Prada: Search for Corporate Identity

By Tyler Silvers

Whether a small department store or a new headquarters, the design of a corporate structure speaks volumes about the company that is housed within – the target audience, core values and corporate intentions are displayed alongside the products in the window. Through the particular design of its temporary headquarters, Prada has utilized architectural design to develop a corporate identity based on an innate predisposition toward innovation and experimentation.

Through the design of its stores around the world, Prada effectively displays its corporate embrace of experimentation. None of the headquarters around the world that Prada has had designed look the same – each were specifically tailored to the particular culture, geography, or situation presented at the time of design. Renzo Piano’s design for Prada’s temporary headquarters in Valencia, Spain constitutes a situational flare that helps Prada, as a sponsor of the Luna Rossa Challenge (an Italian sailboat race), relate to its audience. Piano recycles the high-tech sails no longer able to be used by the boats as a facing for the building, offering both a cost-effective and highly relatable build. The use of the sails offers the obvious connection with the sailboat racers and serves as both a promotion of the race and a symbol of the company’s attempt to reach out to the racers and fans as a client base. As well, the façade shows Prada’s transparency – their openness to innovation. During the day, the facing acts as a brise soleil; diffusing the light on the inside of the building. By night, the sails allow light to cast out from the structure, acting as a beacon, perhaps symbolizing a lighthouse, tying back into the sailing roots of the structure; perhaps alluding to the fact that Prada is willing to do what is necessary to take care of its clients.

In stark contrast, Prada’s Marfa store in Texas is not a store at all, but rather exists as a symbol of Prada reaching out to potential clients. The small, fake store exists along a long, otherwise vacant road in the Texan desert and existed only as a temporary structure – a sort of pseudo-billboard through which Prada could advertise its products. Although the idea may seem silly to people who drive by, most take a few minutes to stop and get a glimpse of the small structure before continuing along the lonely desert road. Perhaps this is Prada’s way of encouraging others to slow down, to forget the conventional and wholly binding social expectations that we encounter on a daily basis, and to realize that, to an extent, the outliers are far more interesting and eye-catching than the moderate.

I respect Prada for taking the necessary initiative in the design of their corporate structures to call in big-name architects. The company displays its pride and confidence in its products; considering the high monetary burden associated with such large firms and the stylistic gap between some of the structures, such designs serve to highlight the overall strength of the company. Also says that they are completely willing to adapt to the cultural, geographical, and situational changes that comes with each new site; thus none of the headquarters look the same.