Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/518559
appearance comes courtesy of the world-renowned architecture practice OMA, which has had an enduring relationship with the Italian fashion maison for 15 years. "I am always impressed by the efficiency of the fashion world," says OMA partner and co-founder Rem Koolhaas. "In eight hours they can organize something sublime. With architects, it can take more than eight years." He speaks with genuine affection of "the industrial quality of the neighborhood" and the tranquil atmosphere imparted by the largely disused railway tracks nearby, which have become "by accident, a lush park." Throughout the grounds, Koolhaas and his team have brought together an audacious blend of high and low materials, and a broad range of spaces. Everyday polycarbonate paneling rubs shoulders with luxuriant gold cladding; bright and playful orange beams punctuate as well as reinforce a series of low-slung former warehouses; the staircase of one of the new buildings sits atop the terrace of an existing building. In the main exhibition gallery, a glamorous and elegant oversize glass box, walls and ceilings of a tactile and lacy aluminium foam more commonly used in armored vehicles are combined with beautifully detailed unpolished travertine flooring from Iran, while dramatic layered Perspex plinths further imbue the space with richness. The fact that some of the plinths are purposely empty—the first show housed in this space is dedicated to Roman copies of original Greek statuary that has never been found—only adds to the theatrical quality of the space. In a gesture toward the city, people will be able to visit the campus (though not the exhibitions) without paying an entrance fee and enjoy the kitsch-meets- nostalgic Wes Anderson–designed café. With its faux vaulted ceiling, saturated color palette and Formica tables, the café channels both the grandeur of the city's chicest and oldest shopping gallery and Italian movies of the 1950s and '60s; Welter hopes it will attract "young people who just want to hang out." The Children's Academy, devised by a neuro- pediatrician and filled with thoughtful and playful furniture designed by architecture students at the University of Versailles, is an unusual and innovative project aimed at children, ages 4 to 10. "It's about working with young children in the hope that they will become adults who appreciate culture and understand why it is necessary," Welter says. It's a generous gesture in what appears to be an ambitious, yet accessible project. As Bertelli put it at the press conference, "This venue is a gift to Milan and to the country." 190 CULTURED Tom Sachs' Balaenoptera Musculus, 2006, at Ca' Corner della Regina in Venice