Alto, enjuto y con una mirada entre risueña y penetrante que debe hacer tambalear a más de uno, RemKoolhaas (Rotterdam, 1944) es el arquitecto más influyente de las últimas décadas. Sus teorías —expresadas en libros como Delirio de Nueva York (Gustavo Gili), S.M.L.XL o Content—y sus proyectos —desde la Kunsthal de Rotterdam de 1992 a la Casa da Musica de Oporto, que inaugura esta semana— son seguidos y analizados con lupa por la profesión.

Tras obtener en 2000 el Premio Pritzker, le fue concedido en Barcelona el Premio de Arquitectura Contemporánea de la Unión Europea-Premio Mies van der Rohe 2005, dotado con 50.000 euros y de carácter bienal, por su edificio de la Embajada de Holanda en Berlín que ha realizado su estudio OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture), brazo constructor de este proyecto que tiene en su estudio paralelo, AMO, su contrapartida teórica.

Pregunta. En el terreno mediático han tenido mucha repercusión su defensa de lo enorme y también su mirada curiosa hacia el caos como organización urbana. ¿Lo refleja en su arquitectura?

Respuesta. He sido periodista y me interesan mucho los distintos fenómenos del mundo. Algunos son caóticos y otros están muy estructurados. Es verdad que hemos estudiado condiciones autoorganizadas en África o investigado el ritmo frenético de crecimiento de las ciudades chinas, pero todo esto es una investigación personal mía y no tiene por qué estar conectada con la obra. Intento entender el contexto más amplio en el que suceden las cosas de forma que nuestras intervenciones encajen bien en este entorno.

P. El Movimiento Moderno era una propuesta de futuro y usted defiende que hay que repensar el presente a partir de la situación económica y social existente.

R. Personalmente, nunca me ha atraído el futuro. Tengo una obsesión por el ahora, por el presente. Como tenemos dos despachos, OMA y AMO, podemos hacer cosas que un arquitecto no puede hacer. Por ejemplo, no puede limitarse a no hacer nada porque el arquitecto es el que llega y construye, no puede decir esto está perfecto y déjelo así como está. Con AMO trabajamos ahora en un proyecto muy interesante para el Museo Ermitage de San Petersburgo y les decimos: “No hagan nueva arquitectura, piensen en lo que está ahí, analícenlo para ver cómo puede funcionar con una nueva distribución de las obras, pero no toquen nada”. Y en Pekín también estamos por la labor de conservar. Eso son aportaciones para el futuro.

P. Es decir, ¿que lo más revolucionario puede ser no hacer?

R. Sí, a veces sí.

P. ¿Cuáles son sus preocupaciones teóricas ahora?

R. Estamos acabando un libro sobre Lagos, en África, con mis alumnos en la Escuela de Arquitectura de Harvard, que aparecerá este año.Y también estoy empezando a pensar en escribir sobre el pasado, conectado con esto de no hacer nada, pero no sé qué forma adoptará este proyecto.

P. Algunos críticos afirman que en sus teorías el tema social no es prioritario. ¿Es así?

R. La arquitectura ha sido siempre una profesión moralista y arrogante. Eso de que nosotros lo hacemos todo bien, pensando lo mejor para el mundo. Y siempre he considerado que era un aspecto muy desagradable de la profesión. En mi caso, lo que ha resultado confuso es que al contemplar con una mirada crítica y dura la situación actual parece ser que no tengo corazón o que no tengo buenas intenciones, según dicen algunos. Bueno, es cierto que detesto hablar de las buenas intenciones, pero estamos muy contentos con edificios como el de la Biblioteca de Seattle o la Casa da Musica de Oporto, y como cualquier arquitecto o ser humano estoy interesado por los temas sociales desde una óptica antropológica, como podrían estarlo los sociólogos. También somos cada vez más políticos con nuestros compromisos de cara a Europa, que es un aspecto muy importante de toda nuestra visión en el estudio.

P. La portada de Content, en la que caricaturizaba a Bush, Sadam Husein y otros políticos, ¿era un manifiesto o una broma?

R. Un manifiesto, por supuesto. Creo que los arquitectos deberían convertirse en algo mucho más político, más antropológico y más económico.

P. Las ciudades europeas han entrado en una carrera por conseguir la mejor arquitectura como atracción turística. ¿Es un fenómeno que favorece la arquitectura?

R. Aunque es algo que puede ofrecer más oportunidades y elevar las expectativas, básicamente me parece un fenómeno malsano porque presiona e incide en el aspecto espectacular a expensas de la seriedad y, paradójicamente, también de la creación y la invención verdadera. La arquitectura solía ser la expresión más seria de los valores del ámbito público y ahora esto se está desdibujando cada vez más. Tal vez por esto hemos ganado este premio, porque el edificio de Berlín es muy serio, no un gancho para el turismo.

P. ¿En qué fase está su proyecto del Palacio de Congresos para Córdoba?

R. [Koolhaas cede la palabra a su socia en OMA, Elle van Loon]. Lo presentamos dentro de dos días y confiamos en que en dos meses podrá empezar la construcción. Intentamos que el proyecto sea un espacio más público de lo habitual, que tenga vida siempre, no sólo cuando haya congresos.

P. ¿Construirá el macroedificio para la televisión de Pekín? R. Sí, ya lo estamos construyendo. Rompe el esquema del rascacielos típico y provoca un movimiento circular entre las diferentes funciones de la emisora. Pekín es una ciudad gestionada con unas reglas muy serias de planeamiento. Por esto es un proyecto importante para nosotros, ya que es un auténtico compromiso con su civilización.

Publicado en EL PAÍS, martes 12 de abril de 2005

A short video about showing the current state of four of Beijing’s new mega buildings:

A short video about showing the current state of four of Beijing’s new mega buildings:

- Rem Koolhaas’ new CCTV building
- Paul Andreu’s National Theater
- The National Swimming Center or ‘Water Cube’ designed by PTW
- The Olympic Stadium designed Herzog & de Meuron
Shot and edited by Luke Mines, presented by Jeremy Goldkorn.

Danwei.org
Danwei.tv

Architect Koolhaas unveils Milstein Hall design:
A ‘miracle box’ to unify AAP campus

By Daniel Aloi

Milstein Hall, the newest building of Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP), will be many things for many people: a space that is social, flexible, improvisational and adaptable. Not to mention big, beautiful and modern.

L. France/University Photography

Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, introduces Rem Koolhaas at the Sept. 19 unveiling of the Milstein Hall design.

The plans for the building were unveiled Sept. 19 in Bailey Hall by famed architect Rem Koolhaas and his associates in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The firm was selected in January to design the long-delayed project. The 43,000-square-foot building has an approved budget of $40 million. Groundbreaking is expected in early 2007 and completion in 2009.

Milstein Hall, the first building Koolhaas has designed for fellow architects, will be a vital campus link for Cornell and a major component of the college’s educational goals. Koolhaas called Milstein “a miracle box — which at first sight seems very straightforward.”

“Since we are the No. 1 school of architecture in the country, it’s fitting to have an exemplar of architecture for our home,” AAP Dean Mohsen Mostafavi said.

The wafer-shaped modernist structure will serve as a unifying platform for the different disciplines within the college and foster community and collaboration across departmental boundaries.

“Part of the new building will have a lecture hall — we’ve been waiting for that for eight years,” Mostafavi said. The renovation of Olive Tjaden Hall in 1996-97 replaced a lecture hall with exhibition spaces, he said.

Lindsay France/University Photography

Students get a close-up view of OMA’s model, which shows how Milstein Hall will be integrated with Sibley and Rand halls. Copyright © Cornell University

Milstein Hall will sit squarely on the northeast corner of the Arts Quad and will unite the AAP campus, connecting East Sibley Hall with the west side of Rand Hall. Its top level, or upper plate, will extend north over University Avenue toward the Foundry, which houses sculpture studios. A portion of Milstein will overlook the Arts Quad along the east side of Sibley.

The covered area beneath the steel structure also will be flexible, for use as a social or exhibition space or project construction area, with the capability to be temporarily enclosed for all-weather use.

“We all know about the climate of this place, so we thought we should have a variety of external spaces,” said OMA associate Shohei Shigematsu.

The proposed Sibley Plaza, on the site of the current Sibley parking lot, will emerge from beneath Milstein as a through-line from AAP to the Johnson Museum, and allow for future expansion behind Sibley and Tjaden halls.

OMA

A new plaza is formed next to Milstein Hall, creating a direct connection to the building, as well as the lower level of Sibley Hall and the Green Dragon Cafe.

OMA

The stair tower can be used for multimedia projection.

OMA

The building covers University Avenue and forms a new, covered location for a bus stop in the Tompkins County transportation system.

The building will have three levels — the first two, at and below ground level, will accommodate a 282-seat auditorium and public spaces for exhibitions and other programs.

The upper plate — essentially one large space for interaction — will house the Fine Arts Library, computer labs, studios and critique space, all suffused with natural light from surrounding floor-to-ceiling windows and a grid of skylights.

The roof of the ground floor, or lower plate, will rise to form a “bump” that defines the slope of the auditorium and create a central lobby and access to the upper plate. Koolhaas described this feature as part of “the hidden depth of the building.”

Mostafavi introduced Koolhaas, 61, to the audience of about 700 as “a visiting research student in the 1970s” — he lived on Eddy Street while working on his book “Delirious New York,” on his way to becoming one of the world’s leading architects.

In presenting the design, Koolhaas said Milstein Hall needed to be an enhancement and not just an addition to the campus.

“What needed to be done was to undo this scandalous neglect and the introduction of a war zone behind Sibley [showing a slide of the construction staging area there, drawing laughter from the audience], and reconnect the campus with its most beautiful feature — the gorge,” he said. “We had to create a building where the gorge and its landscape could be appreciated.”

“We’ve been waiting a long time, anticipating this,” said first-year architecture student Michael Lee during a presentation to students by OMA associates. “They’ve been trying to do this for so many years. It’s exciting to be part of the process — especially to have someone like Rem Koolhaas involved — and we get to see it being built for the next three years.”

The OMA team is presenting the plans to alumni and the media Sept. 20 in Manhattan at AAP’s loft space on W. 17th Street.

[via cornell.edu]

Beijing, China — Rem Koolhaas/OMA

• Site: 10 hectare at new central business district

• Program: 129.000sqm administration, 74.000sqm news, 57.000sqm broadcasting, 93.000sqm production, television cultural centre, 40.000sqm comprehensive area, 4.800sqm guard building, 4.800sqm parking, 7.200sqm other facilities

• “When complete, the new television headquarters will be comparable in size to both the Rockefeller Building and World Trade Center” (Shohei Shigetmatsu, in cnn_02.12.06)

Controversial architect Koolhaas discusses future of cities

Stephanie Schorow, News Office Correspondent

November 22, 2006

Necessity can be the mother of innovation even at an institute of technology: When a PowerPoint presentation by world-renowned Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas failed to work for his scheduled lecture on Nov. 14, staff of the Department of Architecture quickly switched gears on Koolhaas’ behalf and transformed the event from a lecture into a “conversation” with faculty and students.

That suited many in the audience. There was a near-capacity turnout in Room 10-250 to hear Koolhaas, an influential yet controversial figure in the architecture world.

A Dutch graduate of the Architecture Association School in London, Koolhaas cofounded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975 and won the Pritzker Prize in 2000. Yet his style defies categorization; he was a writer and a social critic before he became a working architect, and his 1978 book, “Delirious New York,” examines urban development. A professor at Harvard, he conducts the Project on the City, a research program investigating changing urban conditions.

“The architecture of Rem Koolhaas has been called Structuralist, post-Structuralist Humanist, post-Humanist, Neo-Modernist influenced by (Gilles) Deleuze or just plain old delusional,” said Mark Jarzombek, professor of the history of architecture and director of the History, Theory and Criticism Program, in his introduction.

More recently, Koolhaas was mentioned, in a not particularly flattering way, in an article in the New Yorker magazine on the sprawling growth of the Nigerian city Lagos. Koolhaas has been studying conditions in Lagos for 11 years and has written articles and an upcoming book that see the African megacity as a harbinger of future urban development. The New Yorker article sniped at researchers who view Lagos as a “hip icon of the latest global trends.”

Koolhaas’ MIT lecture was intended to focus on Lagos. But shorn of his slides, he answered questions about his work there. In response to a question by Alexander d’Hooghe, assistant professor of architecture and urban design, Koolhaas detailed his approach.

To avoid “tourism,” he matched Harvard students with local students for research. He sought evidence of inhabitants’ resiliency, finding that, for example, the huge slowdowns of traffic on highway cloverleafs fostered the creation of markets catering to bus passengers. While at first sight, the extreme poverty seems to show that Lagos is a “city in crisis,” Koolhaas sees “self-regulating chaos” at work. Yet, he noted ruefully, as a result “we are accused of being completely free of human feeling.”

Koolhaas remains concerned with the forces of globalization, even though, he acknowledged, architecture is not an “ideal tool for politics.” Globalization has entered a new stage, he said, as the United States has increasingly become “more detached” after Sept. 11.

There is, he said, a “noticeable lack of fear–which is perhaps the best word–of American power and American culture.” This will create the chance for Russia and Europe to more fully define themselves.

Koolhaas said he was considering moving his business to Brussels as part of his commitment to the new European Union. Among Koolhaas’ achievements is the design of a multicolored “barcode” symbol that unites the flags of European countries into a single image.

A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on November 22, 2006 (download PDF).

[via MIT news office]

Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006 July-october 2006

This year’s Serpentine Pavilion is co-designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas and innovative structural designer Cecil Balmond.

The centrepiece of the design is a spectacular ovoid-shaped inflatable canopy that will float above the Gallery’s lawn. Made from translucent material, the structure will be illuminated from within at night. The canopy will be raised into the air or lowered to cover the amphitheatre below according to the weather.

The walled enclosure below the canopy will be used as a café and forum for daily televised and recorded public programmes including live talks and film screenings. The highlights will include two 16-hour events, bringing together leading artists, writers and thinkers to map the culture of London. This series of events will be a collaboration between Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

A major exhibition of works by the German artist, Thomas Demand, will be on show at the Serpentine during this period. Demand is developing work to be included in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006.

Rem Koolhaas said: “The 2006 Serpentine Pavilion will be defined by events and activities. We are proposing a space that facilitates the inclusion of individuals in communal dialogue and shared experience.”

Cecil Balmond said: “These Pavilions have evolved with various structural typologies and materials, provoking a debate on architecture; this year the exploration continues not only with typology and material but with the very definition of Pavilion”.

[via serpentine.org]

En algún momento, a través de mezclas irregulares de actividad intensa e inercia política, regiones europeas enteras han llegado a un punto muerto. Se han desalentado la densidad y la concentración, se han descuidado las redes, se ha estimulado la adquisición de automóviles, se ha proclamado el eterno atractivo de la ciudad (¿cuándo comenzará alguien a glosar el atractivo de lo nuevo?), se ha sufrido la brutalidad acumulada de una invasión cotidiana de las hordas posturbanas. Los sistemas ferroviarios malolientes están siempre demasiado llenos; los autobuses cruzan el país sin lógica alguna; carreteras en todas direcciones se obstruyen hasta el límite, como cintas transportadoras de camiones que demuestran que no hay nada en su sitio; todas las mercancías se entregan a destinos equivocadas. ¿Por qué no podemos concebir vastas ciudades, bastardas, acumulaciones arquitectónicas gigantescas, enormes edificios cojín, destacamentos urbanos más allá de la ciudad, obstáculos urbanos que simplemente absorban todos los flujos, engullan las mercancías, los coches y la gente, vengan de donde vengan? Las autopistas podrían desembocarse allí súbitamente; podrían ser utilizadas para aparcar a bajo precio, y acto seguido, coger trenes, tranvías, autobuses o cualquier otro medio superviviente de tiempos más colectivos, hasta llegar al centro: llegar con cualquier medio y desplazarse a cualquier sitio … Estos edificios serían, por definición, eficientes al máximo, en lugares donde la gente no querría ir en absoluto. Serían al mismo tiempo obstáculos y facilitadores, usando inesperadas posibilidades dentro del marco de unas telarañas infraestructurales aparentemente agotadas, combinando accesos promiscuos con una densidad de precio bajo, casi india; serían lugares con una capacidad infinita para la absorción de la gente de puentes y túneles; edificios señuelo que rápidamente se convertirían en sucedáneos de ciudades, mutaciones paraurbanas desarrolladas espontáneamente, formas de vida urbana como mendigos sin techo durmiendo en los cajeros automáticos; edificios que se convertirían en vertederos programáticos autoregulados, que serían infiltrados por el comercio; guarderías para los complejos cinematográficos que proliferan sin cesar; parques acuáticos, por supuesto, y quizás universidades tipo drive-in; mezquitas invadiendo la infinidad de pavimentos de hormigón … Edificios que en su misma brutalidad podrían salvar la civilización tal como la conocemos hoy en día.

[extraído de la revista Quaderns, nº 213]

Skyscraper a lightning rod for opinions
People love or hate Museum Plaza plan

By Chris Poynter
cpoynter@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about Museum Plaza.

Many people love the design for the 61-story museum, condo and
office tower that is planned for downtown, saying it will pull
Louisville into the 21st century and create an icon for the city.

Others despise it, calling the $380 million glass-and-steel structure a childish collection of Legos or a Tetris game gone bad.

Since the design was unveiled Feb. 9 by the Office for Metropolitan
Architecture, letters, e-mails and phone calls have poured into The
Courier-Journal and courier-journal.com.

Claude Wayne Fulkerson of Jeffersonville, Ind., stopped by the
newspaper office Monday to offer a new design for Museum Plaza — a
700-foot tower in the shape of a fleur-de-lis. “This would be so much
more classic for the city,” he said.

Richard Brinkhaus of Jeffersontown mailed his proposed design —
three tapering boxes stacked atop another, pyramid-like, with a
helicopter pad on the roof.

Brinkhaus, a retired industrial engineer, said he believes Museum
Plaza is inefficient, so he wanted to offer a competing plan. (Museum
Plaza developers and architects say Museum Plaza is actually more
efficient than other skyscrapers.)

Museum Plaza, backed by Brown-Forman heiress Laura Lee Brown, her
husband, Steve Wilson, developer Steve Poe and developer/attorney Craig
Greenberg, will be built on Seventh Street between River Road and Main
Street. The target completion date is 2010.

Architect Joshua Prince-Ramus, who led the design team at OMA, which
was founded by noted architect Rem Koolhaas, said he expected a wide
range of opinions on the building’s design.

“We are not surprised. We are very happy to see a lot of reactions,” he said. “To each his own opinion.”

Museum Plaza’s design has not been as controversial as OMA’s other
projects, such as the Seattle Central Library — in which the architects
were threatened and accused of “defacing the city,” Ramus said. That
project was later hailed as a reinvention of the library and as one of
the most important buildings in decades in the United States.

Ramus said he and his team don’t take the criticism personally.

“We used to,” he said. “We don’t anymore.”

Several C-J readers pointed out that the two condo towers for Museum Plaza resemble the former World Trade Center towers.

“That wasn’t intentional,” Ramus said.

Some architectural blogs, including www.lifewithoutbuildings.net,
point out that Museum Plaza’s design is similar to OMA’s 1996 proposal
for the Bangkok “Hyperbuilding.”

Hyperbuilding was a concept to rethink how cities are built — a self-contained city within a building.

OMA was asked to design a structure that could house 120,000 people
without using the land that would normally be required for such a
population, Ramus said.

Hyperbuilding was only an idea; it was never built.

Though Museum Plaza has similar attributes to Hyperbuilding, OMA was not recycling the idea, Ramus said.

The projects, however, are similar because they were rethinking the
skyscraper and creating a new district for a city, Ramus said.

“The projects share similar aspirations, so it’s not a surprise that they have similar manifestations,” Ramus said.

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2. The elevator -with its potential to establish mechanical rather
than architectural connections- and its family of related inventions
render null and void the classical repertoire of architecture. Issues
of composition, scale, proportion, detail are now moot. The art of
architecture is useless in Bigness.

3. In Bigness, the distance between core and envelope increases to
the poin where the facade can no longer reveal what happens inside. The
humanist expectation of “honesty” is doomed: interior and exterior
architectures become separate projects, one dealing with the
instability of programmatic and iconographic needs, the other – agent
of disinformation – offering the city the apparent stability of an
object. Where architecture reveals, Bigness perplexes, Bigness
transform the city from a summation of certainties into an accumulation
of mysteries. What you see is no longer what you get.

4. Though size alone, such buildings enter an amoral domain, beyond good or bad. Their impact is independent of their quality.

5. Together, all these breaks – with scale, with architectural
composition, with tradition, with transparency, with ethics – imply the
final, most radical break: Bigness is no longer part of any urban
tissue. It exists; at most, it coexists. Its subtext is fuck context.

SMLXL by OMA

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Koolhaas and his team unveiled the design created by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), and hosted a question and answer session following the presentation.

The 43,000-square-foot Milstein Hall is to be built directly behind Sibley Hall and adjacent to the Foundry and Rand Hall.

The new building will not only expand the facilities of AAP, but also create, for the first time, a vibrant public space north of Sibley.

“We wanted to provide something currently absent from the college, a space with the scale to facilitate collaboration.

We also saw an opportunity to reconnect the gorge to the north side of the Arts Quad,” said Koolhaas.

Within Milstein Hall, space is set aside for studios, library, presentation and exhibition areas, lobby and an auditorium/boardroom , all with flexibility to be reconfigured according to the needs of students and faculty.

Its height will be lower than Sibley’s, and a portion of the building will extend above University Avenue toward the Foundry.

[via cornell.edu + arcspace.com]