Remment Lucas Koolhaas (; born 17 November 1944) is a Dutch architect,

architectural theorist Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings o ...

, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

. He is often cited as a representative of

Deconstructivism Deconstructivism is a movement of postmodern architecture which appeared in the 1980s. It gives the impression of the fragmentation of the constructed building, commonly characterised by an absence of obvious harmony, continuity, or symmetry. ...

and is the author of '' Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan''. He is seen by some as one of the significant architectural thinkers and urbanists of his generation, by others as a self-important iconoclast. In 2000, Rem Koolhaas won the

Pritzker Prize The Pritzker Architecture Prize is an international architecture award presented annually "to honor a living architect or architects whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produ ...

. In 2008, ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' put him in their top 100 of '' The World's Most Influential People''. He was elected to the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 2014.

Early life and career

Remment Koolhaas was born on 17 November 1944 in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte (river), Rotte'') is the second largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the Prov ...

, Netherlands, to

Anton Koolhaas Anthonie "Anton" Koolhaas (16 November 1912 – 16 December 1992) was a Dutch journalist, novelist, and scenario writer. Biography Anthonie Koolhaas was born on 16 November 1912 in Utrecht, Netherlands. He was the son of Teunis Koolhaas and Trij ...

(1912–1992) and Selinde Pietertje Roosenburg (born 1920). His father was a novelist, critic, and screenwriter. His maternal grandfather, Dirk Roosenburg (1887–1962), was a

modernist architect Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that form ...

who worked for

Hendrik Petrus Berlage Hendrik Petrus Berlage (21 February 1856 – 12 August 1934) was a Dutch architect. He is considered one of the fathers of the architecture of the Amsterdam School. Life and work Hendrik Petrus Berlage, son of Nicolaas Willem Berlage and An ...

, before opening his own practice. Rem Koolhaas has a brother, Thomas, and a sister, Annabel. His paternal cousin was the architect and urban planner Teun Koolhaas (1940–2007). The family lived consecutively in Rotterdam (until 1946),

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...

(1946–1952),

Jakarta Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital city, capital and list of Indonesian cities by population, largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coa ...

(1952–1955), and Amsterdam (from 1955). His father strongly supported the Indonesian cause for autonomy from the colonial Dutch in his writing. When the war of independence was won, he was invited over to run a cultural programme for three years and the family moved to Jakarta in 1952. "It was a very important age for me," Koolhaas recalls "and I really lived as an Asian." In 1969, Koolhaas co-wrote ''The White Slave'', a Dutch film noir, and later wrote an unproduced script for American soft-porn king Russ Meyer. He was a journalist in 1963 at age 19 for the ''

Haagse Post ''HP/De Tijd'' is a Dutch language monthly opinion magazine published by the Audax Groep. Its editorial offices are in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Alongside '' De Groene Amsterdammer'', '' Vrij Nederland'' and '' Elsevier'', it is one of the most ...

'' before starting studies in architecture in 1968 at the

Architectural Association School of Architecture The Architectural Association School of Architecture in London, commonly referred to as the AA, is the oldest independent school of architecture in the UK and one of the most prestigious and competitive in the world. Its wide-ranging programme ...

in London, followed, in 1972, by further studies with Oswald Mathias Ungers at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

Ithaca Ithaca most commonly refers to: *Homer's Ithaca, an island featured in Homer's ''Odyssey'' *Ithaca (island), an island in Greece, possibly Homer's Ithaca *Ithaca, New York, a city, and home of Cornell University and Ithaca College Ithaca, Ithaka ...

, New York, followed by studies at the

Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies The Institute for Architecture & Urban Studies is a non-profit architecture studio and think tank located in Manhattan, New York, United States. IAUS (1967–1984) The Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies was founded in 1967 as a non-pr ...

in New York City. Rem Koolhaas SCL

Koolhaas first came to public and critical attention with OMA (The Office for Metropolitan Architecture), the office he founded in 1975 together with architects Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and (Koolhaas's wife)

Madelon Vriesendorp Madelon Vriesendorp (born 1945, Bilthoven) is a Dutch artist, painter, sculptor and art collector. She was married to Rem Koolhaas and best known as one of the co-founders of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in the early 1970s (toge ...

in London. They were later joined by one of Koolhaas's students,

Zaha Hadid Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid ( ar, زها حديد ''Zahā Ḥadīd''; 31 October 1950 – 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi-British architect, artist and designer, recognised as a major figure in architecture of the late 20th and early 21st centu ...

– 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 The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

of 1980, curated by Italian architect

Paolo Portoghesi Paolo Portoghesi (born 2 November 1931, Rome) is an Italian architect, theorist, historian and professor of architecture at the University La Sapienza in Rome. He is a former president of the architectural section of the Venice Biennale (1979–9 ...

, titled "Presence of the Past". Each architect had to design a stage-like "frontage" to a

Potemkin Prince Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tauricheski (, also , ;, rus, Князь Григо́рий Алекса́ндрович Потёмкин-Таври́ческий, Knjaz' Grigórij Aleksándrovich Potjómkin-Tavrícheskij, ɡrʲɪˈɡ ...

-type internal street; the façades by ,

Frank Gehry Frank Owen Gehry, , FAIA (; ; born ) is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions. His works are considered ...

and OMA were the only ones that did not employ Post-Modern architecture motifs or historical references. Other early critically received (yet unbuilt) projects included the

Parc de la Villette The Parc de la Villette is the third-largest park in Paris, in area, located at the northeastern edge of the city in the 19th arrondissement. The park houses one of the largest concentrations of cultural venues in Paris, including the Cité d ...

, Paris (1982) and the residence for the Prime Minister of Ireland (1979), as well as 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), which was written while he was a visiting scholar at the

in New York, directed by

Peter Eisenman Peter Eisenman (born August 11, 1932) is an American architect. Considered one of the New York Five, Eisenman is known for his writing and speaking about architecture as well as his designs, which have been called high modernist or deconstructiv ...

Architectural theory

''Delirious New York''

Koolhaas's book '' Delirious New York'' set the pace for his career. Koolhaas analyzes the "chance-like" nature of city life: "The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape" "Rem Koolhaas...defined the city as a collection of 'red hot spots'." ( Anna Klingmann). As Koolhaas himself has acknowledged, this approach had already been evident in the Japanese Metabolist Movement in the 1960s and early 1970s. A key aspect of architecture that Koolhaas interrogates is the "

Program Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program management, the process of managing several related projects * Time management * Program, a part of planning Arts and entertainment Audio * Programm ...

": 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 Form follows function is a principle of design associated with late 19th and early 20th century architecture and industrial design in general, which states that the shape of a building or object should primarily relate to its intended 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).

Project on the city

Koolhaas' next publications were a by-product of his position as professor at

, in the Design school's "Project on the City"; firstly the 720-page ''Mutations'', followed by ''The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping'' (2002) and ''The Great Leap Forward'' (2002). All three books published student work analysing what others would regard as "non-cities", sprawling conglomerates such as

Lagos Lagos (Nigerian English: ; ) is the largest city in Nigeria and the second most populous city in Africa, with a population of 15.4 million as of 2015 within the city proper. Lagos was the national capital of Nigeria until December 1991 fo ...

in Nigeria, west Africa, which the authors argue are 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 Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...

and

globalization Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20t ...

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". Perhaps such caustic cynicism can 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. It does, however, demonstrate one of the architect's characteristic devices for deflecting criticism: attack the client or subject of study after completing the work. 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. In 2003, ''Content'', a 544-page magazine-style book designed by &&& Creative and published by Koolhaas, gives an overview of the last decade of OMA projects including his designs for the

Prada Prada S.p.A. (, ; ) is an Italian luxury fashion house founded in 1913 in Milan by Mario Prada. It specializes in leather handbags, travel accessories, shoes, ready-to-wear, and other fashion accessories. Prada licenses its name and branding t ...

shops, the

Seattle Public Library The Seattle Public Library (SPL) is the public library system serving the city of Seattle, Washington. Efforts to start a Seattle library had commenced as early as 1868, with the system eventually being established by the city in 1890. The syst ...

, a plan to save

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

from Harvard by rechanneling the

Charles River The Charles River ( Massachusett: ''Quinobequin)'' (sometimes called the River Charles or simply the Charles) is an river in eastern Massachusetts. It flows northeast from Hopkinton to Boston along a highly meandering route, that doubles bac ...

, Lagos' future as Earth's third-biggest city, as well as interviews with

Martha Stewart Martha Helen Stewart (, ; born August 3, 1941) is an American retail businesswoman, writer, and television personality. As founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, she gained success through a variety of business ventures, encompassing pu ...

and Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown.

Volume Magazine

In 2005, Rem Koolhaas co-founded '' Volume Magazine'' together with Mark Wigley and

Ole Bouman Ole Bouman (born 1960, Amersfoort) is a Dutch German historian, writer, curator in urbanism design and architecture. Bouman is the founding director of Design Society, an initiative of China Merchants Group and the Victoria and Albert Museum in S ...

. ''Volume Magazine'' – the collaborative project by Archis (Amsterdam), AMO and C-lab (

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

NY) – is a dynamic experimental think tank devoted to the process of spatial and cultural reflexivity. It goes beyond architecture's definition of ‘making buildings’ and reaches out for global views on architecture and design, broader attitudes to social structures, and creating environments to live in. The magazine stands for a journalism which detects and anticipates, is proactive and even pre-emptive – a journalism which uncovers potentialities, rather than covering done deals.

Buildings and projects

In the late nineties he worked on the design for the new headquarters for Universal. Indeed, online marketing and propaganda has been a hallmark of OMA's rise in the current century. It has also led to pointed criticism, such as the critique by ''New York Magazine'' critic Justin Davidson, who found the 2020 Guggenheim exhibition ''Countryside, the Future'' "mildly amusing if it weren’t such terrible waste — of attention, of gallery square footage, of resources, talent, and expertise. Bored with being an architect and building things, Koolhaas lets his fingertips graze important topics, genuine insights, and actual lives. He treats them all as ironic bric-a-brac, meaningless souvenirs of his meanderings through a fragile world. How frustrating that the Guggenheim couldn’t force a little more intellectual rigor on this romp."

Architecture, fashion, and theatre

With his

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 Beverly Hills is a city located in Los Angeles County, California. A notable and historic suburb of Greater Los Angeles, it is in a wealthy area immediately southwest of the Hollywood Hills, approximately northwest of downtown Los Angeles. ...

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 on Broadway in Manhattan, New York, which had previously been owned by the Guggenheim: the museum signs were not removed during the outfitting of the new store, as if emphasizing the premises as a cultural institution. The Broadway Prada store opened in December 2001, cost €32 million to build, and has 2,300 square meters of retail space.

21st Century Projects

Probably the most costly and celebrated OMA projects of the new century were the massive Central China Television Headquarters Building in Beijing, China, and the new building for the

Shenzhen Stock Exchange The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE; ) is a stock exchange based in the city of Shenzhen, in the People's Republic of China. It is one of three stock exchanges operating independently in Mainland China, the others being the Beijing Stock Exch ...

, the equivalent of the

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

in China. In his design for the new CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2009), Koolhaas did not opt for the stereotypical skyscraper, often used to symbolise and landmark such government enterprises; he patented a "horizontal skyscraper" in the U.S. The building, popularly called "The Big Pants" by Beijing residents, was designed as a series of volumes which attempt to tie together the numerous departments onto the nebulous site, but also introduce routes (again, the concept of cross-programming) for the general public through the site, allowing them some degree of access to the production procedure. An unfortunate incident that highlighted the folly of the circulation scheme (no effective fire egress for people on the upper floors), was the construction fire that nearly destroyed the building and a nearby hotel in 2009. In February 2020, his exhibition ''Countryside,The Future'' opened at the Guggenheim in New York City. The exhibition closed within a month, after New York City closed all its major art institutions in connection with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Personal life

Koolhaas was previously married to

, an artist who is the mother of his two children, Charlie, a photographer, and Tomas, a filmmaker. Koolhaas divorced Vriesendorp in 2012. He has known his current partner

Petra Blaisse Petra Blaisse (born 1955 in London, United Kingdom) is a British-born Dutch designer.Database searc ...

, an interior and landscape designer, since 1986.

Selected projects

*Villa dall’Ava, ( Saint-Cloud, 1991) *Nexus World Housing (Fukuoka, 1991) * Kunsthal (

, 1992) *Euralille (Lille, 1994) *Educatorium (

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

, 1995) *Maison à Bordeaux (

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefectu ...

, 1998) * Embassy of the Netherlands (

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

, 2003) * McCormick Tribune Campus Center (Chicago, 2003) *

Seoul National University Museum of Art The Seoul National University Museum of Art (SNUMoA) is a museum in Seoul National University. History *1995 Prof. Jong-Sang Lee proposes the establishment of the MoA and the Samsung Cultural foundation promises to fund the creation of the muse ...

(

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the Capital city, capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the North Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea ...

, 2005) * Seattle Central Library (

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...

, 2005) * Casa da Música (

Porto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropo ...

, 2005) *Dee and Charles Wyly Theater (Dallas, 2009) * CCTV Headquarters, (Beijing, 2012) * De Rotterdam (Rotterdam, 2013) * Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow, 2014) *

Qatar National Library Qatar National Library (QNL) is a non-profit organization under the umbrella of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development.Qatar National Library.About the library." Retrieved 2014-12-14. The plans for the new national ...

(Doha, 2017) * Taipei Performing Arts Center (

Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...

, 2022)

Bibliography

*''Project Japan. Metabolism Talks... ''(2011) (''with Hans Ulrich Obrist'') *'' Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan'' (1978) *''

S,M,L,XL ''S,M,L,XL'' () is a book by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, edited by Jennifer Sigler, with photography by Hans Werlemann. Overview The book was first published by Monacelli Press in 1995 in New York and 010 Publishers in Rotterdam. This enormous ...

'' (1995) *''

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery ...

'': 24 Hour Interview Marathon'' (2007) *''Living Vivre Leben'' (1998) *''Content'' (2004) * ''Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006''; Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, Germany 2008

Gallery

File:Villa dall'Ava.jpg, Villa dall'Ava, Paris, France, OMA File:NexusWorldHousing1992Anonymous.png, Nexus World Housing,

Fukuoka is the sixth-largest city in Japan, the second-largest port city after Yokohama, and the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The city is built along the shores of Hakata Bay, and has been a center of international commerce since anc ...

, Japan, OMA File:Kunsthal Rotterdam.JPG, Kunsthal,

, The Netherlands, OMA File:Uithof, 3584 Utrecht, Netherlands - panoramio (19).jpg, Educatorium,

, The Netherlands, OMA File:MAISON À BORDEAUX.jpg, Maison à Bordeaux, France, OMA File:Be Dutch Embassy 01.JPG, Embassy of the Netherlands,

, Germany, OMA
File:McCormick Tribune Campus Center.jpg, McCormick Tribune Campus Center, Chicago, United States, OMA
File:SCL2.JPG, Seattle Central Library,

, United States, OMA
File:Casa da musica.JPG, Casa da Música,

, Portugal, OMA
File:Serpentine Gallery pavilion 2006 by Koolhaas and Balmond - geograph.org.uk - 214757.jpg, Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, London, UK, OMA File:Distant view of the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre (edited).jpg, Dee and Charles Wyly Theater,

Dallas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County ...

, US, OMA File:De Rotterdam, September 2019 - 01.jpg, De Rotterdam,

, The Netherlands, OMA File:Taipei Performing Arts Center construction site 20190629.jpg, Taipei Performing Arts Center, Taipei, Taiwan, OMA

References

External links

Office for Metropolitan Architecture

OMA official Facebook page
(updated daily)
OMA official Vimeo channel

OMA portfolio on Archello.com

Rem Koolhaas
at

*
Urgency 2007: Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman lectures
Canadian Centre for Architecture, 8 June 2007
Rem Koolhaas in conversation with Mirko Zardini and Giovanna Borasi
Rotterdam, 26 August 2015, for the exhibitio
The Other Architect
Canadian Centre for Architecture
On Starchitecture

Rem Koolhaas lecture "Russia for Beginners" at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art: September 15th, 2014

Rem Koolhaas on Empty Canon
{{DEFAULTSORT:Koolhaas, Rem 1944 births 20th-century Dutch architects 21st-century Dutch architects Architectural theoreticians Urban theorists Deconstructivism Postmodern architecture Dutch non-fiction writers Living people Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning alumni Harvard Graduate School of Design faculty Dutch urban planners Architects from Rotterdam Pritzker Architecture Prize winners Recipients of the Royal Gold Medal Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Recipients of the Praemium Imperiale Alumni of the Architectural Association School of Architecture Honorary Fellows of the American Institute of Architects Members of the American Philosophical Society Compasso d'Oro Award recipients