Rem Koolhaas

Rem Koolhaas 1944-, Dutch architect, b. Rotterdam. He began his career as a journalist and screenwriter, moving to London in the late 1960s to study architecture. Koolhaas is widely viewed as the most intellectually challenging, audacious, and influential architectural thinker of his generation; until the 1990s he was primarily known as a theorist. He founded (1975) and heads the Rotterdam-based Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). His cutting-edge work defies categorization; it is innovatively functional and often uses inexpensive everyday materials. Among his completed commissions are the Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague (1987); the vast Euralille urban complex, Lille, France (1994); the Dutch Embassy, Berlin (2003); the McCormick Tribune Campus Center, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago (2003); and the Casa de Música, Oporto, Portugal (2005). His Central Library in Seattle (2004), featuring an irregularly angled and cantilevered exterior, glass and steel skin, spiral of interior bookshelves, and soaring reading room, is probably his most highly acclaimed project. Koolhaas is the author of Delirious New York (1978, repr. 1994), about the city's architecture and density; S, M, L, XL (1994), about OMA's projects; and several other books. He received the Pritzker Prize in 2000.

Koolhaas, Rem (1944– ). Dutch architect, he formed OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) in 1975 with Madelon Vriesendorp and Elia and Zoe Zenghelis, producing a number of visionary and theoretical projects, including ‘Delirious New York’ (1972–6), later published as a book (1978), in which overlapping themes and ideas produced a collage-like effect. Koolhaas and his colleagues have been successful publicists for Deconstructivism and winners of competitions, notably for the National Dance Theatre, The Hague (1981–7), and for several sites in Berlin. His high-rise apartment-block with communal facilities and observation-tower, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (1982), demonstrated his fondness for distorting, engulfing, and twisting form, for it is essentially a row of towers distorted by a slab. Among later works, the Kunsthal, Rotterdam (1987–92), a vast exhibition-building bisected by an entranceramp, and featuring deliberately rough concrete on some façades, may be mentioned. The gigantic Grand Palais and master-plan for Euralille (a shopping-centre, conference, concert and exhibition-halls, and many other facilities at Lille, France (1989–96)), on a major station of the Eurostar rail-link between London, Brussels, and Paris, is one of his largest projects. Like several architects of his generation, Koolhaas has favoured sharp corners and an abrasive manner towards context (ignoring it for the most part). Curiously, in Las Vegas, NV, USA (perhaps the world-capital of Kitsch), OMA designed a restrained, even Minimalist, Art Museum (2000–2), and its Prada Epicentre Shop, Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, CA (2003–4), is also quietly subtle. The firm also designed the Royal Netherlands Embassy, Berlin (2000–3), the gigantic headquarters for China Central Television (2003–8), and the Books Building (2004), both in Beijing, the City Library, Seattle, WA (2001–4), and, with others (including Alsop, Chipperfield, and Portzamparc), what he termed ‘corrections’ for the new town of Almere, Netherlands (from 1997). His writings, like his lectures, are somewhat opaque: many find them profound.

Bibliography

Anno Domini (In the Year of (Our) Lord), i.e. any year since the reputed birth of Christ from AD 1 onwards, xlvii/5 (1977), Profile 5, 315–27;
Amsoneit (1994);
Cuito (ed.) (2002b);
Kalman (1994);
Jodidio (1995a);
Johnson & and Wigley (1988);
Lampugnani (ed.) (1988);
Lucan (ed.) (1991);
O M Amsoneit et al. (1995)