Archinect - News

AMO design for the Prada 2024 FW Men's Show stages nature against an invasive interior environment

2024-01-21T08:00:00-05:00

AMO’s latest collaboration with the fashion industry went on display recently as part of the 2024 FW Prada Men's Show, held on January 14th at the Fondazione Prada for Milan Fashion Week.

For the presentation, AMO and partner in charge Rem Koolhaas created a scenographic imitation of an outmoded office environment set against an outer landscape that appears to audience members from beneath a transparent platform stage as though an “analogue projection among the many digital images that saturate one’s life today.”

This theatrical blending of nature and its opposite keys to the brand’s stated desire to produce clothes that reflect the spaces and seasons surrounding them. It, of course, also pays homage to design trends apparent in the latest examples of corporate architecture.

“In the space of the Deposito an improbable encounter takes place: chaos and order, reality and fiction, predictability and spontaneity – seemingly opposite elements – engage in a game of collaboration, a syne...

AMO reveals unique retail spaces for Jacquemus' Paris and London expansions

2022-10-05T12:57:00-04:00

A splashy collaboration between AMO (the research arm of OMA) and the French fashion house Jacquemus is making the scene in Paris and London this season thanks to the dynamic duo of OMA partner Ellen van Loon and Giulio Margheri.

Located inside the iconic Parisian department store Galeries Lafayette Haussmann and the equally posh London’s Selfridges and Harvey Nichols outfitters, the stores first premiered in July and were inspired by a deep dive into the brand’s origins, according to the design team.

Photograph by Benoit Florençon, Courtesy of AMO

“We wanted to capture the atmosphere of Provence through the materiality of the spaces,” van Loon says. “[That] led us to approach the design in a different way altogether. Instead of working with form and deciding on the materials afterwards, we chose the materials at the outset and let them guide the shape of each space.”

Photograph by Benoit Florençon, Courtesy of AMO

Photograph by Benoit F...

OMA adds a bit of firm history into its design for the new Amex Centurion card

2021-08-13T17:05:00-04:00

A tiny new addition to Rem Koolhaas and OMA’s famed catalog will be launching in the USA in September after a successful European launch earlier this year.

The new Centurion Card design is a collaboration between the Dutch studio and American Express aimed at updating the bulletproof old metallic versions of the card that have been on the market since 2005.

The Boompjes project, Stefano de Martino at OMA

The card’s design is based on the original plan for Boompjes, the never-realized Rotterdam redevelopment project that Koolhaas counts as the first major commission in his home country. Amex came across the Boompjes designs (which feature prominently in several different museum collections including the MOMA) after approaching OMA with the project in 2019. The design was originally centered around the Roman theme that has been synonymous with the company since its inception in America in the late 1950s.

The design is taken from a 1982 silkscreen triptych rendering designed by Koolha...

AMO-designed new flagship for Virgil Abloh's Off-White has opened in Paris

2021-07-06T20:57:00-04:00

A new collaboration between OMA/AMO and design icon Virgil Abloh has opened in Paris this past weekend, giving the 9-year-old Off-White brand a flagship location in the couture capital’s 1st arrondissement.

The store is the second project from AMO and the famed designer after opening a Miami location at the end of last summer. The two had previously paired on a retrospective exhibition of Abloh’s work held at the MCA Chicago in 2019.

Off-White founder and creative director Abloh told Hypebeast he views the new flagship as “an incubator for new talent, a cultural connector within the community, and an experimental laboratory of creativity and innovation.”

The three-floor retrofitted 19th-century space features a ground floor with a dedicated wing for Nike products, gallery space, and two contrasting retail areas meant to “amplify the voices of the community” and evoke bygone Parisian flea markets respectively.

The remaining two f...

AMO undertakes set design and video art direction for Bulgari's summer 2021 fine jewelry show

2021-06-28T13:14:00-04:00

AMO, the research branch of OMA, has revealed its designs for Italian luxury brand, Bulgari’s, Summer 2021 fine jewelry show.

Photo: Agostino Osio/Courtesy of AMO

The firm carried out the show’s set design and video art direction. It is being presented at the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a major landmark in Milan and Italy’s oldest active shopping gallery. The project is led by OMA Partner Ellen van Loon and Giulio Margheri.

Photo: Agostino Osio/Courtesy of AMO

Striking uses of light and color create a dramatic atmosphere that compliments the grandiose, classical nature of the iconic building.

As stated in the project’s press release, “In manipulating scale and time, the show creates a mutually reinforcing encounter between the splendors of fine jewelry and architecture.”

Photo: Agostino Osio/Courtesy of AMO

“We conceptualized the production as an interplay of the lyrical and the mechanical,” says Ellen van Loon. “We wanted to create scenes that resonate with the design of fine je...

'Countryside at the United Nations' by Rem Koolhaas + AMO opens in New York

2021-06-16T12:40:00-04:00

AMO, the research, branding, and publication studio of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), has taken over the fences of the United Nations headquarters in New York for a public exhibition that serves as a continuation of Countryside, The Future.

Curated by architect and OMA founder Rem Koolhaas and AMO director Samir Bantal, Countryside was originally presented in February 2020 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The exhibition presented research gathered by AMO over five years, bringing together discussions from scientific, sociological, artistic, and political spaces. It set out to define and explore the contemporary “countryside” of the “98% of the Earth’s surface not occupied by cities.” Countryside, The Future was unfortunately shut down just three weeks after its opening due to the coronavirus pandemic but continued after the museum reopened.

Previously on Archinect: See photos from "Countryside, The Future" at the Guggenheim Museum

This new showcase, informed by ...

AMO and Volkswagen team up to develop electric tractor

2020-03-06T09:14:00-05:00

Led by Samir Bantal, AMO, the think tank founded by Rem Koolhaas has announced a new partnership with Volkswagen to focus on the development of rural mobility. As a first step in the partnership, the team has begun a study for an electric tractor that will be developed for sub-Saharan Africa "to facilitate small-scale agriculture and increase the productivity of subsistence farmers." The project is currently on display at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York as part of the Countryside, The Future" exhibition by AMP and Rem Koolhaas.

The VW e-tractor in the Guggenheim, Image by Philipp Gladsome.

Being in the conceptual phase, the project's next steps will be to set up partnerships with local collaborators, universities, and stakeholders to further develop strategies and knowledge surrounding the new technological ambitions.

AMO and Volkswagen hope to use this research to explore how different concepts of mobility can address challenges with aging population and decreased popul...

See photos from "Countryside, The Future" at the Guggenheim Museum

2020-02-27T18:46:00-05:00

The architecture world has been abuzz lately over the recent public opening of Countryside, The Future, the new exhibition taking place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City by the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).

Let's take a look at some of the photography from the blockbuster exhibition.

Installation view of the Guggenheim Museum rotunda. Image by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

The exhibition makes use of the museum's continuous spiral design to display a wide range of materials. Image by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

The Rotunda oculus, filled with large-format information displays. Image by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

The exhibition is co-organized by OMA co-founder Rem Koolhaas, OMA's research arm AMO and its director Samir Bantal, Guggenheim Museum Curator of Architecture and Digital Initiatives Troy Conrad Therrien, and a vast team of researchers and interns hailing from the Harvard Graduate Schoo...

Koolhaas in the countryside

2020-02-14T13:21:00-05:00

The Office of Metropolitan Architecture's (OMA) much-anticipated exhibition, Countryside, The Future, is set to open next week at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

The exhibition, according to the museum website, explores "radical changes in the rural, remote, and wild territories collectively identified here as 'countryside,' or the 98% of the earth’s surface not occupied by cities, with a full rotunda installation premised on original research."

The exhibition is organized by OMA co-founder Rem Koolhaas, AMO director Samir Bantal, The Guggenheim's Curator of Architecture and Digital Initiatives Troy Conrad Therrien, and others. It features research and contributions from students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; Wageningen University, Netherlands; and the University of Nairobi.

According to a recent article in The Guardian from UK architecture critic Oliver Wainwright, Koolhaas got the idea for the exhibition ...

AMO's exhibition for Virgil Abloh opens in Chicago

2019-06-18T14:23:00-04:00

Polymath designer Virgil Abloh's 12 Figures of Speech exhibition has opened at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibition was designed by Samir Bantal, director of AMO, the research and design arm of Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA).

A screen-printed temple front. Image by Nathan Keay, Courtesy of MCA Chicago

3D-printed models wearing 3D-printed clothing. Image by Nathan Keay, Courtesy of MCA Chicago

The exhibition highlights Illinois Institute of Technology-trained designer's relentlessly inventive creative efforts, enterprises that include works of fashion, painting, sculpture, and furniture design. A mix of high- and low-culture, found and bespoke objects, the exhibition presents a multi-faceted vision into Abloh's creative process and output.

One gallery, for example, contains frameless photographic prints depicting Abloh's couture designs. There, matte black walls and a domed ceiling frame images that touch on elements of racial politics in fashion and art, ...

AMO designs Virgil Abloh exhibition for the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

2019-05-16T14:11:00-04:00

As an architecture student-turn-fashion designer, Virgil Abloh has famously straddled the line between the two professions. An exhibition of his work, which has been described as 'ultramodern' and 'genre-bending,' will highlight this Interdisciplinarity at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), starting June 10th.

Off-White™ c/o Virgil Abloh, Spring/Summer 2017, Look 30; Courtesy of Off-White™ c/o Virgil Abloh. Photo: Fabien Montique.

The exhibition will be designed in part by Samir Bantal, the director of AMO, OMA’s research wing, and curated by Michael Darling. Bantal has expressed that the exhibition will focus on the different worlds Virgil moves in: Architecture, Fashion, Design, Music and Art. After the show's opening, there are plans for it to travel internationally and become part of an ongoing collaboration between AMO and Abloh.

Virgil Abloh, “Material Table,“ 2016. Courtesy of the artist.

AMO has previously provided creative input for exhibitions on fashion, includin...

Ready to wear Rem's 'frontpack'? Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron reinterpret nylon for Prada

2018-01-22T16:31:00-05:00

In her latest interpretation of the material, Prada asked the architects Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron — with whom she collaborates regularly — to design something in nylon for the show, and to select another talent from their field to do the same. They chose, respectively, the German designer Konstantin Grcic and the French designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. T spoke to each of them about their designs.

Prada just wrapped up its anticipated fall/winter 2018 show, which the fashion powerhouse held in a converted warehouse in Milan, designed by AMO.

"The building is organized in sectors that each correspond to a specific theme," a Prada statement describes the venue conversion. "Boxes, crates and all the other objects that colonize the warehouse are marked with a series of ambiguous symbols that express the multiplicity of the Prada identity. Classical themes like idealized accessories, gizmos, mascots and recurring motifs of the collections are transformed into emblems that hint at the content of the crates."

'Prada Warehouse' by AMO. Credit: AMO.

Noteworthy moments of the fall/winter collection were the collaborations with architects Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron, contributing designs that interpreted this year's theme: nylon.

Frontpack by Rem Koolhaas. Image: Prada.

Frontpack by Rem Koolhaas. Image: P...

Rem Koolhaas envisions the future of the 'countryside' in upcoming Guggenheim exhibition

2017-12-01T13:23:00-05:00

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is teaming up with Rem Koolhaas and the research arm (AMO) of his practice (OMA) for an upcoming exhibition that will be on display come fall 2019. The project, Countryside: Future of the World, will explore radical changes in the countryside while positing speculations about its future and is an extension of research already underway at the think tank.

Koppert Cress, The Netherlands, 2011. Photo: Pieternel van Velden.

Curated by Troy Conrad Therrien—the museum's first curator for architecture and digital initiatives who also happens to be one of our Ed contributors—the exhibition will examine themes of artificial intelligence and automation, the effects of genetic experimentation, political radicalization, mass and micro migration, large-scale territorial management, human-animal ecosystems, subsidies and tax incentives, the impact of the digital on the physical world, and other developments that are altering landscapes across the globe, according t...

Reinier de Graaf: “Architecture is in a State of Denial”

2017-11-08T17:43:00-05:00

I never realised how nostalgic I am, until I started writing. An architect is not supposed to be nostalgic but forward-looking. But I’m nostalgic for a time when mankind was a lot more forward-looking than it is today; for a gradual optimism about the future. That’s the paradox.

"In his book Four Walls and a Roof – The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession, Reinier de Graaf paints an honest picture of what it is like to work as an architect today. De Graaf, who is a partner at OMA and director of AMO, the office’s think tank, provides engaging stories about the banal, everyday reality of working for an acclaimed firm. These vivid, uncompromising narratives are contextualised with shrewd essays about architecture’s lost ideals, its false pretentions, and utter dependence on forces far more powerful than design. We sat down to talk about housing and political mobilisation, his compromises, and his radical pursuit of the mundane."

An excerpt,

Mark Minkjan: The book’s journal-like descriptions of encounters with politicians, bureaucrats, real estate developers and celebrated architects are highly entertaining – and often depressing. I had to laugh more than once, for example when reading your account of a meaningless talk by Richard Rogers in Abu Dhabi, in whic...

Italian department store La Rinascente commemorated in OMA/AMO-designed exhibition

2017-05-25T12:39:00-04:00

La Rinascente, a department store chain headquartered in Milan, has a long and storied history. The descendent of Aux Villes d’Italie—perhaps the first department store in Italy—the business brought modern shopping into the country. Instead of tailors, shoppers could now see garments on display, turning consumption into the sensory experience we know today.

After the original store closed in the midst of the First World War, it was reborn as “La Rinascente”, or “She who is born again.” The name was coined by Gabriele d’Annunzio, the revered Italian poet-turned-war hero whose ideas helped influence Italian fascism. The name took on additional significance after the original building burned to the ground on Christmas 1918.

Now, the department store, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, will be commemorate by an exhibition designed by OMA/AMO. Designed as a series of unfolding sequences, intended to echo the logic of a department store, the exhibition will outline the history of ...

Take a look at "Real Fantasies," AMO's latest collaboration with Prada

2016-02-05T13:43:00-05:00

For the 2016 Spring/Summer Prada Real Fantasies, AMO graphically reinterprets the Indefinite Hangar as a synthetic sunset fixed within a 3 dimensional blank space. The abstract hangar is populated with geometric objects and furniture. Characters move through a neutral scene between the undefined and distilled fragments of daily life. The horizon and scale constantly shifts, manipulating the frame and disrupting a linear sequence: an artificial landscape where fiction and collection collide.

OMA and its think tank counterpart, AMO, have deep ties to the fashion world, in particular with Prada. Alongside built work by the architectural powerhouse, notably the recently-completed Fondazione Prada, OMA/AMO has designed runways, look books, and videos for the Milanese luxury brand.

Since 2012, that collaboration has produced graphic short movies showcasing new collections under the project banner "Real Fantasies." For the 2016 Spring/Summer collection, AMO imagined a world of pure architectural extension, a CAD utopia unblemished by reality.

Described as a "3 dimensional blank space," the setting of the video seems locked in an endless sunset. Lithe models ride a train past a city of pure geometry, which morphs seamlessly into an unending picture window.

It's visual porn at it's best and well worth a look. Watch the video below, and for more connections between fashion and architecture, check out these links:

AMO designs a "Timeless Ruin" for Miu Miu's 2016 S/S show

2015-10-09T15:19:00-04:00

AMO – the think tank counterpart to OMA – extensively works with fashion labels. They've designed stores and runways for brands like Prada and Miu Miu for years, crafting (often) conceptually-charged, and (always) visually-punchy environments to consume the latest and greatest sartorial inventions.

For the 2016 Spring/Summer Miu Miu show in Paris, AMO designed a large geometric volume clad in reflective industrial materials that served both as backdrop and pathway for the models, who walked around it on Wednesday.

Jammed into the hypostyle of August Perret's monumental Palais d'Iena, the structure – or folly – is intended to play off the architecture, both obscuring and offering glimpses of the building's famous tapered columns.

"Timeless Ruin" – as its called in the press announcement – is intended to introduce "a dramatic counterpart to the rigorous linearity of the Palais." It's a pleasant-enough name and probably intended to reflect AMO's thinking about Perret's architecture, but ...

The first-ever AV Monograph on Rem Koolhaas focuses on the last 12 years

2015-09-22T20:03:00-04:00

The Spanish-publisher Arquitectura Viva just published a new monograph on Rem Koolhaas, their first-ever on the Dutch architect. Focusing on work since he won the Pritzker in 2000, the monograph includes an essay and twelve critical texts by Luis Fernández-Galiano alongside images of some of the most notable projects by OMA / AMO over the last twelve years.

The 240 page volume is available for €55, or €28 for the digital edition. Visit AV's website for more information.

Check out some of the images below: