REM KOOLHAAS: Preoccupations

Rem Koolhaas founded OMA in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vrieserdrop. Koolhaas worked as a journalist and screenwriter before beginning architecture, and writing has remained central to his architectural practice. At the same time as designing buildings around the world with OMA, Koolhaas works in non-architectural disciplines including politics, publishing, media, fashion and sociology through his think tank and research unit, AMO.

After studying at the Architectural Association in London and at Cornell and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in the US, Koolhaas wrote Delirious New York (1978) and simultaneously began producing projects and proposals with OMA. In 1995, S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA in a 1,200 page book that redefined architectural publishing. As director of the Project on the City research program at Harvard University, Koolhaas produced the books The Harvard Guide to Shopping (2001), an analysis of the role of retail and consumption in society and architecture, and Great Leap Forward (2002), a study of China’s Pearl River Delta; he also produced studies on Lagos, Roman architecture and communism.

Recently completed OMA buildings include the new G-Star headquarters in Amsterdam; De Rotterdam, three interconnected towers on the river Maas; Shenzhen Stock Exchange; the new headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) – a tower reinvented as a loop – in Beijing; a new headquarters for Rothschild Bank in London; and Milstein Hall, an elevated slab that extends Cornell’s college of Architecture, Art and Planning.

OMA-designed buildings currently under construction include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre; three buildings in Doha, Qatar; the Bibliotheque Multimedia a Vocation Regionale, a four-storey public library in Caen; and Bryghusprojektet in Copenhagen, a mixed-use project accomodating the new headquarters for the Danish Architecture Center.

In 1998, Koolhaas established AMO as a platform for using architectural thinking in non-architectural realms. Recent AMO projects include research into the countryside (globally) and the Russian hinterland; the design of catwalk shows for Prada and Miu Miu; “Cronocaos”, an exhibition on preservation at the 2010 Venice Biennale; participation in the EU Reflection Group think tank, with the task of making proposals for Europe in 2020; Roadmap 2050, a masterplan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; and the development of an educational program for Strelka, a new architecture school in Moscow. AMO has also guest edited an issue of Wired magazine as well as consulting on the future of Conde Nast magazines; proposed a “barcode” EU flag; and developed a curatorial masterplan for the Hermitage museum, St Petersberg.

This year, Koolhaas is the director of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, entitled, Fundamentals. He received the Johannes Vermeer Prijs in 2013, the Golden Lion for lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2010 and the Pritzker Prize in 2000.