Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)

Well known architecture firms- such as Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)/Rem Koolhaas, Herzog & de Meuron, and Future Systems, among others- to design their retail spaces has demanded that the architects carefully study the work of their clients. In the case of Koolhaas’s design for Prada, his firm’s in-depth research covered everything from clothing construction to mechanisms of display and even global distribution and branding. Second, as architects have moved away from freehand drawing and model making toward increasingly sophisticated design software to generate more complex architecture forms, they have looked to fashion for inspiration- in particular, its methods of construction and its manipulation of plat, almost two dimensional cloth. Yes, Fashion has a long history of dealing with the kinds of complex forms and constructions that architects are now able to confront thanks to advancements in software and building materials.