Office for Metropolitan Architecture

OMA was foun­ded in 1975 by Rem Koolhaas, Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp as a col­la­bo­ra­tive of­fice prac­ticing ar­chi­tec­ture and ur­ba­nism.

The of­fice gai­ned re­nown through a se­ries of ent­ries in major com­pe­ti­ti­ons: Parc de la Vil­lette, Paris, France (1982), ZKM, Karls­ruhe, Ger­many (1989), Tres Grande Bi­blio­the­que and Two Li­bra­ries for Jus­sieu Uni­ver­sity, Paris, France (1993). Du­ring these for­ma­tive years OMA also rea­li­zed am­bi­tious projects, ran­ging from pri­vate re­si­den­ces to large scale urban plans: Villa dall'Ava, Paris, France (1991), Nexus Hou­sing, Fu­kuoka, Japan (1991), the Kunst­hal, Rot­ter­dam (1992) and the House in Bor­deaux (1998). In 1994 OMA com­ple­ted Eu­ra­lille, a 70-hectare busi­ness and civic cen­ter in nort­hern France com­pri­sing the Eu­ro­pean hub for high-speed trains.

Since 2001 OMA has com­ple­ted nu­merous projects in­clu­ding Casa da Mu­sica in Porto (2005), the Prada Epi­cen­ter in Los An­ge­les (2004), the Se­at­tle Pu­blic Li­brary (2004), the Leeum Samsung Mu­seum of Art (2004), the Nether­lands Em­bassy in Ber­lin (2003), the IIT Cam­pus Centre in Chi­cago (2003), and the Prada Epi­cen­ter in New York (2001). OMA has also been en­ga­ged in se­veral mu­seum projects in­clu­ding the Whit­ney Mu­seum in New York, the Los An­ge­les Coun­try Mu­seum of Art and two Gug­gen­heim Mu­se­ums in Las Vegas (2001).

The work of Rem Kool­haas and OMA has won se­veral in­ter­na­tio­nal awards, in­clu­ding the Pritz­ker Ar­chi­tec­ture Prize 2000, and was the sub­ject of a re­tro­spec­tive ex­hi­bi­tion held at the Mu­seum of Mo­dern Art, New York in 1995: Rem Kool­haas and the Place of Pu­blic Ar­chi­tec­ture.