Dutch marks in competition global. Proposal to relocate the Schipol Airport. OMA 1999
Rem Koolhaas has developed a successful career based on the cynical story of the contemporary metropolis. Faced with the design its admired heroic ancestors, those who built the theory of the vanguard in the International Congresses of Modern Architecture, Koolhaas is limited to dissect the latest urban problems, unraveling the staging strategies that support and ideological cover to the growing economic taxation advanced capitalism.
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His fascination with the chaotic and uncontrolled processes that seem to define contemporary urbanization have shown a way to describe the aesthetic problems of coexistence in the city from a different perspective. That vision aestheticized world has prevented him from criticizing a truly reformist beyond the brilliance of metaphor to the disqualification of what you do not like. Conformism always seems to emerge from the depths of his writings despite its formal radicalism.
The vastness of his knowledge and brilliance of his writing have allowed him to build an international reputation as a guru of architecture and interpret current issues. Every time I get my hands on a text Koolhaas, I read with relish. Something I think they have been happening to many architects, along and across the planet over the last thirty years. Is someone who has a great ability to crawl on their dreams and thoughts to a nihilistic view of city planning and politics today.
architects from raw clay. The new vision of the American city. Hugh Ferris, 1929
Originally, Koolhaas described himself as a journalist in the architecture discovered a way of understanding social transformation in the global space, experienced throughout the twentieth century. Over the years assumed a more prominent leadership role on the professional scene. A tireless traveler, often traveling thousands of miles annually to cross reading the different places they visit. For example, as shown excessive book S, M, L, XL included numerous graphic as those used by economists to point out its 305 nights spent in hotels and 360,000 kilometers throughout 1993.
At the end of his formative years, in 1978, published an architectural masterpiece of journalism, the phenomenon that was called Delirious New York, illustrated with wonderful vignettes of the artist Madelon Vriesendorp. A book with clear architectural ambitions which extolled the mutations suffered by the city of New York over a century is from 1850 to mid-twentieth century. There appeared reflected her admiration for the American city through that kind of rhetorical figures, inspiring and provocative, which define the essence of his discursive style. Manhattan explaining brilliant paraphrases as Rosetta Stone twentieth century or that one in Brooklyn as he described Clitoraid Appendix in the mouth of the natural harbor of the metropolis, in reference to how that part of the city has cartographic map.
Buildings X, Y and Z of Rockefeller Center. K. Wallace Harrison, architect. Photo: Lucca martelucci, Flickr
Your tour delirious New York would begin with the brief historical overview of urban integration of the cross piece, Central Park, adjective the landscaping of Olmsted and synthetic carpet Arcadia . Following the path of urban construction, would be interested to review the emergence of a new artificial paradise, which meant that Coney Island. That park by the sea would be a fundamental urban experiment, a strategy that looks brilliant Koolhaas, and would be the beginning of a new way of structuring the contemporary city as a setting and show for the entertainment of the masses. For him, the construction of scenarios and the exaltation of the drama would be the epitome of urban expression of the twentieth century, what really matter over the metropolitan physical realities. One story even more interesting for him, which would involve the construction of the modern American city from a precise volume of your computer. The complex and intricate rules New York's planning regulations, hygienic and enlightened character, constitute a framework that would create a special formalization of the metropolis. Urban design rules that subsequently acquire artistic condition in discussions Hugh Ferris and his colleagues in what he calls Manhattanism . The ultimate test of the New York metropolitan expression exemplifies Koolhaas in the process of defining and projecting the realization Rockefeller Center. A collective effort to create a representative piece of the city, which would engage the most prominent local architects of that time, among others, Andrew Reinhardt, Raymond Hood, Harvey Wiley Corbett and Wallace K. Harrison . For Koolhaas, the urban complex on Fifth Avenue would be a masterpiece without great leadership defined.
The book is closed with a description of landing in the city of two brilliant European ideologues covered by divergent aesthetic visions. Dalí and Le Corbusier would preeminent intellectual figures to conquer the new continent, they would try to impose their respective visions in Latin establishing a first cultural bridgehead in the early 30's. While Dali's practical intelligence allows him to reach there if palliative recognition from the first sight, the Swiss visibility is denied in the first instance.
Dalí used the method of the proper interpretation of discourse, or critical-paranoid in its special jargon, to win over Americans:
B iuer! Ai bring ou surrealism. Meni Aulredi pipoul in Niu York jove bin bai zi infected and Marvelous laifquiving sors of surrealism.
The irrational to conquer the minds of the American Puritans.
The road to fame of Le Corbusier would be more tortuous. While sharing with Dali strategies acquisition of notoriety, the use of claims épatant for attention does not serve first in that city. There would blunt statements like that skyscrapers would be deformed monsters adolescents in the age of the machine operated without direction as a result of a deplorable and romantic urban ordinance. Finally, journalists sought acquire popularity: So as the headlines come to collect his idea that the American skyscrapers are too small.
Educatorium Interior of Utrecht. Rem Koolhaas, 1997
Finally, undeniable prestige gained by Le Corbusier would be delayed for maneuvering in the shadow of New York architects to absorb its brilliant display of rudeness and Entertainment, subtly integrating the dynamics of committees and receptions. The final phase and declining creative and New York would be well reflected in the episode related to the implementation of United Nations headquarters on a platform of land near the East River. The collision between the modern orthodox approaches of Le Corbusier and handle negotiations of people like Wallace K Harrison, the great beadle in the shadow of New York architecture of the mid-twentieth century, would inevitably lead the resignation of the European master of their participation in the collective authorship of this building.
The epitaph of New York as a place at the forefront of architectural expression would represent the final additions Koolhaas in Rockefeller Center, called Building X, Y and Z. A terse simple boxes that represent the respective extrusions solar paralelipédicas who renounce the possible expression Apollonian, spurred by the Manhattanism.
Rem Koolhaas boasts a very strong ambition to unlocking the keys to the urbanization process, an attitude that has led him to travel the world relentlessly. This modern-day Flying Dutchman has visited countless cities of our planet in an effort to understand where this trend leads to concentration of people in specific places. A shining example of this constant dedication in his book condenses S, M, L, XL which included countless dissections, explanatory text and graphics of cities like Atlanta, Singapore, Paris and, of course, Dutch agglomerations. That effort will continue in the mammoth series of volumes entitled Harvard Project on the City .
Scheme visuals for the management of the Seattle Public Library. OMA, 2003
seem that his disbelief in the future of humanity has led him to take a nihilistic view of our historical moment. Years ago, when I read the stunning article Space Junk, further increased my respect for Kollhaas Rem. A slight booklet published repeatedly, and I read in the version of OMA's special issue on A + U Magazine May 2000. There, for instance, and curtly told a crowd of strong phrases:
Junkspace be our grave. Half of mankind pollutes to produce, to consume the other polluter.
We have built so much space junk as anything previously done throughout history.
The great walls served the mural to show the gods. The scalable modules Junkspace serve to support the brands we consume.
At the time, was fascinated with these texts. Probably due to its firmness and strength of character incisor. Exerted a hypnotic effect with vibrant rhythm and anger compared to the passive and uncontrolled destruction of our environment. Something that was described as a consequence of the inexorable action of economic forces. Oozed truths that many would share but until then we would not have been able to express in a coherent manner. Rem Koolhaas was there to channel the rage of those who saw the ill-fated radical metamorphosis took place in our cities and in the course of our lives. All for the sake of a flow property misunderstood, that he had finished transforming the historic and natural environments in a banal space comparable to junk food. Metaphors sharp and sarcastic comparisons were to express an efficient resource la ira frente a la destrucción sistemática de las herencias del pasado en aras de una eficiencia de los flujos monetarios.
Propuesta de rascacielos lider para Dubai Renaissance. OMA 2007. Eikongraphia
Lo que está claro es que este arquitecto holandés es alguien que atesora una visión amplísima y es un gran experto en la ya larga tradición arquitectónica generada a lo largo del siglo XX. Como consecuencia de ello es capaz de ofrecer otra forma de entender la arquitectura; alguien que tiene la necesidad imperiosa de escribir para descargar los pensamientos que le atenazan en su esfuerzo por entender los fenómenos urbanos más recientes.
Probablemente, se lo plantea como una forma de contribuir a paliar las inmensas fuerzas destructoras que acompañan a esa estrategia descarnada de la organización del mundo en torno a la economía. En los últimos decenios el sometimiento de la política y las necesidades sociales al imperio de lo financiero nos han ido hundiendo paulatinamente en un pozo de insostenibilidad cada vez más profundo.
Algunos hemos coleccionado con fruición a lo largo de los años los excesivos y sucesivos ladrillos de Koolhaas. Son unas publicaciones que tienen una presencia preeminente en nuestras bibliotecas personales, aunque no creo que nos puedan serve as a permanent relief for our growing political impotence. However, they are now an indelible part of our every day environment, that often surround the architects.
The founders of the Office for Metropoitan Architecture, M. Vreisendorp, Rem Koolhaas, E. and Z. Zenguelis --->
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