Real World Transformers – The Prada Koolhaas Creation

Great minds see the world in a vastly different way.

Buildings typically are constructed with two key thoughts in mind.

First, there is a specific structure based on a notion of function that seeks to meet a prescribed and generally singular purpose. Second, there is sense of permanence and life span, the structure is built to best handle the designed function for decades.

So the idea that a building could be designed to transform is certainly an anomaly. But such is the case with Koolhaas’s Transformer, constructed in a manner that it can not only be reconfigured monthly, it can be removed when its one year life span is complete.

The Transformer

Even those without an architectural interest have to be intrigued by Koolhaas’s concept, a temporary construction that now rests near a 16th-century Korean palace in Seoul. The Prada Foundation asked famed architect Rem Koolhaas to create a temporary structure that would host a diverse group of cultural events over the upcoming summer.

While the building will need the assistance of some decent size cranes, the structure began with a focus towards being a venue for hosting a fashion show. Later, the building will be lifted and rotated to serve as a movie theater. Likewise, with the help of those same cranes, it will be adjusted later in the summer so as to host an art exhibition before being reconfigured to again host a fashion show.

Each side is flat and the rotation will involve the amazing step of using a different side as its base for each cultural event. Mathematically, the term tetrahedral is used to describe a structure that has but three sides exposed and a fourth that is used as the base.

Instead of hard, firm surfaces, the structure is wrapped in a white fabric skin and the four sides offer a multi-faceted, visual appearance that includes a circle, a cross, a hexagon and a rectangle. For the first fashion show, the building was set so as to rest on the hexagonal side, a shape most conducive for fashion shows.

Later, for the movie house, the building will be placed on the rectangular side, etc. With those rotations will come yet another of the visual effects of a specific shape greeting visitors to the city or the building.

And in the ultimate of transforming, the entire structure will live a short, albeit famed life. It will be disassembled and removed at summer’s end though where it might reappear is apparently still not finalized.