It is difficult to imagine, in the history of contemporary architecture, an intellectual figure as controversial as that of Rem Koolhaas: on the one hand, a guide for – architectural – crowds who, in his apodictic texts, read an analysis of the present that is as acute as usefully unsettling (Marco Biraghi, in “Rem Koolhaas. L’architettura al di là del bene e del male”, likens him to Nietzsche); on the other hand, a voice fiercely contested by those who do not tolerate his provocative boutades, breaking with all cultural heritage (which did not, however, prevent him from receiving the Pritzker Prize in 2000). As an architect and tireless interpreter of modern complexities, his defining trait is the strong theoretical foundation behind his work. This has shaped both his projects with OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture)—founded in London in 1975, relocated to Rotterdam in 1978, and later expanded to Asia, Australia, and the U.S.—and, since 1999, with his think tank, AMO. Such foundation is the structure of Koolhaas’s “best-selling” writings, and runs through all of his work, from his 1972 graduation thesis—imagining endless parallel walls enclosing lively spaces reclaimed from a stagnant London—to his recent studies of the countryside as a potential refuge for a post-human future.
Rem Koolhaas’s architecture in 8 defining projects
From the United States to Italy, from The Netherlands to China, we explore the work and philosophy of the most multifaceted figure on today’s architectural scene, founder of OMA, Pritzker Prize winner in 2000, and irreducible subverter of the modern world’s cultural paradigms.
From Domus 811, Jenuary 1999
From Domus 811, Jenuary 1999
Photo Anne Chou from Wikimedia Commons
Photo Sergii Figurnyi from Adobe Stock
Photo ikuday from Adobe Stock
Photo Malik from Adobe Stock
Photo Pieter de Kievit from adobe Stock
Photo imphilip from Adobe Stock
Photo Torval Mork from Adobe Stock
Photo Leungchopan from Adobe Stock
Foto Leungchopan from Adobe Stock
Photo Clement Guillaume, courtesy OMA
Courtesy Bordeaux Metropole
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- Chiara Testoni
- 30 April 2025
Hyper-density and metropolitan congestion (“Delirious New York”, 1978), the triumph of the architectural macro-scale (“Bigness, or the Problem of Large”, 1994), the “generic city” produced by the homologising globalisation (“The Generic City”, 1995) and the “junk spaces” shaped by the uncontrolled proliferation of the mass market (“Junkspace. For a radical rethinking of urban space”, 2006) for him are not indications of an Armageddon of urbanism but rather show that the modernist anxiety of programmatic-functional control cannot modify the contemporary city's genetics. Cities are naturally mutant “monsters” that are free only when unburdened by the “strait-jacket” of the past and identity, with their own reasons that (architects’) reason does not know. Over nearly fifty years of work, Koolhaas has developed an approach to design that resists categorization – even those labels often assigned to him, like “deconstructivism” or “post-modernism.” A design which is not interested in prescribing solutions from the drawing board, but in absorbing the intellectually stimulating (dys)functions of the contemporary city without moralizing them. Little concern is shown for formal beauty, often favoring raw, disruptive gestures over staged aesthetics. This ethos is evident in projects that say ‘’fuck the context” (according to his laconic anathema; Seattle Central Library, Casa da Música); to provocations at different “size-scales” (“S, M, L, XL”), macroscopic (De Rotterdam, Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Taipei Performing Arts Center) or microscopic (Maison à Bordeaux); to interventions that redefine the concept of interaction between past and present (Fondazione Prada), and the concept itself of urban space (Simone Veil Bridge). What emerges is a conviction: if “God” (i.e., architecture) is dead, then perhaps urban humanity, with all its neuroses and vulnerabilities, isn’t doing so great either. And that’s fine – as it might just be the only way to a renewal, to escape the comforting lie of a pale shelter from chaos.
The three-storey private residence is located on a hill overlooking the city. The lower floor, carved into the ground, houses the family’s private spaces; the ground floor, at garden level, houses the living area enclosed by a glazed shell; the upper floor, an area for the children and one for the parents. At the core of the house there is a 3x3.5 m elevating platform designed for the client, who is confined to a wheelchair after an accident: a “room” moving freely between floors which, by alternately incorporating itself into the living area and the kitchen, or transforming itself into an office, ceaselessly changes the space layout.
The three-storey private residence is located on a hill overlooking the city. The lower floor, carved into the ground, houses the family’s private spaces; the ground floor, at garden level, houses the living area enclosed by a glazed shell; the upper floor, an area for the children and one for the parents. At the core of the house there is a 3x3.5 m elevating platform designed for the client, who is confined to a wheelchair after an accident: a “room” moving freely between floors which, by alternately incorporating itself into the living area and the kitchen, or transforming itself into an office, ceaselessly changes the space layout.
Koolhaas proposes a civic space for the circulation of knowledge throughout all media without distinction and an archiving system conceived for an increasing library collection: the “Books Spiral”, a continuous ramp of shelving in which the various “formats” (digital and paper) coexist seamlessly. The library’s various programmes are intuitively organised on five platforms and four fluid “intermediate” floors, which determine the building’s characteristic multifaceted shape.
The building stands out like an white concrete meteorite in a regular neighborhood on the outskirts of Porto, creating a strong tension with the surrounding urban fabric. A central void acts as the epicenter of the composition: the elevated 1,300-seat Grand Auditorium (shaped like a “shoebox”, often sterilely vituperated by architects, as Koolhaas claims) with corrugated glass façades at either end, introjecting the city as a scenic backdrop. The building also includes a smaller, flexible performance space, ten rehearsal rooms, recording studios, an education area, a restaurant, a terrace, bars, a VIP lounge, administrative areas and an underground car park.
The De Rotterdam, located next to the Erasmus Bridge within the regeneration programme of the Wilhelminapier port district, is conceived as a vertical city: three interconnected mixed-use towers housing offices, flats, a hotel, conference spaces, shops, restaurants and cafés. Urban density and diversity, both in programme and form, are the founding principles of the project: the towers are arranged in an irregular agglomeration that refuses to be resolved in a single form and changes according to the multiple internal uses, weaving an ever-changing relationship with the context.
For the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Koolhaas subverts the traditional building typology of the skyscraper anchored on a plinth, designing a three-storey cantilevered block embedded in the body of the tower at a height of 36 metres above the ground. The suspended volume, which houses the stock exchange’s quote room and offices, evokes the globally dominant power of the stock market. The translucent glass “skin”, enveloping the tower grid and the elevated podium, constantly changes with the light, alluding to the fluctuating character of finance.
The project consists of seven renovated buildings of an old gin distillery dating back to the early 20th century (including warehouses, fermentation silos and workshops) and three new buildings distributed around a courtyard: a space for temporary exhibitions, a multimedia auditorium and a ten-storey permanent exhibition space for the Foundation’s collection and activities. The intervention is not conceived by Koolhaas as a conservation or new construction project but as a hybridization of heterogeneous fragments which, through a permanent interaction between past and present, coagulate to form a composite image.
The 59,000-square-metre Taipei Performing Arts Center, located in the bustling Shilin district, is the new home of Taiwan’s many arts companies, embracing a wide variety of activities (from dance, to opera, to theatre). It includes three theatres connected to a central cube, creating a space that is constantly changing and adaptable to experimental dynamics: the Globe Playhouse, a spherical 800-seat volume that looks like a planet embedded in the structure of the building, the 1,500-seat Grand Theatre with a slightly asymmetrical shape and the 800-seat Multiform Theatre (“Blue Box”). The latter two can be connected to form a 2,300-seat “Super Theatre” designed to host the most innovative performances.
The Simone Veil Bridge rejects the recurrent conception of bridges as sophisticated and aesthetically appealing engineering works, in search of an alternative purpose for this typology. The bridge over the Garonne is a 549-metre long and 44-metre wide platform, actng as both an urban infrastructure and a linear public space. Indifferent to formal research, the work conveys different transit flows (bicycle, pedestrian and wheeled, public and private) in dedicated lanes, as well as a non-programmed “neutral” space that can be adapted and used for cultural, recreational or commercial purposes.