Rem Koolhaas

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Rem Koolhaas
Personal Information
Name	Rem Koolhaas
Nationality	Dutch
Birth date	17 November 1944
Birth place	Rotterdam, Netherlands
Work
Significant Buildings	Casa da Música in Oporto Seattle Central Library Netherlands Embassy in Berlin
Awards and Prizes	RIBA Gold Medal, Praemium Imperiale, Pritzker Architecture Prize

Remment Koolhaas (born November 17, 1944 in Rotterdam) is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. Koolhaas first studied scriptwriting at the Dutch Film Academy, and was then a journalist for the Haagse Post before starting studies, in 1968, in architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, followed, in 1972, by further studies at Cornell University in New York. Koolhaas is the principal of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, or OMA, and of its research-oriented counterpart AMO, nowadays based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

[edit] Early architectural career

Koolhaas first came to public and critical attention with OMA (The Office for Metropolitan Architecture), the office he founded in 1980 together with architects Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and (Koolhaas's wife) Madelon Vriesendorp in London. They were later joined by one of Koolhaas's students, Zaha Hadid - who would soon go on to achieve success in her own right. An early work which would mark their difference from the then dominant postmodern classicism of the late 1970s, was their contribution to the Venice Biennale of 1980, curated by Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi, titled "Presence of the Past". Each architect had to design a stage-like "frontage" to a Potemkin-type internal street; and the OMA scheme was the only modernist scheme among them.

Other early critically-received (yet unbuilt) projects included the Parc de la Villette, Paris (1982) and the residence for the President of Ireland (1981). The first large project by OMA to be built was the Kunsthal in Rotterdam (1992). These schemes would attempt to put into practice many of the findings Koolhaas made in his book Delirious New York (1978),^[1] which was written while he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York, directed by Peter Eisenman.

[edit] Theoretical position

[edit] Delirious New York

Delirious New York set the pace for Koolhaas's career. His work emphatically embraces the contradictions of two disciplines (architecture and urban design) that have struggled to maintain their humanist ideals of material honesty, the human scale and carefully crafted meaning in a rapidly globalising world that espouses material economy, machine scale and random meaning. Instead, Koolhaas celebrates the "chance-like" nature of city life: "The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape." As Koolhaas himself has acknowledged, this approach had already been evident in the Japanese Metabolist Movement in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Seattle Central Library, designed by OMA

Another key aspect of architecture Koolhaas interrogates is the "Program": with the rise of modernism in the 20th century the "Program" became the key theme of architectural design. The notion of the Program involves "an act to edit function and human activities" as the pretext of architectural design: epitomised in the maxim Form follows function, first popularised by architect Louis Sullivan at the beginning of the 20th century. The notion was first questioned in Delirious New York, in his analysis of high-rise architecture in Manhattan. An early design method derived from such thinking was "cross-programming", introducing unexpected functions in room programmes, such as running tracks in skyscrapers. More recently, Koolhaas (unsuccessfully) proposed the inclusion of hospital units for the homeless into the Seattle public Library project (2003).

[edit] S,M,L,XL

The next landmark publication by Koolhaas was S,M,L,XL, together with Bruce Mau and Hans Werlemann (1995),^[2]a 1376-page tome combining essays, manifestos, diaries, fiction, travelogues, and meditations on the contemporary city. The layout of the huge book transformed architectural publishing, and such books - full-colour graphics and dense texts - have since become common. Ostensibly, S,M,L,XL gives a record of the actual implementation of "Manhattanism" throughout the various (mostly un-)realized projects and texts OMA had generated up to that time. The part lexicon-type layout spawned a number of concepts that have become common in later architectural theory, in particular "Bigness": 'old' architectural principles (composition, scale, proportion, detail) no longer apply when a building acquires Bigness. This was demonstrated in OMA's scheme for the development of "Euralille" (1990-94), a new centre for the city of Lille in France, a city returned to prominence by its position on the new rail route from Paris to London via the Channel Tunnel. OMA sited a train station, two centres for commerce and trade, an urban park, and 'Congrexpo' (a contemporary Grand Palais with a large concert hall, three auditoria and an exhibition space). In another essay in the book, titled "The Generic City", Koolhaas declares that progress, identity, architecture, the city and the street are things of the past: “Relief … it’s over. That is the story of the city. The city is no longer. We can leave the theatre now...” For Koolhaas architecture and the city are said to be superseded by Bigness.

[edit] Project on the city

Koolhaas's next landmark publications were a product of his position as professor at Harvard University, in the design school's "Project on the City"; firstly the 720-page Mutations (2001)^[3]; followed by The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping (2002)^[4]; and The Great Leap Forward (2002))^[5] All three books involved Koolhaas's students analysing what others would regard as "non-cities", sprawling conglomerates such as Lagos in Nigeria, west Africa, which the authors argue is highly functional despite a lack of infrastructure. The authors also examine the influence of shopping habits and the recent rapid growth of cities in China. Critics of the books have criticised Koolhaas for being cynical - as if Western capitalism and globalization demolish all cultural identity - highlighted in the notion expounded in the books that "In the end, there will be little else for us to do but shop". However, such cynicism can alternatively be read as a "realism" about the transformation of cultural life, where airports and even museums (due to finance problems) rely just as much on operating gift shops.

When it comes to transforming these observations into practice, Koolhaas mobilizes what he regards as the omnipotent forces of urbanism into unique design forms and connections organised along the lines of present day society. Koolhaas continuously incorporates his observations of the contemporary city within his design activities: calling such a condition the ‘culture of congestion’. Again, shopping is examined for "intellectual comfort", whilst the unregulated taste and densification of Chinese cities is analysed according to "performance", a criterion involving variables with debatable credibility: density, newness, shape, size, money etc. For example, in his design for the new CCTV headquarters in Beijing (2006, under construction), Koolhaas did not opt for the stereotypical skyscraper, often used to symbolise and landmark such government enterprises, but instead designed a series of volumes which not only tie together the numerous departments onto the nebulous site, but also introduced routes (again, the concept of cross-programming) for the general public through the site, allowing them some degree of access to the production procedure. Through his ruthlessly raw approach, Koolhaas hopes to extract the architect from the anxiety of a dead profession and resurrect a contemporary sublime, however fleeting it may be.

In 2003 Content, a 544-page magazine-style book was published by Koolhaas, giving an overview of the last decade of OMA projects^[6] including his designs for the Prada shops, the Seattle Public Library, a plan to save Cambridge from Harvard by rechanneling the Charles River, Lagos' future as Earth's third-biggest town, as well as interviews with Martha Stewart and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

[edit] AMO

In the late nineties, while working on the design for the new headquarters for Universal (currently Vivendi), OMA was first exposed to the full pace of change that engulfed the world of media and with it the increasing importance of the virtual domain. It led Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) to create a new company, AMO, exclusively dedicated to the investigation and performance in this realm. He is heading the think tank ever since with Reinier de Graaf.

[edit] European Flag proposal

The 'barcode', a Koolhaas proposal for the flag of the European Union became the logo of the 2006 Austrian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Following the signing of Treaties of Nice in May 2001, which made Brussels the official capital of Europe, the then President of the European Commission, Romano Prodi and the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt invited Koolhaas to discuss the necessities and requirements of a European capital.

During these talks and as an impetus for further discussion, Koolhaas and his think-tank AMO – an independent part of OMA – suggested the development of a visual language. This idea inspired a series of drawings and drafts, including the "Barcode". The barcode seeks to unite the flags of the EU member countries into a single, colourful symbol. In the current European flag, there is a fixed number of stars. In the barcode however, new Member States of the EU can be added without space constraints. Originally, the barcode displayed 15 EU countries. In 2004, the symbol was adapted to include the ten new Member States.

Since the time of the first drafts of the barcode it has never been officially used by commercial or political institutions. During the Austrian EU Presidency 2006 it was officially used for the first time. The logo has already been used for the EU information campaign which will also be continued during the Austrian EU Presidency. There was initially some uproar caused, as the stripes of the flag of Estonia were displayed incorrectly.

[edit] Architecture, Fashion, and Theatre

Prada, Beverly Hills

Second Stage Theatre, New York

With his Prada projects, Koolhaas ventured into providing architecture for the fleeting world of fashion and with celebrity-studded cachet: not unlike Garnier's Opera, the central space of Koolhaas' Beverly Hills Prada store is occupied by a massive central staircase, ostensibly displaying select wares, but mainly the shoppers themselves. The notion of selling a brand rather than marketing clothes was further emphasised in the Prada store in New York, which had previously been owned by the MOMA: the museum signs were not removed during the oufitting of the new store, as if emphasising the premises as a cultural institution.^[7]

Prior to his Prada project in New York, Koolhaas was behind another remodeling project on the other side of town. Koolhaas redesinged an old 1929 bank and transformed it into a one-of-a-kind, 296 seat, performance space for Second Stage Theatre.

[edit] Quotes

• Reference to the article 'Generic city', a critic to current mode of urbanization: "People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming. But the generic city, the general urban condition, is happening everywhere, and just the fact that it occurs in such enormous quantities must mean that it's habitable. Architecture can't do anything that the culture doesn't. We all complain that we are confronted by urban environments that are completely similar. We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living." —interview in Wired 4.07, July 1996 ^[8]

• Asked if there is a certain contribution he aspires to make: "It's very simple and it has nothing to do with identifiable goals. It is to keep thinking about what architecture can be, in whatever form. That is an answer, isn't it? I think that S,M,L,XL has one beautiful ambiguity: it used the past to build a future and is very adamant about giving notice that this is not the end. That's how it felt to me, anyway. That is in itself evidence of a kind of discomfort with achievement measured in terms of identifiable entities, and an announcement that continuity of thinking in whatever form, around whatever subject, is the real ambition." —interview in Index Magazine, 2000^[9]

[edit] Trivia

A southbound Green Line train passing through the stainless steel tube shielding the McCormick Tribune Campus Center. Nicknamed the BUTT for "Building Under The Tracks"

In 1952, when Rem Koolhaas was eight, his parents moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, and lived there for four years. His father, in his writing, had strongly supported the Indonesian cause for autonomy from the colonial Dutch, and when the war of independence was won he had been invited over to run a cultural programme for three years. 'It was a very important age for me,' Koolhaas recalls. 'And I really lived as an Asian.'^[10]

[edit] Awards

• 2004 RIBA Gold Medal
• 2003 awarded the Praemium Imperiale
• 2000 Pritzker Architecture Prize
• 2007 (February 2) Doctor Honoris Causa by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

[edit] List of projects

Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal

Netherlands Embassy in Berlin, Germany, opened in 2004. Koolhaas's design won the Architekturpreis Berlin in 2003 and the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in 2005.

Koolhaas's projects include:

• Copenhagen Brewery Site competition winner, for a new Danish Architecture Center^[11]
• Milstein Hall, Cornell, currently in the planning phase
• Casa da Música (2001–2005), Porto, Portugal
• Seattle Central Library (2004)
• CCTV HQ, Beijing (Construction Commencing 2004)
• Retail design for Prada stores (New York 2003, Los Angeles 2004)
• McCormick Tribune Campus Center, IIT, (Chicago, 1997-2003)
• Royal Dutch Embassy (Berlin, 2003)
• Guggenheim Museum, (Las Vegas, 2002)
• Second Stage Theatre, (New York City, 1999)
• Educatorium, (Utrecht, 1993–1997)
• Kunsthal, (Rotterdam, 1993)
• Euralille (Lille, 1988)
• Netherlands Dance Theater (The Hague, 1988)
• "Maison à Bordeaux" (France)
• Nexus Housing (Fukuoka, Japan)

[edit] References

1. ^ Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York: A retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (Academy Editions, London, 1978; republsihed, The Monacelli Press, 1994)
2. ^ Rem Koolhaas, Hans Werlemann and Bruce Mau, S,M,L,XL, The Monacelli Press, New York, 1994 (2nd edition 1997)
3. ^ Rem Koolhaas, Stefano Boeri, Sanford Kwinter, Nadia Tazi, and Daniela Fabricius, Mutationshttp://www.actar.com/index.php?option=com_dbquery&Itemid=134&task=ExecuteQuery&qid=10&idllengua=2&idllibre=859, Actar http://www.actar.com, New York, 2001)
4. ^ Rem Koolhaas, Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, and Sze Tsung Leong, The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping. Harvard Design School Project on the City 2, Taschen, New York, 2002
5. ^ Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Chang, Mihai Craciun, Nancy Lin, Yuyang Liu, Katherine Orff, and Stephanie Smith, The Great Leap Forward. Harvard Design School Project on the City, Taschen, New York, 2002
6. ^ Rem Koolhaas, Content, Taschen, New York, 2003
7. ^ Anette Baldauf, "Branded", in Learning from Calvin Klein, Umbau 21, 2004.
8. ^ From Bauhaus to Koolhaas
9. ^ Rem Koolhaas, 2000
10. ^ Metropolis Now. Guardian Unlimited 25 June 2006
11. ^ Copenhagen - Brewery Site Competition winner: Rem Koolhaas OMA

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Rem Koolhaas

• Office for Metropolitan Architecture
• Harvard Design School Faculty Profile
• Article on Rem Koolhaas
• List of projects Rem Koolhaas
• Links on Rem Koolhaas
• Hal Foster: Rem Koolhaas
• Interview Interview (2000)
• Wired Interview (07/1996)
• images of several OMA projects
• BBC News | On Koolhaas' flag proposal
• FOTW | Entry on flag proposal
• Serpentine Pavilion 2006 Images
• Casa da Musica photo essay and info at KultureFlash
• Time alters perspective on Koolhaas article by architecture critic Blair Kamin at the Chicago Tribune website (Published November 26, 2006)

http://www.actar.com/index.php?option=com_dbquery&Itemid=134&task=ExecuteQuery&qid=10&idllengua=2&idllibre=859 Mutations, Rem Koolhaas, Actar http://www.actar.com, 2001