Fashion brand Prada has worked with local design studio 2×4 to cover a New York City store in functional seafoam-green scaffolding designed to shift visually with changing light and weather.
The temporary installation covers the brand’s 5th Avenue shop and is made of a scaffolding structure covered in semi-transparent scrim paper that creates a moiré, or rippling, effect.
Prada and 2×4 have transformed typical scaffolding into a “Prada green” installation
The structure, which encircles the two exposed facades of the store, is made of standard commercial pipe scaffolding elements, which are lined with lighting and painted Prada Green.
Lightweight, fibre-based scrim paper, sometimes used in theatre backdrops, was double-layered and was printed with different coloured patterns to create the moiré effect.
The facade shifts in transparency via a double-layered scrim paper
As the light changes, or passerby grow closer or further from the structure, the transparency shifts, sometimes appearing monolithic and solid, and sometimes revealing the structure underneath.
According to spatial design studio 2×4, long-time collaborators of Prada, the project was an opportunity to showcase the brand as the store undergoes renovations.
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“Rather than hiding construction and maintenance, we leverage them as an opportunity to express Prada’s unique aesthetic heritage,” said the studio in an Instagram post.
“Through colour, pattern, and moiré, the scaffold becomes an extension of the brand language rather than a screen; a branding of and in the structure of the city.”
A slightly offset motif creates the moiré effect
According to Prada, there is no end date set for the installation, as details of the extent of renovations have not been released.
The appearance of New York City scaffolding has been revisited in recent years, in part because of outgoing Mayor Eric Adams ‘ disdain for the structures.
Last year, the city passed several bills aimed at shortening the duration of scaffolding installation, while it also selected the finalists for a long-running initiative that called for the redesign of the structures.
Louis Vuitton also used renovations on its flagship store as a moment for installation by wrapping the building in an opaque facade that resembles a huge stack of luggage.
Prada also recently worked with Redbull to create a huge skateboard ramp down the side of a skyscraper in Brazil.
The photography is by Bridgit Beyer