Photo - Marco Cappelletti - courtesy Fondazione Prada
"The project aims to encourage dialogue and speculative reflection
on the communication of knowledge and data.
The ultimate goal is to raise awareness of the value and risks inherent
in a medium that is increasingly used in communications today,
as well as of its implications for society and the construction of
personal ideas and identities."
Miuccia Prada
Ca' Corner della Regina - Fondazione Prada
Diagrams - A Project by AMO/OMA
Diagrams is a research-driven exhibition by AMO/OMA - founded by Rem Koolhaas - for the Fondazione Prada in Venice, examining how diagrams function as vital tools of visual communication, knowledge creation, and manipulation. At Ca’ Corner della Regina - until November 24 - the show features over 300 items—including rare books, documents, digital media, and videos—ranging from the 12th century to today. These are organized around nine pressing themes: Built Environment, Health, Inequality, Migration, Environment, Resources, War, Truth, and Value, offering a cross-cultural and historical lens on the diagram’s role in shaping understanding. Curated in collaboration with Giulio Margheri and scholar Sietske Fransen, the exhibition explores the diagram’s evolution from explanatory to persuasive forms, highlighting its adaptability across time, disciplines, and media—from religion to fashion. Koolhaas emphasizes the diagram’s enduring relevance and its capacity to transcend language. "Diagrams" also traces the influence of modernist aesthetics on contemporary infographics, urging viewers to reconsider how knowledge is structured and shared today.
Exhibition View
Built Environment Michael Wolgemut - Wilhelm Pleydenwurff - Family tree of Christ and Solomon's Temple Plans for Solomon's Temple - 1493
"When I was young, I was totally fascinated by diagrams and realized that my brain is particularly engaged in - and maybe also particularly capable
of synthesizing complex ideas in accessible form."
Rem Koolhaas
Built Environment - Sustainability
Arthur Bowen - Diagrams of the insulation of a building - 1984
Built Environment - Sustainability 1.1
Atmos Lab with Lacaton & Vassai - Temperature stratification in the Centre Pompidou
-Chenille- glazed walkway - Paris - 2024
Utagawa Kunisada - Toyokuni III - Dietary life rules chart showing ill effects of intemperance and functions of organs - 1850s.c.
The muscular system - The circulation system - The nervous system - The skeleton - 2022 - In Joelle Jolivet - Il Corpo Umano
Inequality - 3.1
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois - Occupations of Negroes and whites in Georgia -1900c.
photo - courtesy Fondazione Prada
Migration - 4.1
Philippe Rekacewirz - The African big wheel - 2007
Environment
John Auldjo - Map of Vesuvius showing the direction of the streams of lava in the eruptions from 1631-1831 - 1831
Environment - 5.1 World
Waqidi Geography Map - 1281
October monthly averages - Antarctic total ozones - 2022
Peak streamflows in California from 1905 to 1975 - 1979
photo - courtesy Fondazione Prada
Resources - 6.2 FoodSankey diagram of the product flows and food waste generated along the food supply chain in Europe 2011 - 2019
AMO The new farmer - 2020
Arrangement of troops - 1521
Nicolo Machiavelli - Libro della arte della guerra - 1521
Robert A. Lewis - Bombing plan for the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima - August 6 - 1945 - 1945
Picture Post - In Martin Chisholm - The Navy in the Atomic Age - October 25- 1947
Diagram showing what happened to the ships of the - Sitting Duck Fleet - after the bombing - 1947
Emma willard - The temple of time - 1846
Clarence Larkin - I.E. Earle - Chronological geographical, and harmonical bird's-eye view of the life of Christ - 1894
Andreas Cellarius - Map charting the movement of the planets - 1661
Cosmological representations - Various appearances of the sun - moon - stars and clouds and related predictions - 1914
Johannes Buno - Mnemonic plate with a dragon symbolizing the fourth
millennium - 1672
photo - courtesy Fondazione Prada
Value
Italian postal saving banks - Number of passbooks - Average passbook and total deposit at the end of each month from 1876 to 1880 - 1888
William Playfair - The trade between England and America from 1700 to 1782 - 1789
Nigel Holmes - Medical care expenditures - 1979
The percentage increase in hosuing prices across EU countries from 2015 to 2023 - 2023
"the diagram has always been an unconventional language for designing, thinking, and communicating without words."
In the process of making this exhibition, diagrams were both the material and the means. The adjacent diagrams emerged as a device to build it- to organize content, test relationships, and maintain diversity. What you see is both a summary and a trace of that process.
