Hasta La Ideas

(Photos: Prada)

Multi-dimensional event spaces grow up so fast these days. It seems like only yesterday we were welcoming the Prada Transformer into the world, nestled beside a 16th-century palace in Seoul, and now it’s time to bid the Rem Koolhaas/Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)-designed structure a fond farewell. Yesterday, the Transformer made its final flip, rotated by crains onto its circular base to host today’s “Student Takeover.” The program showcases and celebrates the transformation-themed design ideas and artwork of Korean students.

On the luxe leather heels of the fashion exhibition, film festival, and art installation hosted by the Transformer over the past five months, the student program is an effort to engage with the host city by making the structure “a place for debate and open-minded discussion; inviting innovative students to communicate ideas freely and contemplate the future of art, design, and the society in which it exists,” according to a Prada spokesperson. The work exhibited was created by 130 Korean art, design, and architecture students. They spent two weeks in a workshop-style environment led by OMA’s Alexander Reichert, design architect on the Transformer project, hatching the products of their takeover, from redesigned Prada Transformer flyers, pins, and t-shirts to plans for overhauling the architecture. By day’s end, the structure is expected to have been painted on, wallpapered, covered in graffiti, and torn apart—just enough “to create a new spatiality that engages with the students’ content” and serve as the venue for a final, blow-out party.

Previously on UnBeige: