Rem Koolhaas © Courtesy of OMA/Photography by Fred Ernst

Recent Pre-occupations: Architecture and Exhibition Making

Föreläsning av Rem Koolhaas

15.3 2013

Stockholm

You really begin to wonder why the space is so susceptible to these apocalyptic kinds of projects, and I have a feeling that, like radioactive matter, there might be a half-life for the relevance of certain types of space and the art they promote. So here, the equating of industrial space, with its inherent nostalgia, with the contemporary sublime of Minimalism may be nearing exhaustion. Maybe we’re witnessing a moment where these massive non-spaces, once backed by Wall Street’s steep ascent, are actually reaching their ultimate impotence, sustaining and containing only the announcement of the end – a moment, interestingly, where it perhaps becomes relevant again for space to push back, to be more confrontational, more oppositional, more heretical, and more editorial.
Rem Koolhaas, Artforum, summer 2010

It would be nice to think about a museum architecture where you look for one thing and you find something else that you needed more.
Rem Koolhaas, 2013

Rem Koolhaas

Rem Koolhaas (Rotterdam 1944) founded OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. At the same time as designing buildings around the world with OMA, Koolhaas works in non-architectural disciplines – 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). In 1995, S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA in a 1,200-page book that redefined architectural publishing. In 2011, Project Japan: Metabolism Talks, an oral history by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist documented the first non-Western avant-garde movement in architecture and the last moment that architecture was a public rather than a private affair. Recently completed OMA buildings led by Koolhaas include the new headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing; a new headquarters for Rothschild Bank in London; the Wyly Theatre, Dallas; and Milstein Hall, an extension to Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art and Planning. OMA buildings currently under construction include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre; a new headquarters for G-Star in Amsterdam; the Shenzhen Stock Exchange; and De Rotterdam, a mixed-use building on the river Maas. At the beginning of 2013, Koolhaas was selected to direct the Architecture section of the Venice Biennale, with the specific responsibility of curating the 14th International Architecture Exhibition to be held in 2014, under the title, Fundamentals. He received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2010 and the Pritzker Prize in 2000.

www.oma.nl

Contact: Karin Malmquist, Moderna Museet