Rem Koolhaas

REM KOOLHAAS

Carson Russell

early years

Remment (often truncated to Rem) Lucas Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam (Netherlands) on November 17th, 1944. He was born to Anton Koolhaas, a novelist, critic, and screenwriter, and Selinde Pietertje Roosenburg. His father received moderate success with two documentary films (for which he wrote the scenarios) that were nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature. His maternal grandfather was Dirk Roosenburg; a modernist architect. Throughout his life, Koolhaas and his family lived in Rotterdam (1944-1946), Amsterdam (1946-1952), and Jakarta (19521955). His father was supportive of the Indonesian revolution against the Dutch. After the Indonesians achieved their independence, he (and his family) were invited to move to Jakarta and run a cultural program for a few years. Koolhaas once noted: “It was a very important age for me, I really lived as an Asian.”

background

early years

Rem’s first education was in script writing at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam, not in architecture. In his time as a script writer, he co-authored The White Slave (a Dutch film noir) as well as Hollywood Tower, a script for Russ Meyer, American soft-porn king. After remedial success in the field, Koolhass became a journalist for the Haagse Post. In 1968, Koolhaas began his education in architecture at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, in London. While at the AA, he studied under Elia Zenghelis and formed a strong bond. Together they worked on the Exodus|the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture project. After graduating, he furthered his education at Cornell University.

background

OMA

In 1975, Koolhaas along with Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis, and Madelon Vriesendorp (Koolhaas’ wife) founded The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). OMA began designing in 1976, and had their first major commission in 1981, the Netherlands Dance Theatre. The original design was modified and the construction was postponed due to a site change, but it was eventually completed in 1987. The building received international acclaim. Apart from the theatre project, in the 1980’s OMA also designed a police station in Almere (1982-85), a bus station in Rotterdam (19851987), an apartment block in Amsterdam (19851991), and a housing complex near ‘Checkpoint Charlie.’ Video Bus Stop

background

OMA

During the 1990’s OMA rose to even more fame with provocative entries to a few major compitetions (Tres Grande Bibliotheque + Two Libraries for Jussieu University). Though unsuccessful in winning the competitions, they did achieve recognition in a few other built projects, notably Villa dall’Ava (Paris, France), Nexus Housing (Fukuoka, Japan), and the Kunsthal (Rotterdam, Netherlands).

Tres Grande Bibliotheque

In one of their more memorable projects from the 90’s, OMA designed Maison a Bordeaux. The project is a villa for a handicapped client. The floor-plan is flooded with complexity, but the most memorable part of the project is the elevator system that moves a platform in the core of the house between 3 floors. This allows the wheelchair-bound resident freedom of mobility within his own house. OMA worked closely with Cecil Balmond (structural engineer) throughout the project.

background

social setting

Neither those in the West nor those in the East are free, only those trapped in the wall are truly free.

The Avoval

Before graduating from the AA, Koolhaas worked with his artist girlfriend Madelon Vriesendorp, mentor Elia Zenghelis, and Elia’s wife Zoe Zenghelis to design a project for Casabella magazine’s competition for visions of the city. They coined themselves “Dr. Caligari’s Cabinet of Metropolitan Architecture.” Their entry was Exodus, or The Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture. It is a dystopian interpretation of cold-war Berlin, and the effect the Berlin wall had on its citizens on both a physical and emotional scale. Koolhaas argued that the psychological and symbolic effect on the Berlin Wall was “infinitely more powerful” than the artifact itself. As so often before in this history of making, architecture was the guilty instrument of despair.

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

premise

The site for the project was London. In his proposal, Rem tells a story of a city (Berlin). He sees the city as divided into two parts- the good half and the bad half. The bad half of the city is constantly trying to escape into the good half of the city. In an attempt to stop this mass migration to the good half, the authorities built a wall to separate the two. His proposal is about using the inverse- to have a wall that separates as powerfully and effectively, but instead of despair, the wall is in service of positive intentions.

The Allotments

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

premise

And as in Berlin, this migration was countered (but ultimately exacerbated) by a “desperate and savage use of architecture,” the construction of a wall. In the face of “division, isolation, inequality, aggression, destruction, the wall operated not by a timid reformist intervention into troubled social domains but by providing “totally desirable alternatives” in the form of “collective facilities that fully accommodate individual desires.” Catalyzing the ruination of an industrial and imperial metropolis, the “strip of intense metropolitan desirability” demarcated by the wall was cast as a force of revolutionary change. Felicity D. Scott

The Strip

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

proposal

The proposal is to create a void in the heart of London. The void (or the strip) has a wall on either side. Its inhabitants are the voluntary prisoners of architecture. Instead of being trapped and confined by the wall, they are protected by it. Koolhaas describes it as a “… strip of intense metropolitan desirability [that] runs through the city of London. This strip is like a runway, a landing strip for the new architecture of collective monuments.” He sees this strip as so desirable that all of London will beg for entrance. The strip is broken down programmatically into a reception area, a central area, a ceremonial square, a square of the arts, a park of the four elements, baths, an institute of biological transactions, the allotments, a park of aggression, and the tip of the strip. The Strip

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

proposal

The reception area is where the ‘inmates’ are allowed access to the strip. The reception area is characterized by the indoctrination of newcomers while the other inhabitants obsess over architectural proposals and refinements for the strip. One of the pieces of the program that stands out the most is the tip of the strip. The tip of the strip is the architectural frontline. This is the area where the strip gains new ground. Its citizens battle with the citizens of London for architectural space. In a continuous confrontation with the old city, existing structures are destroyed by the new architecture, and trivial fights break out between the inmates of the old London and the Voluntary Prisoners of the Strip. The Reception Area

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

proposal

The other pieces of program are highly detailed in his proposal. They range from a park that emits hallucinogenic gasses that allow the inhabitants to experience ‘sequences of emotion’ (note: although this sounds extreme, Koolhaas details the existence of ‘vertical air jets’ that provide environmental protection above the pavilions) to a small reconstruction of the Egyptian landscape (complete with pyramids). In his proposal, Rem details the character of all the spaces through words, drawings, and collages. There are eighteen drawings, watercolors, and collages.

The Allotments

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

proposal

The Tip of the Strip

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

proposal

The Square of the Muses

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

proposal

The Park of Aggression

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

proposal

The Institute of Biological Transactions

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

proposal

The Central Area

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

proposal

The Central Area

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

proposal

The Baths

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

proposal

The Allotments

Exodus | The Voluntary Prisoners

thesis

Since his Exodus | Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture proposal, Koolhaas’ (and OMA’s) work has largely been geared towards exploring and trying to understand the larger processes that determine social formations. As influenced by his experience with the Berlin wall (and his proposal) most of his built projects address social and political issues, and most deal with some idea of the edge. These themes are more apparent in some works than in others, but his Lille master plan (1989, Lille) and Byzantium housing (1995, Amsterdam) exemplify this influence the most.

Training the New Arrivals

influence

Byzantium housing

A transition between two urban antipoles The Byzantium housing serves to join two polar opposites. On one side of the project there is one of the busiest metropolitan sites in the Netherlands, and on the other, the Zandpad: a quiet rustic lane next to the Vondelpark. The project is the buffer (or void) between the two extremes. In this project, Koolhaas tries to negotiate the urban disparity between polar opposites. “The design tries to do justice to both conditions by using the metropolitan scale to screen the idyll.” Here, again, Koolhaas is interested in architectural complexity as generated by a myriad of social and political conditions. Byzantium Housing

influence

Euralille

The Euralille master plan toys with the idea that the “experience” of Europe will shift. Koolhaas was interested in the shift that would occur once the tunnel that links Britain and Europe was completed. He saw Lille as a kind of sleeping center of Europe, activated in the middle of a triangle between London, Brussels, and Paris. In the contemporary world, functional designs have become abstractions in the sense that they are no longer linked to a specific environment or city, but float and gravitate around the place in an opportunistic manner, offering the maximum number of relationships. Again, in this project Koolhaas plays on the inevitability of social evolution, and attempts to design an infrastructure for it. He isolates different programmatic functions and combines them in a way that attempts to forge a new social hybrid. Euralille Site Model

influence

bibliography

Books Articles

Websites

Perfect Acts of Architecture, Jeffrey Kipnis Junkspace, Rem Koolhaas Urbanism After Innocence: Four Projects, Rem Koolhaas Involuntary Prisoners of Architecture, Felicity D. Scott Rem Koolhaas, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rem_Koolhaas OMA, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_for_Metropolitan_ Architecture

OMA, http://www.oma.eu/ Cold War Art, http://noyspi.com/koolhaas.html Evil Can Also Be Beautiful, spiegel/0,1518,408748,00.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/