Before any visitor walks through the gallery, the people who built it did. Last week, the full prado team gathered in Knokke, and for one evening, we became the first guests of our own space.
A week that brought everyone together
Colleagues from Belgium, the USA, Europe, and the Middle East joined for a full week of work, conversation, and shared direction. On the final evening, we walked through the gallery together for the first time. Not as builders reviewing their work, but as visitors, moving through the rooms the way anyone would. Sitting in the low-lit corner. Watching the light shift. Feeling what the space does when you stop thinking about how it was made.
We closed the night at Surfers Paradise, with a BBQ, cold beers, and the kind of easy company that a long week earns.
A home by the sea, not a showroom
The walls are finished in sand-colored clay plaster, the floor follows the same natural tone, and the rooms are built around one question: what does light do to a space? You sit down, the light shifts, and a room you thought you understood feels different. Two spaces stand out. A library, where prado's products become objects in their own right. And a darker, intimate corner kept deliberately low-lit, where you can load your own floor plan and see it projected in 3D.
For the gallery, prado worked with Atelier Luxus on interfaces and switches and with Vervloet on door and window hardware. Every finish carries across every product. Door handle, outlet, lighting, switch: the same material, one interior. For architects, that means their design vision comes forward instead of the hardware. For the people who live there, technology becomes self-evident.
Come and feel it yourself
the gallery is open at Strandstraat 11 in Knokke. Walk in freely, or book a visit at knokke@prado.com.
It is the second space where prado brings its vision to life, after the chapel in Antwerp, and a first look at what is still to come in Paris and Amsterdam.
