OMA/Rem Koolhaas

December 05, 2019

OMA/Rem Koolhaas

OMA/Rem Koolhaas: A Critical Reader
Christophe Van Gerrewey (Editor)
Birkhäuser, October 2019

The activities of Rem Koolhaas and his staff were widely discussed even before the foundation of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975. Today, many contributions on the work of OMA can be found in the international architectural press, including Koolhaas’ own writings.

The book contains about 150 selected texts—interviews, feature articles, essays, lead articles, reviews, letters, introductions, appraisals, and competition reports that have been compiled for the first time. This compilation not only provides a fresh and critical view of the oeuvre of one the most important contemporary architects, but also represents an account of the debate on architectural and urban design in recent decades.

dDAB Commentary:

Last week, when I was trying to find out a bit more about the rare first edition of Rem Koolhaas's Delirious New York from 1978 (I, like many people, have the paperback edition put out in 1994 rather than the deliriously expensive first edition), I came across a review of the book published on Christmas Eve in the New York Times. Yet, instead of being written by Paul Goldberger, who was the Times architecture critic at the time and had one month before reviewed the lesser-known exhibition, The Sparkling Metropolis, that accompanied the book's release, Delirous New York was reviewed by Gilbert Millstein, the reviewer known for giving an early boost to Jack Kerouac. I didn't know the name, but reading his review I quickly realized he was not architecturally minded, especially when he disagreed with Koolhaas's assertion that Coney Island was a "foetal Manhattan": "The men who built Coney Island could never have put up their wild fantasies of Steeplechase, Luna and Dreamland in Manhattan," Millstein wrote, taking Koolhaas's assertion too literally. Millstein clearly hated Modernism (he calls La Defense and Nanterre "nightmarish places") and therefore parts ways with Koolhaas, who has embraced the modern city in all its contradictions and messiness. Decades — not even — years later, the impact of Delirous New York won out over Millstein's misguided take, which is one of roughly 150 critical reviews, articles, and essays in this much appreciated anthology that also includes Goldberger's exhibition review from November 1978.

The critical pieces in OMA/Rem Koolhaas start around the time of Delirious New York (more precisely, it starts with a roundtable discussion over Koolhaas's and Laurinda Spear's Miami house submitted to the PA Awards in 1975) and wrap up with the equally influential S,M,L,XL two decades later. Before getting to the texts, readers confront a chronological presentation of magazine covers, exactly 100 of them spanning the same 25-year time frame. The covers — mainly European journals but also American magazines, books, and the occasional newspaper — feature OMA projects and sometimes a portrait of Koolhaas. Since they are presented chronologically, there's a convergence of important projects such as the Kunsthal in Rotterdam and Euralille in France, projects that are used to structure some of the book's ten chapters. Although the critical texts were selected by Christophe Van Gerrewey from around 600 "substantial texts on OMA published in the twentieth century" based on factors of content (e.g., "Does the author reveal aspects of the work of OMA that weren't previously under consideration?"), I'm guessing the authors of the pieces were also a factor, considering how it assembles a who's who of important architecture critics in the last half of the 20th century: Peter Blake, Kenneth Frampton, Fredric Jameson, Charles Jencks, Sanford Kwinter, Bart Lootsma, Stanislaus von Moos, Herbert Muschamp, Michael Sorkin, Deyan Sudjic, Anthony Vidler, Mark Wigley, and many, many more. But of course it's the one big name, Koolhaas, that will draw people to this big book — if they're like me, they won't be disappointed.