Rem Koolhaas – författare

“Once there was a nation that went to war, but after they conquered a continent their own country was destroyed by atom bombs... then the victors imposed democracy on the vanquished. For a group of apprentice architects, artists, and designers, led by a visionary, the dire situation of their country was not an obstacle but an inspiration to plan and think... although they were very different characters, the architects worked closely together to realize their dreams, staunchly supported by a super-creative bureaucracy and an activist state... after 15 years of incubation, they surprised the world with a new architecture—Metabolism—that proposed a radical makeover of the entire land... Then newspapers, magazines, and TV turned the architects into heroes: thinkers and doers, thoroughly modern men… Through sheer hard work, discipline, and the integration of all forms of creativity, their country, Japan, became a shining example... when the oil crisis initiated the end of the West, the architects of Japan spread out over the world to define the contours of a post-Western aesthetic....” —Rem Koolhaas / Hans Ulrich ObristBetween 2005 and 2011, architect Rem Koolhaas and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist interviewed the surviving members of Metabolism—the first non-Western avant-garde, launched in Tokyo in 1960, in the midst of Japan’s postwar miracle. Project Japan features hundreds of never-before-seen images—master plans from Manchuria to Tokyo, intimate snapshots of the Metabolists at work and play, architectural models, magazine excerpts, and astonishing sci-fi urban visions—telling the 20th-century history of Japan through its architecture.From the tabula rasa of a colonized Manchuria in the 1930s, a devastated Japan after the war, and the establishment of Metabolism at the 1960 World Design Conference in Tokyo to the rise of Kisho Kurokawa as the first celebrity architect, the apotheosis of Metabolism at Expo ’70 in Osaka, and its expansion into the Middle East and Africa in the 1970s: The result is a vivid documentary of the last moment when architecture was a public rather than a private affair.Oral history by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist Extensive interviews with Arata Isozaki, Toshiko Kato, Kiyonori Kikutake, Noboru Kawazoe, Fumihiko Maki, Kisho Kurokawa, Kenji Ekuan, Atsushi Shimokobe, and Takako and Noritaka Tange Hundreds of never-before-seen images, architectural models, and magazine excerpts Layout by award-winning Dutch designer Irma Boom Further reading

A colorful, comprehensive volume documenting the short-lived but highly influential work of Sander Lak’s beloved and now cult fashion brand, Sies Marjan.Known for its evocative use of color, proportion, and subversive fabrication, the New York–based fashion house Sies Marjan, founded in 2016 by Dutch creative director Sander Lak, had a brief but influential life. Although it shut its doors in 2020, Sies Marjan made a permanent mark on the fashion scene. Pieces were characterized by luxurious construction, the signature use of shining, jewel-toned hues, and effortlessly cool appeal—the house’s pastel coats, thrown over T-shirts, are still regularly seen in downtown New York. Since its founding, Sies Marjan has garnered a devoted fan base and praise from notable critics, celebrities, and fans alike in a city known for its endless affection for a darker palette. Rejecting the chronologies and seasonality of the typical fashion compendium, this exhaustive, richly illustrated volume is organized purely by color. The trajectory through the color spectrum traces the journey through the blazing life of the brand. Images featured within range from previously unpublished looks from iconic runway shows, and ad campaigns to found objects that reveal the inspiration behind the creation of these luxurious, chromatic garments. The flow of color is punctuated by a number of interviews and reflections from Marc Jacobs, Donna Tartt, Isabella Rossellini, Rem Koolhaas, Hanya Yanagihara, and others.

Since its publication - Delirious New York (1978) has attained mythic status. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the variety of human behaviorAt the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle - "the culture of congestion" - and its architecture. "Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper.Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.

In Junkspace (2001), architect Rem Koolhaas itemises in delirious detail how our cities are being overwhelmed. His celebrated jeremiad is here updated and twinned with Running Room, a fresh response from architectural critic Hal Foster.'The manifesto is a modernist mode, one that looks to the future… Junkspace makes no such claim: “Architecture disappeared in the twentieth century,” states Koolhaas matter-of-factly. Junkspace does a harder thing: it “foretells” the present, which is to say that it calls on us to recognize what is already everywhere around us.’ Hal Foster

Since the beginning of the century, the field of architecture has fervently turned its attention to documenting the contemporary urban condition. Every city been has been examined as a repository of architectural concepts, scrutinized as an urban manifesto, and recorded as a series of found objects. The Ordinary articulates a potential genealogy for this practice and for the genre of books derived from it. Organized around conversations with the authors of three seminal texts that document the city-Denise Scott Brown's Learning from Las Vegas (1972), Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York (1978), and Yoshiharu Tsukamoto's Made in Tokyo (2001)-this volume traces the history of these "books on cities" by examining the material they recorded, the findings they established, the arguments they advanced, and the projects they promoted. These conversations also question the assumptions underlying this practice and whether in its ubiquity it still remains a space of opportunity.

Elements of Architecture focuses on the fragments of the rich and complex architectural collage. Window, façade, balcony, corridor, fireplace, stair, escalator, elevator and toilet: the book seeks to excavate the micro-narratives of building detail. The result is no single history, but rather the web of origins, contaminations, similarities, and differences in architectural evolution, including the influence of technological advances, climatic adaptation, political calculation, economic contexts, regulatory requirements, and new digital opportunities. It’s a guide that is long overdue—in Koolhaas’s own words, “Never was a book more relevant—at a moment where architecture as we know it is changing beyond recognition.”Derived, updated, and expanded from Koolhaas’s exhaustive and much-lauded exhibition at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, this is an essential toolkit to understanding the fundamentals that comprise structure around the globe. Designed by Irma Boom and based on research from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the 2,600-page monograph contains essays from Rem Koolhaas, Stephan Trueby, James Westcott and Stephan Petermann; interviews with Werner Sobek and Tony Fadell (of Nest); and an exclusive photo essay by Wolfgang Tillmans.In addition to comprehensively updated texts and new images, this edition is designed and produced to visually (and physically) embody the immense scope of its subject matter:Custom split-spine binding: our printer modified their industrial binding machine to allow for the flexible, eight-centimeter thick spine Contains a new introductory chapter with forewords, table of contents, and an index, located in the middle of the book (where it naturally opens due to its unique spine) Printed on 50g Opakal paper, allowing for the ideal level of opacity needed to realize Boom’s palimpsest-like design Translucent overlays and personal annotations by Koolhaas and Boom are woven in each chapter to create an alternative, faster route through the book Printed at the originally intended 100% size for full readability

More than four centuries on from its first publication, discover one of the jewels of urban cartography and civic studies. This reprint includes the most enchanting color plates from the Civitates orbis terrarum, a magnificent collection of town map engravings, produced between 1572 and 1617.Featuring plans, bird’s-eye views, and maps for all major cities in Europe, plus important urban centers in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, this masterwork in urban mapping gives us a comprehensive view of city life at the turn of the 17th century. It was edited and annotated by theologian and publisher Georg Braun and largely engraved by Franz Hogenberg, but also involved over a hundred different artists and cartographers who contributed not only town views, but additional elements, such as figures in local dress, courtroom scenes, and topographical details, to help convey the situation, commercial power, and political influence of each city.TASCHEN's reprint contextualizes the plates with selected extracts from Braun’s original texts on the history and significance of each urban center as well as detailed commentaries to place each city map in its cartographical and cultural context.

Rem Koolhaas es uno de los grandes pensadores y polemistas contemporáneos acerca de la ciudad. Desde que en 1978 publicara su texto fundamental Delirio de Nueva York, el arquitecto holandés se ha catapultado como una de las voces más escuchadas a la hora de abordar la reflexión en torno a la ciudad contemporánea. Sus aportaciones se han centrado en el estudio de determinadas urbes o condiciones urbanas (además de Nueva York, Atlanta, Singapur, Lagos, etc). Este volumen, sin embargo, recoge cuatro textos intermedios aparecidos de forma dispersa —"¿Qué ha sido del urbanismo?", "Grandeza, o el problema de la talla", "La ciudad genérica" y "Espacio basura"— que, sin centrarse en ninguna ciudad en particular, recogen la visión general de Koolhaas sobre la muerte del urbanismo moderno y el nacimiento de un nuevo urbanismo sin teoría ni arquitectos.

Situada casi en las antípodas del escenario que dio origen al proyecto moderno, Singapur se erige sorprendentemente como adalid triunfante de la estrategia de la vivienda moderna. Quizás por la confluencia con el autoritarismo y la mentalidad asiáticos, esta isla y ciudad-estado del sureste asiático ha adoptado sin escrúpulos el programa mecanicista y racionalista de la modernidad hasta configurar una demoledora ''metrópolis potemkin''. Rem Koolhaas narra en este libro la crónica de la renovación urbana de Singapur desde que Lee Kuan Yew tomara en 1959 las riendas del primer gobierno autónomo de la ex colonia británica y emprendiera el proyecto de desarrollo de la isla auspiciado por las recomendaciones de la ONU. Un proyecto que pasó por hacer tabla rasa de las preexistencias y cuyo programa gubernamental fue acompañado de encuentros y desencuentros con el colectivo arquitectónico, como el movimiento metabolista representado por figuras como Fumihiko Maki o la intelectualidad de Singapur agrupada en el Singapore Planning and Urban Research (SPUR). Tildada posteriormente de ''caricatura repulsiva'' y ''orgía de vulgaridad eurasiática'', la experiencia de Singapur, sin embargo, no fue excepcional, sino que se configuró como un patrón arquetípico que, como apuntó Koolhaas en este ensayo premonitorio, estaba preparado para extenderse por toda Asia: ''Su modelo será el sello de la modernización de China. Y dos mil millones de personas no pueden estar equivocadas''.

Manhattan es el escenario donde se representa el último acto de la civilización occidental. Con la explosión demográfica y la invasión de las nuevas tecnologías, Manhattan se ha convertido, desde mediados del siglo XIX, en el laboratorio de una nueva cultura, la de la congestión; una isla mítica donde se hace realidad el inconsciente colectivo de un nuevo modo de vida metropolitano, una fábrica de lo artificial donde lo natural y lo real han dejado de existir. Delirio de Nueva York es un ''manifiesto retroactivo'', una interpretación de la teoría no formulada que subyace en el desarrollo de Manhattan; es el relato de las intrigas de un urbanismo que, desde sus inicios en Coney Island hasta los teóricos del rascacielos, ha hecho explotar su retícula de origen. Este libro, polémico y premonitorio (publicado originariamente en 1978), ilustra las relaciones entre un universo metropolitano mutante y la singular arquitectura que puede producir; y afirma también que, con frecuencia, la arquitectura genera la cultura.

La metrópolis contemporánea cuestiona nuestros valores más profundos, o al menos aquellos a los que estamos más apegados sentimentalmente. ¿Por qué arquitectos, regímenes políticos y culturas (europeas, americanas, asiáticas) que son completamente diferentes entre sí llegan a configuraciones similares? A través de temas generalmente desatendidos por los arquitectos, como la tabla rasa, el espacio basura o la congestión, Rem Koolhaas cuestiona "lo que en su momento se llamó" la ciudad como un espacio único para la reflexión. Este libro recoge los ensayos dedicados a algunas ciudades con las que Koolhaas ha tenido contacto por motivos profesionales, académicos o biográficos en las dos décadas de plena madurez: Atlanta, París, Lille, Tokio, Berlín, Nueva York, Moscú y Londres. No se trata de escritos teóricos, sino de un conjunto de textos coyunturales atravesados por laberínticas remisiones internas, situados a mitad de camino entre la experiencia y la reflexión.

Preservation is Overtaking Us brings together two lectures given by Rem Koolhaas at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, along with a response (framed as a supplement to the original lectures) by Jorge Otero-Pailos. In the first essay Koolhaas describes alternative strategies for preserving Beijing, China. The second talk marks the inaugural Paul Spencer Byard lecture, named in celebration of the longtime professor of Historic Preservation at GSAPP. These two lectures trace key moments of Koolhaas' thinking on preservation, including his practice's entry into China and the commission to redevelop the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. In a format well known to Koolhaas' readers, Otero-Pailos reworks the lectures into a working manifesto, using it to interrogate OMA's work from within the discipline of preservation.

Celebrating 30 years of the groundbreaking publication by iconoclastic architect Rem Koolhaas and designer Bruce Mau, now reissued in a new collectible colorway S,M,L,XL presents a selection of the remarkable visionary design work produced by the Dutch firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.) and its acclaimed founder, Rem Koolhaas, in its first twenty years, along with a variety of insightful, often poetic writings.The inventive collaboration between Koolhaas and designer Bruce Mau is a graphic overture that weaves together architectural projects, photos and sketches, diary excerpts, personal travelogues, fairy tales, and fables, as well as critical essays on contemporary architecture and society.The book's title is also its framework: projects and essays are arranged according to scale. While Small and Medium address issues ranging from the domestic to the public, Large focuses on what Koolhaas calls "the architecture of Bigness." Extra-Large features projects at the urban scale, along with the important essay "What Ever Happened to Urbanism?" and other studies of the contemporary city.Running throughout the book is a "dictionary" of an adventurous new Koolhaasian language - definitions, commentaries, and quotes from hundreds of literary, cultural, artistic, and architectural sources.

Source Books in Architecture No.14: Rem Koolhaas / OMA + AMO Spaces for Prada is the most recent volume in the Source Books in Architecture series. Among the topics discussed in the book are the longstanding relationship with Prada and how the early objectives in that relationship have both maintained and shifted. An underlying theme to the conversations held with students and faculty of the Knowlton School community is the topic of architect client relationships, their history, their problems, and how they have contributed to the discipline over time. Explicitly, a focus of the conversation is on a number of projects that OMA has developed or completed with Prada, a large number of which are installation scale environments that manifest in the form of runway shows and exhibitions. The challenge of such projects is to retain a commitment to the political and cultural agenda that OMA embeds in the larger and permanent buildings. Given the ephemerality and role of these environments as literal backgrounds to highlighted events, the projects are ideal scenarios in which to develop an architecture that lacks the permanence of buildings while still carrying potency and contributing to larger cultural discussions involving, for example, event, place, concept, product, staging, the crowd, lighting, and materiality. Source Books in Architecture No.14 contains project documentation from the OMA and Prada archives, transcripts from Koolhaas’ conversations with students at the Knowlton School at The Ohio State University, and commentary and critique from architects, critics, and theorists.