Rem Koolhaas

Rem Kool­haas foun­ded the Office for Me­tro­po­li­tan Ar­chi­tec­ture (OMA) in 1975 to­ge­ther with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. Ha­ving worked as a jour­na­list and script wri­ter be­fore be­co­m­ing an ar­chi­tect, Kool­haas gra­dua­ted from the Ar­chi­tec­tu­ral As­so­cia­tion in Lon­don and in 1978 pu­blis­hed De­li­rious New York, a Re­troac­tive Ma­ni­festo for Man­hat­tan. In 1995, his book S,M,L,XL sum­ma­ri­zed the work of OMA and es­ta­blis­hed con­nec­tions bet­ween con­tem­porary so­ciety and ar­chi­tec­ture. At this mo­ment Rem Kool­haas is hea­ding the work of OMA as well as AMO - the con­cep­tual branch of OMA, a think tank fo­cu­sed on so­cial, eco­no­mic, and tech­no­lo­gi­cal is­sues.

Rem Kool­haas is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity where he con­ducts the Project on the City, a re­se­arch pro­gram in­ves­ti­ga­ting chan­ging urban con­di­ti­ons around the world. The projects in­clude a study on China's Pearl River Delta (pu­blis­hed as Great Leap For­ward), an ana­ly­sis of the role of re­tail and con­sump­tion in the con­tem­porary so­ciety (The Har­vard Guide to Shop­ping), and stu­dies on Rome, Lagos, Moscow and Bei­jing.

Re­cently, OMA has com­ple­ted the Nether­lands Em­bassy in Ber­lin, a cam­pus cen­ter at the Il­li­nois In­sti­tute of Tech­no­logy in Chi­cago, the Prada Epi­cen­ter in Los An­ge­les and the Pu­blic Li­brary in Se­at­tle. The Se­at­tle Li­brary was cho­sen by TIME Ma­ga­zine as The Best Ar­chi­tec­ture for 2004 and was de­scri­bed by the New York Times as: »At a dark hour: Seattle's new Cen­tral Li­brary is a bla­zing chan­de­lier to swing your dreams upon. If an Ame­ri­can city can erect a civic project as brave as this one, the sun hasn't set on the West.« (May 16th 2004)

In April 2005 the Casa da Mu­sica con­cert hall in Porto was com­ple­ted and was al­re­ady voted as one of the most im­portant con­cert halls in the world by the New York Times (April 10th 2005). In Asia, work has begun on CCTV - a 575,000 m² head­quar­ters, stu­dio, and cul­tu­ral cen­ter for China's na­tio­nal broad­cas­ter, China Cen­tral Te­le­vi­sion, in Bei­jing. CCTV is OMA's lar­gest buil­ding to date, and is to be com­ple­ted by 2008, in time for the Bei­jing Olym­pic Games. Ano­ther project cur­rently being de­ve­l­o­ped in Bei­jing ent­ails the re­no­va­tion of a 50,000 m² books­tore and the ad­di­tion of an ex­ten­sion, which will dou­ble the size of the buil­ding to one of the lar­gest books­to­res in the world.

Re­cent AMO projects in­clude a study for the Eu­ro­pean Com­mis­sion on the vi­sual iden­tity of the EU, image re­struc­tu­ring for Con­dé Nast ma­ga­zi­nes Lucky and Wired, a study on the fu­ture of the au­to­mo­bile for Volks­wa­gen, and a study con­cerning pre­ser­va­tion for the city of Bei­jing. By com­bi­ning AMO and OMA Rem Kool­haas is seen as one of the most im­portant thin­kers of the last de­ca­des. Ni­co­lai Ou­rouss­off cri­tic for Los An­ge­les Times un­der­li­nes this by: »There is little ques­tion that Rem Kool­haas is one of the most in­flu­en­tial ar­chi­tects of the last 20 years. As an ar­chi­tec­tu­ral thin­ker, his cool ana­ly­tic ap­proach to de­sign, sprin­k­led wit h a healthy skep­ti­cism, has in­for­med the pro­fes­sion that his fin­ger­prints can be found on the work of al­most any young ar­chi­tect today. Kool­haas has achie­ved the en­via­ble sta­ture of both cult idol and in­ter­na­tio­nal ce­le­brity.« (May 21st 2004)

The work of Rem Kool­haas and the OMA has been ce­le­bra­ted as well by se­veral in­ter­na­tio­nal awards, in­clu­ding the Pritz­ker Ar­chi­tec­ture Prize (2000) and the RIBA Gold Medal (2004). In 2005 Rem Kool­haas re­cei­ved the Mies van der Rohe Award for the Nether­lands Em­bassy, Ber­lin. This award is pre­sen­ted every two years by the Eu­ro­pean Union and the Fund­a­ció Mies van der Rohe (Bar­ce­lona) to ack­now­ledge and re­ward qua­lity ar­chi­tec­tu­ral pro­duc­tion in Eu­rope. The jury sin­gled out OMA's de­sign of the Nether­lands Em­bassy in Ber­lin for the ex­tra­or­di­nary re­la­ti­ons­hip es­ta­blis­hed with its sur­roun­dings. In ma­king their de­ci­sion to award the Nether­lands Em­bassy, the jury com­men­ded the “quality of the urban re­flec­tion and in­tel­li­gence of the con­cept im­ple­men­ted, es­pe­cially as re­gards the un­pre­ce­den­ted con­cept of »trajectory« and the new po­ten­tial it brings to this project of great complexity”.

Koolhaas' work was the sub­ject of an over­view ex­hi­bi­tion, Con­tent, which opened at the Neue Na­tio­nal­ga­le­rie, Ber­lin in 2003 and at the Kunst­hal (built by OMA) in 2004. In con­junc­tion with the ex­hi­bi­tion, a book of the same name was pu­blis­hed in 2003 by Ta­schen Books. Con­tent il­lus­tra­tes the ways that Rem Kool­haas and OMA-AMO in­ter­act with the world and how the world in turn in­flu­en­ces their work. An ex­hi­bi­tion by AMO on re­pre­sen­ta­tion in and the per­cep­tion of Eu­rope was on dis­play last Fall in Brus­sels and at the Haus der Kunst in Mu­nich. In sum­mer 2005 Rem Kool­haas cu­ra­ted one of the ex­hi­bi­ti­ons tit­led »Expansion & Neglect« for the pres­ti­gious Bi­en­nale in Ve­nice.