Diagrams explain the world, sorting, organising and telling stories. They make complex everyday life clear and construct a truth. By putting diagrams at the centre of their exhibition at the Fondazione Prada in Venice, AMO/OMA are striking a chord with the spirit of the times.
Text: Sandra Hofmeister
The world model, 1972, Printed book, 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
Illustrating data and facts
Infographics have an air of objectivity; after all, they are based on reliable facts. However, diagrams and data visualisations merely pretend to explain reality; in fact, they invent a narrative. They illustrate data and facts and explain connections in the form of pie charts, curves and colourful images that can be understood regardless of language. In doing so, they interpret and create fictional connections. When their narrative prevails over many others, something becomes generally accepted as 'truth'.
John Auldjo, Map of Vesuvius showing the direction of the streams of lava in the eruptions from 1631 to 1831, 1832, Exhibition copy from a printed book In John Auldjo, Sketches of Vesuvius: with Short Accounts of Its Principal Eruptions from the Commencement of the Christian Era to the Present Time (Napoli: George Glass, 1832), Olschki 53, plate before p. 27, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, Firenze , Courtesy Ministero della Cultura – Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Firenze
Historical and contemporary phenomena
Nevertheless, diagrams remain an indispensable explanatory model. In our present day, the growing volume of data makes its analysis key to our understanding of the world, and the diagram is the ideal means to this end. The ‘Diagrams’ exhibition by AMO/OMA at Ca' Corner della Regina of the Fondazione Prada in Venice critically examines these visual models and explores them as a historical and contemporary phenomenon, revealing philosophical and cognitive boundaries.
Italian postal savings banks. Number of passbooks. Average passbook and total deposit at the end of each month from 1876 to 1880, 1888, Printed book, In Antonio Gabaglio, Teoria generale di statistica (Milano: Ulrico Hoepli, 1888), Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milano, Courtesy Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milan
The fascination of images
‘When I was young, I was fascinated by diagrams,’ says Rem Koolhaas, founder of the architectural firm OMA. ‘Diagrams are a permanent tool in my view,’ says the architect and Pritzker Prize winner. He also highlights the historical dimension of graphics, which date back to before the birth of Christ. For the Venice exhibition, Koolhaas and his team collected infographics from various cultures and organised them systematically into thematic groups. One thematic block focuses on the environment and includes graphics of disasters, weather maps and heat maps. Another section focuses on health and the body and features Renaissance anatomical studies, medieval Persian drawings of the nervous system, and maps showing the spread of cholera in England in the 19th century. Other sections focus on war, resources, migration and truth from religious and astronomical perspectives. The exhibits, which are printed or drawn on paper, include historical and contemporary graphics, evaluations of digital data, rare manuscripts, and artistically impressive graphic representations. What is striking about this phenomenological and systematic observation? The depicted connections are transient, as many of the narratives are no longer valid today. They are seen as historical mistakes and have been rendered obsolete by new discoveries.
Ed Hawkins, Temperature changes around the world between 1901 and 2018, 2019 , Published by BBC on June 21, 2019. Digital image. From BBC News at bbc.co.uk/news and Prof. Ed Hawkins, National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading, UK www.ShowYourStripes.info , Courtesy BBC News
Museum blockbusters
Rem Koolhaas (OMA) has repeatedly brought timely topics to museums through his think tank, AMO. ‘The Image of Europe’ was the title of the popular exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2004. 'Countryside: The Future', which took place at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2020, focused on structural changes in rural areas — a topic that is all too often overlooked in the age of megacities. The new exhibition in Venice continues this series of promising and sensitive contemporary themes, while also demonstrating the transient and vulnerable nature of diagrams, even when they evaluate complex databases and interpret facts. Exhibits include facsimiles and originals, such as early book prints, hand drawings from Iran, Le Corbusier's Brise-Soleil studies, and current climate maps from the Office for Metropolitan Architecture's everyday work.
Elwin J. Woodward, Historic and prophetic diagram of the world: God’s plan of salvation for law breakers, 1912, Colored lithograph, exhibition copy, David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford University Libraries, Courtesy David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford University Libraries
OMA and Prada
The Prada Epicentre opened on Broadway in New York in 2001 – the first project that OMA completed for Miuccia Prada. Since 2015, the art collection of the Fondazione Prada in Milan has been housed in the historic rooms of a former distillery designed by OMA. The exhibition in Venice marks the provisional end of this long-standing collaboration. "The project encourages dialogue and speculative thinking about communication, as well as the exchange of knowledge and data," says Miuccia Prada. ‘The aim is to raise critical awareness of the value and risks of a medium that we increasingly rely on for communication today.’ Alongside all the historical images and drawings, not all of which were unfortunately available in their original form, the exhibition also has a strong contemporary focus, with contributions from Situ Research, Transsolar and Atmos Lab.
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The Irma Boom catalogue
Visitors to the Venice exhibition should allow plenty of time for the tour, to fully immerse themselves in each section. Alternatively, you can refer to the catalogue. It was designed by Irma Boom, a Dutch book designer and typographer. This 448-page volume is packaged in a specially designed cardboard box. The pages are untrimmed proofs with a Pantone colour scale and are closed on the sides. Readers must first open them using the supplied tool. In addition to short essays by Kate Crawford, Theo Deutinger, Kohei Sugiura and many others, there is also an interview with Rem Koolhaas and Katya Inozemtseva. As the book has no table of contents, reading it involves a process of trial and error: leafing through the pages and searching. The texts are literally hidden amongst the illustrations, pictures and diagrams. This is probably one of the characteristics of the present day: the sheer quantity of data can sometimes obscure what is important. The most important insights do not reveal themselves; they must be discovered.
“diagrams. A project by amo/oma”, Mario Mainetti (ed.), catalogue for the exhibition at Fondazione Prada Venezia, until 24.11.2025, book design: Irma Boom with Anna Moschioni, Frederik Pesch, 448 pages, softcover, Fondazione Prada, Milan 2025, ISBN 978-88-87029-94-9
Foto: Marco Cappelletti, courtesy Fondazione Prada
