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PRADA RONG ZHAI "DIAGRAMS: A PROJECT BY AMO/OMA"

Prada presents “Diagrams”, an exhibition conceived by AMO/OMA, the studio founded by Rem Koolhaas. The project, organized with the support of Fondazione Prada, will be on view from 14 March to 21 June 2026 at Prada Rong Zhai.

PRADA RONG ZHAI

No. 186 North Shaan Xi Road Jing’an District, Shanghai

Tuesday-Sunday 10am-6pm

First presented at Fondazione Prada in Venice from May to November 2025, “Diagrams” investigates the visual communication of data as a powerful tool for constructing meaning, comprehension, or persuasion, an instrument for analyzing, understanding, and transforming the surrounding world. 

The second chapter of the exhibition at Prada Rong Zhai gathers more than 150 items sourced from the 12th century to the present day and drawn from various geographical and cultural contexts. The project benefits from the extensive research conducted by Fondazione Prada in close collaboration with Rem Koolhaas and Giulio Margheri, Associate Architect at OMA. Materials are displayed according to a thematic principle that reflects some main contemporary world urgencies and demonstrates the diagram’s transversal nature through five thematic sections: Built Environment, Body, Resources, Truth, and Value. Within each section, diagrams appear in a wide range of formats and media—drawings, books, prints, and digital contents—to highlight the evolution of data communication and how these instruments have adapted over time to different contexts, technologies, and audiences.

Two additional focuses complement these themes: the first dedicated to one of the earliest illustrated encyclopedic projects in China, the Sancai Tuhui encyclopedia (Ming period, 1368–1644), a 106-volume of the Ming period (1368–1644) and the other to the work of the African American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963), renowned for his studies and infographics on African American communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

CREDITS
  

The Great Horizontal Diagram of Fu Xi’s Sixty-Four Hexagrams. In Wang Qi, Wang Siyi, Sancai Tuhui encyclopedia, 1607-09. Courtesy National Library of China

 

The world model, 1972. In Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, William Behrens III, The Limits to Growth. A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Potomac Associates – Universe Books, 1972) Private collection. Courtesy of the authors via System Dynamics Society

 

Open Forests,Forest management map: deforestation analysis, 2017 (2025 print). Courtesy Open Forests

 

Anonymous, Triloka: Purusha, the three-part universe., 1840 – 1860 (2025 reprint). Courtesy Alamy

 

Atmos Lab with TOTEM Arquitectos, Naturally ventilated corridors for cross ventilation, 2018. Courtesy: Atmos Lab, London

 

Unknown, GANSU DEFENSE DIAGRAM - CHINA WALL, 1507 – 1567 (2025 reprint). Private collection

 

George F. Cram, US annual products | US comparative debts | US comparative wealth | US states area | US states population | US increase of population | US increase of public debt

 

World nations national debt | World nations money circulation pro capita | World nations wealth | World nations commerce | World nations army and navy In George F. Cram, Cram’s Unrivaled Family Atlas of the World (Chicago: George F. Cram Company, 1889) 1889, Private collectionUnknown,GANSU DEFENSE DIAGRAM - CHINA WALL, 1507 – 1567 (2025 reprint). Private collection

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