Prada to transform Milan distillery into art gallery

A derelict distillery is being given a new lease of life and is set to become Milan’s largest gallery of contemporary art thanks to funding from fashion label, Prada.

A derelict distillery is being renovated into a contemporary art gallery by fashion house, Prada

For decades, the Largo Isarco building south of Milan has been left in disrepair but is now transformed into an art gallery by Fondazione Prada, the art foundation set up by fashion designer Miuccia Prada and her husband Patrizio Bertelli in 1993.

It will become Foundazione Prada’s first permanent art gallery project and Milan’s first “proper” gallery for contemporary art.

“This new opening is an act of responsibility towards present times,” said Miuccia Prada. “Fondazione Prada will not be a museum, but rather the continuation of an intellectual process founded on extensive research.”

Dutch architect Rem Koolhas will design the foundation’s expansive arts and exhibition space, blending the building’d original industrial character with several extensions, including a tower eight storeys tall.

Astrid Welter, project director of Fondazione Prada, described the project as a pivotal moment in the organisation’s history.

“This is our transformation, our phase two of the foundation,” she said. “We have already become a platform for art exhibitions and other disciplines like architecture, cinema and philosophy, and the new exhibition site in Milan will now allow us to amplify all the activity which we have done so far on grander scale.”

The distillery’s transformation comes in light of a previous project announced earlier this year, when Bill Stolze announced plans to convert a former whisky distillery in Pittsburgh, US, into a block of flats.