If you adore something, you want to take it apart, yes? With obsessive curiosity, you want to examine this object you’re so enamored with. You wonder what its insides look like, how it functions, and what materials were used to make it. Right? Precisely. Now imagine dissecting a Prada runway—the actual runway. Imagine, further, walking into the house’s clandestine storage facility to sift through the hardware used in its shows going back to the nineties. Yes, they have a storage facility. And yes, it will have a second life on display, as part of the Salone del Mobile design fair.

Prada’s Ex Limbo project investigates the architectural and scenographic elements of Prada’s runway presentations over the past decade. The exhibit, presented at the Fondazione Prada in Milan, has been put together by Rotor, a Brussels-based collective composed of six people who share an interest in material exchange. Homage is paid to the silent existence of these materials, sitting in darks shadows after their moment of glory: piles of wood, seats, metal, mirrors, and polyethylene foam. And in one final nod, Fondazione Prada will publish a catalog whose case is made from the vinyl used to cover the fall ’11 catwalk.

April 13 – June 5, 2011
Fondazione Prada
via Fogazzaro 36
Milan