MILAN — The lambent new tower of art galleries Rem Koolhaas and his Rotterdam-based firm, OMA, have designed for the Prada Foundation is a chameleon¹.

米兰——雷姆·库哈斯(Rem Koolhaas)和他位于鹿特丹的建筑事务所OMA为普拉达基金会(Prada Foundation)设计的艺术展览空间——一座新的塔楼散发着柔和的光泽，就像一只变色龙。

From the east, the elevation² presents a slim, unadorned, milk-white concrete block, nine stories high, punctured³ by loggias — a signpost, like the traditional village bell tower, rising above a low, scruffy⁴ neighborhood.

从东面看，一幢细长、未加修饰的乳白色混凝土大楼耸立着，九层楼高，开出几处阳台——它成了一个路标，就像传统村庄里的钟塔，从一片低矮破旧的房屋当中拔地而起。

To the north, where the facade⁵ meets Milan’s skyline and becomes mostly glass, cantilevering over the street, the block breaks into a zigzag⁶ of shifting floor plates, rectangles and trapezoids, the whole building wedged onto a triangular⁷ plot.

再到北面，建筑立面在此汇入米兰的天际线，墙面变成玻璃为主，悬挑在街道之上，不同楼层的楼面在平行四边形和不规则四边形之间变换，把楼体分割出曲折错落，整座建筑落在一个三角形地块上。

The south end makes plain how the structure stands up. An ensemble⁸ of enormous cables encased inside a giant beam counteracts⁹ the thrust of all those heavy, cantilevered concrete decks. Like a sword in a stone, the beam angles from the top of the tower through the red-tiled roof of an adjacent former warehouse¹⁰, anchoring in the floor below.

南面令竖立的建筑结构一目了然。一条硕大的梁里藏有数根粗大的钢缆，牵制了那些悬挑、沉重的混凝土楼板产生的推力。这道梁像一把插入石头的剑，从楼顶倾斜向下，穿过紧挨着的一座老仓库的红瓦顶，锚入地面。

In the Arthurian legend, the wizard Merlin put the sword in the stone. Mr. Koolhaas must be Merlin, I suppose. That makes Miuccia Prada, the Lady of the Lake.

在亚瑟王的传奇里，是魔法师梅林(Merlin)把剑放进了石头。我想这里的梅林必然是库哈斯。那么湖夫人(Lady of the Lake)就是缪西娅·普拉达(Miuccia Prada)了。

The tower completes the arts campus OMA has spent the past decade conceiving for the Prada Foundation. An offshoot of the global fashion conglomerate¹¹, dedicated¹² to contemporary art and culture, the foundation commissions new art, presents exhibitions and organizes film festivals and other events. It also oversees¹³ the vast art collection Ms. Prada and her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, have put together. For years, it operated in far-flung locales.

OMA用了十年时间为普拉达基金会设计该艺术中心，这座塔楼是艺术中心的收官之作。普拉达基金会是全球性时尚集团普拉达的分支机构，专事当代艺术与文化，基金会委约创作新的艺术作品，举办展览，组织电影节和其他活动。这个机构也负责监管普拉达女士和丈夫帕特里齐奥·贝尔泰利(Patrizio Bertelli)庞大的艺术收藏。多年以来，基金会都在偏远地点运营。

In 2008, Mr. Koolhaas and a partner, Christopher van Duijn, were enlisted¹⁴ to reimagine a former, turn-of-the-century distillery Prada owned as the foundation’s permanent home. Walled-in, abutting¹⁵ a weedy stretch of railroad tracks, the distillery was a picturesque¹⁶ assortment¹⁷ of dilapidated stables, a bottling facility, a carriage house, some offices and warehouses¹⁸.

2008年，库哈斯与合伙人克里斯多夫·范·丹(Christopher van Duijn)受邀把普拉达拥有的一座20世纪初的酒厂重新设计为基金会的永久总部。围墙内，毗邻一条荒草丛生的铁道，画面感十足的酒厂包括几处残破的马房、装瓶车间、马车库、办公室和仓库。

The architects cleared away some of the old buildings, refurbished others. They built new ones. The tower was the last piece of the puzzle.

建筑师拆除了一些老建筑，另一些做了翻新。他们也盖了新建筑。塔楼是整个设计的最后一块拼图。

Without it, the site first opened to the public in 2015. It featured about 120,000 square feet of new or reconfigured exhibition space; a new cinema; a new two-story Miesian pavilion of wide open gallery spaces, called the Podium, the whole building clad in light, shimmery¹⁹ panels of foamed²⁰ aluminum²¹, an automotive and medical industry material also used for bomb blast absorption that looks a little like rough stone. There was even a 1950s-style Italian cafe straight out of a Wes Anderson movie.

2015年还没有塔楼的时候，艺术中心首次对公众开放。那时已经有了12万平方英尺（约合1.1万平方米）的新建或改建的展览空间；一座新影院；一座新建的密斯风格的两层展厅，有着开阔的展示空间，名叫“讲台”(Podium)，“讲台”通体覆以哑光的轻质泡沫铝板，这是汽车与医疗产业常用的一种材料，也用于吸收爆破冲击波，看上去有点像粗糙的石材。甚至还有一间1950年代意大利风格的咖啡馆，直接出自韦斯·安德森(Wes Anderson)的一部电影。

That was because Wes Anderson designed it.

因为它是韦斯·安德森的设计。

Chameleons²² themselves, Mr. Koolhaas and Ms. Prada made natural confederates. She was the famous communist turned high-fashion mogul whose empire evolved from bags and backpacks constructed out of an industrial nylon²³ lining²⁴ material. He was a prophet of global cities who declared the countryside his real passion after everyone else jumped on the urbanist bandwagon.

库哈斯和普拉达女士都很多变，他们的结盟也就自然而然。她是著名的由共产党员转型的高端时尚业大亨，她的帝国始自用一种工业尼龙材料做衬里的手袋和背包。他是全球城市的预言家，在别人都跳进都市化大潮之后宣告乡间才是他真正的热情所在。

Her clothes always seemed less about what men desired than what whet²⁵ her creative appetite. He was once invited to propose an expansion for the Museum of Modern Art and thumbed his nose at the selection committee by suggesting a billboard²⁶ that said “MoMA Inc.” They were both contrarians and closet optimists²⁷.

她设计的服装似乎总是取决于什么能激发她的创造欲望，而无关男人的渴望。而他曾受邀为纽约现代艺术博物馆(Museum of Modern Art)的扩建做提案，面对评委会大不敬地提议树一块“现代艺术博物馆有限公司”(MoMA Inc.)的广告牌。两个人都是逆反者和背地里的乐观主义者。

And they shared a sense of humor. At one time it was rumored²⁸ that Prada might back the Dutch architect for a seat in the Italian Parliament.

他们俩还有共同的幽默感。一度有谣传说普拉达要支持这位荷兰建筑师在意大利国会争取一个席位。

The foundation became their love child. It is unlike the eye-popping art gallery Frank Gehry designed for the Louis Vuitton Foundation beside the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, with its billowing glass sails, conjuring²⁹ up flounces of silk and memories of Bilbao. The Prada campus feels, by comparison, world-weary, sneakily luxurious³⁰ and — especially with its new tower — a mini-city, fragmentary, full of craft and secrets. Cities enshrine history and agitate³¹ for change. They’re forever unresolved.

普拉达基金会成了两个人爱的结晶。它不像弗兰克·盖里(Frank Gehry)在巴黎布洛涅森林边上为路易·威登基金会(Louis Vuitton Foundation)设计的令人瞠目的艺术中心，那些鼓鼓的玻璃风帆让人想起丝绸的翻涌，想起毕尔巴鄂。相比之下，普拉达基金会的艺术园看破了红尘，不事张扬地奢华，尤其是有了新的塔楼后，像一座断片拼接的迷你城市，充满了心机与秘密。城市珍藏历史又激荡于变革。它们永无定论。

This has been Mr. Koolhaas’s mantra. It is reflected in a foundation that’s neither a preservation³² project nor a tear-down-and-build-new venture. Its mode is bricolage. More is more. Both is better.

这一直是库哈斯的真言。它反映在这处即非保护项目又不是拆除重建的营造上。它的手法是利用手头的现成材料进行创作。繁即是多。新旧结合更佳。

Cities are theaters and shape-shifters, too. I’m vaguely³³ reminded of the old Cinecittà studios outside Rome, where Fellini worked and Mr. Anderson has made films. A stable house in the former distillery now resembles the cabinet rooms in old master museums. A tiny, Alice in Wonderland door opens onto an immense warehouse, 60 feet high and 200 feet long.

城市是剧场，城市也会变身。我隐约想起了罗马郊区老旧的电影城(Cinecittà studios)，费里尼曾在那里工作，韦斯·安德森也在那拍过电影。老酒厂里的一间马房现在就像古代大师美术馆里的书房。一间小小的、爱丽丝漫游奇境式的门通向60英尺（约合18米）高、200英尺（约合61米）长的巨大仓库。

And a building nicknamed the Haunted House is slathered in gold leaf, like an early Renaissance³⁴ panel painting. (“A very cheap cladding material,” Mr. Koolhaas has insisted, “compared to marble or even paint.”)

绰号“鬼屋”的建筑外表贴以金箔，像一幅文艺复兴早期的木板油画。（“这是一种很便宜的外墙材料，”库哈斯曾坚持说，“比大理石甚至涂料还便宜。”）

“There is no difference between gold and rags,” Michelangelo Pistoletto, the veteran artist, once said. Mr. Pistoletto made his bones in the 1960s as a founder³⁵ of Arte Povera, the Italian twist on post-Minimalism. Writing in 2001, after Mr. Koolhaas’s Prada shop opened in downtown Manhattan, the critic Herbert Muschamp noted³⁶ Prada’s philosophical³⁷ roots in Arte Povera.

艺术家米开朗基罗·皮斯特莱托（Michelangelo Pistoletto）曾说，“黄金与破布并没有什么不同。”皮斯特莱托因在1960年代开创了“贫穷艺术”(Arte Povera)而闻名，这是后极简主义的意大利变体。2001年，库哈斯设计的位于曼哈顿下城的普拉达门店开业之后，评论家赫伯特·穆尚浦(Herbert Muschamp)提出普拉达的哲学源自贫穷艺术。

Mr. Muschamp recalled how Art Povera consisted of “old bedding and tar-stained rope” displayed “in barren, out-of-the-way locations.”

穆尚浦回顾了“破床单和沾染油污的绳索”在“荒无人烟的偏僻场所”展出，是怎样构成了贫穷艺术。

Somehow, he added, “you always needed a private jet to get there.”

不知为什么，他加了一句：“你总是要搭乘私人飞机才能抵达。”

Up to a point, that describes the foundation, with its fetishized lowdown materials like chipboard and orange construction fencing and slightly out-of-the-way location, south of the city’s center.

某种程度上，这个描述是贴切的，门店设计高调使用了刨花板、橙色的工地围栏等廉价材料，店面也位于市中心以南略微偏僻的地段。

Arte Povera isn’t the only ghost of midcentury modernism inhabiting the project — there’s the twee cafe, with its Formica furniture and veneered wood paneling; the new tower restaurant, with its furniture bought at auction³⁸ from New York’s Four Seasons; the cinema, with chairs imported from ’70s-era Milanese movie houses; and the sun-baked, deeply shadowed squares, conjuring up de Chirico.

游荡在这里的上世纪中期的现代主义鬼魂还不只是贫穷艺术——艺术中心有间花哨的咖啡馆，里边是贴面家具和木纹墙板；新塔楼里的餐厅，家具是从纽约四季饭店歇业前的拍卖上买来的；电影院里的座椅来自几家1970年代的米兰影院；还有阳光灿烂时广场上的阴影，让人想起基里科(Giorgio de Chirico)的画。

At the same time, there are the custom sheets of very modern translucent³⁹ polycarbonate and aluminum handrails milled like Ferraris. There are the oak wood box-on-end pavers and the repurposed metal prison grates painted lime green, which serve as screens in the coat checks and bathroom stalls.

同时这里又使用了非常现代的定制透明聚碳酸酯板，铝合金扶手打磨得像法拉利汽车一样精细。还有橡木铺路板和漆成嫩绿色的监狱金属栅栏改作他用，成了存衣处的屏风和厕所里的隔间。

Some visitors have complained the layout doesn’t tell you where to go. You find your way around it. Like in a city. I think that is a virtue⁴⁰.

有些访客抱怨说内部布局不告诉你该往哪里走。你得自己去试探。就像在一座城市里。我认为这是个优点。

But until now the project was missing its cornerstone where the 200-foot-high, 22,000-square-foot tower, or Torre, was meant to rise. Delays in construction stretched three years. They ended up allowing time to refine the design.

不过整个项目一直在等最重要的这座高200英尺（约合60米）高、面积2.2万平方英尺（约合2044平方米）的塔楼，直到现在。建设工期拖延了三年。这也给改进设计留出了时间。

The tower’s six, stacked gallery floors were created as full-time⁴¹ showcases for Prada’s private art collection. They’re reached through a small, open-air lobby like a disco ball, with flashing screens and a dizzying cutout in the ceiling to reveal the building core’s scissored stairs. One flight up, mirrored bathrooms, industrial sinks and a patterned floor summon to mind Pierre Chareau and Superstudio.

塔楼里上下六层楼的展厅专门用来陈列普拉达的私人艺术收藏。进入展厅要通过一个小型的开放式前厅，像迪斯科舞厅的反光球，有许多闪烁的屏幕，天花板上有令人晕眩的开口，透过它能看到建筑核心筒里交错的楼梯。沿楼梯向上一层，镶镜面的洗手间、工业水槽和拼花地板让你想起皮埃尔·夏洛(Pierre Chareau)和Superstudio（注：1960年代的意大利激进建筑小组）。

The galleries above are one to a floor, no two rooms alike, each taller than the last, their layouts shifting with the floor plates, the lowest gallery, 9 feet high; the topmost, 26 feet high.

楼上每一层就是一个展厅，每个展厅都截然不同，每个都比上一个更高，布局也随着楼面形状而变化；最低层的展厅挑高9英尺（约合2.7米），最上层的是26英尺（约合7.9米）。

The middle-floor galleries end up feeling the nicest, proportion-wise. But the whole building is one narrative⁴². As Federico Pompignoli, OMA’s project manager, has said, the tower is “an attempt at the white cube defying its own boringness.”

从空间比例来说，中间层的展厅感觉最舒服。但整座楼是一个整体表述。就像OMA的项目经理费德里克·庞皮尼奥里(Federico Pompignoli)说过的，塔楼是“尝试在一个白方块上抗拒它自身的无趣”。

Much credit here goes to him. He oversaw⁴³ every inch of construction and it shows. Elevator cabs clad in backlit slabs⁴⁴ of rose and green onyx suggest medieval reliquaries. I am told blacksmiths from a tiny shop outside Milan hand-tooled the restaurant’s exquisite⁴⁵ bar, sliding doors and custom-embossed the anodized aluminum panels on the terraces that look like expensive Lego pieces.

对于塔楼，他功不可没。他监督了它每一寸的建造与外观。电梯轿厢内铺以有背光的玫瑰色及绿色缟玛瑙，使人联想到中世纪的圣物盒。我听说来自米兰城外一家小铺子的铁匠手工打造了餐厅里精致的吧台、滑动门和露台上定制花纹的阳极氧化铝板，它们看上去就像昂贵的乐高积木。

I kept running my hands over the tower’s concrete walls. Infused with Carrara marble and poured by construction workers who wore white gloves, they feel smooth as silk.

我不停用双手抚摸塔楼的混凝土墙面。混凝土注入卡拉拉(Carrara)产的大理石模板，由戴着白手套的建筑工人浇筑，摸上去像丝一样滑。

The big rectangular and wedge-shaped galleries, windows alternating between panoramas⁴⁶ of the city and narrow views over the campus, accommodate best the large-scale works in the inaugural⁴⁷ show, “Atlas⁴⁸.” It features Jeff Koons, Mona Hatoum, Michael Heizer and others. Check out the restaurant if you go. Works by Carsten H?ller and Lucio Fontana are on permanent display.

在巨大的长方形和楔形展厅，窗外风景在城市全景与院内的狭窄视野间交替，展厅极好地容纳了揭幕展《阿特拉斯》(Atlas)中的大尺寸作品。展览展出了杰夫·昆斯(Jeff Koons)、莫娜·哈透姆(Mona Hatoum、迈克尔·海泽(Michael Heizer)等艺术家的作品。你去的话一定要到餐厅看看。卡斯滕·霍勒(Carsten H?ller)和卢齐欧·封塔纳(Lucio Fontana)的一些作品在那里永久陈列。

From “Atlas,” I made my way through the loan exhibition about Fascist⁴⁹ art that has taken over the pavilion and stables, watching a few of the old news clips of cheering mobs and Benito Mussolini in the cinema.

从《阿特拉斯》展出来，我又去了凉亭和马房里关于法西斯艺术的借展，在电影院看了几段老的新闻短片，里面有欢呼的人群和贝尼托·墨索里尼(Benito Mussolini)。

Then I wandered into Mr. Anderson’s cafe and ordered what may be the most delicious sandwich I have eaten in my entire life.

然后我溜达进韦斯·安德森的咖啡馆，点了三明治，这可能是我这辈子吃过的最好吃的三明治。

Private museums are mostly vanity projects. Few invent social spaces. It may be the ultimate tribute to Mr. Koolhaas and OMA to say that the Prada campus works. The plazas⁵⁰ are poetic⁵¹. The galleries are practical and varied⁵².

私立美术馆大多是浮华的项目。很少创造社交空间。在这点上普拉达基金会艺术中心是成功的，这样说可能是对库哈斯和OMA的最大肯定。广场很有诗意。展厅实用而形态多样。

Ms. Prada should be pleased and maybe a little worried. It’s up to the foundation to program these spaces for generations to come.

普拉达女士应该很高兴，或许也有一点担心。这些空间现在要靠基金会为将来的几代人策划内容了。

Architecturally speaking, there’s a lot to live up to.

从建筑上讲，有很多不可辜负之处。