Architecture firm OMA reveals its Midas touch with the new venue of Fondazione Prada, opening this month with a swarm of inaugural activities. Led by Rem Koolhaas, OMA has transformed the industrial compound of a former distillery, erecting three new buildings and renovating seven existing structures. One, completely covered in gold leaf, will host a site-specific work by Robert Gober, and an installation by Thomas Demand will occupy the basement of another. The impressive range of exhibition environments includes a cavernous former sugar-storage area and a sixty-meter white concrete tower. And while the new site boasts a vintage-style Milanese bar designed by Wes Anderson and an educational space conceived by the students of the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Versailles, the crown jewel is Podium, a centrally located pavilion. Here, archaeologist Salvatore Settis will stage “Serial Classic,” a subversive but scholarly exhibition of classical sculpture, focusing on the relationship between originality and imitation in Roman culture.

— Francesco Bonami