Archinect - News

New NEOM documentary features Thom Mayne, Peter Cook, Reinier de Graaf, and other architects speaking highly of The Line megacity project

2023-07-28T13:06:00-04:00

A new look behind the process and select architects involved in Saudi Arabia’s controversial The Line megacity for NEOM has been released, answering some questions as to its ideation while leaving many remaining in regard to the project's structural engineering, technical specifics, and design feasibility overall.

Among the torrent of quickly-spliced and placable bromides, the 45-minute "documentary" features Peter Cook stating, "if it's to be a success... parts of it will fail." None of the interviewees, including especially Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, offered an explanation as to how the "top-down, hardcore engineering" OMA partner Reinier de Graaf describes will be carried out in any detail, an element which has been a constant source of criticism since the segment was first announced a year ago.

"Many projects acquire their sanity as they go along, and I think very, very much the case here too — and the jury's out," de Graaf stated before bemoaning a "complete lac...

OMA and Buro Happold reveal new video of modular hospital prototype

2022-04-12T09:00:00-04:00

One of the most promising recent healthcare infrastructure concepts has engendered an offshoot project that looks to expand on its original framework design.

As a product of the research done for their collaboration on the Al Daayan Health District Master Plan in Doha, OMA and Buro Happold have created a prototype for a low-rise hospital structure commissioned by the Hamad Medical Corporation.

Previously on Archinect: OMA and Buro Happold reveal designs for the Al Daayan Health District in Doha

Image © HMC

The prototype appears to consist of similar two-story-high modular units that can be adapted and reconfigured to allow for maximal variation and minimal costs. Scalable, self-sufficient, and built using a considerable amount of 3D printing technology, the design is a sustainable refresh to the important typology and hopes to see further use in other climates once the Qatari concept catches on.

Image © HMC

“Medical technology is advancing exponentially, leaving hospitals to...

OMA and Buro Happold reveal designs for the Al Daayan Health District in Doha

2021-10-18T14:50:00-04:00

Final drafts for the joint OMA and Buro Happold-designed Al Daayan Health District are now available, showcasing a localized model of healthcare infrastructure that OMA Partner Reinier de Graaf hopes will be transplanted from Doha, Qatar to the rest of the world.

Image © OMA

The 1.3-million-square-meter (14-million-square-foot) facility will be completely self-sustaining thanks to onsite prefabrication, 3D printing, an agricultural element, and built-in solar farm.

Image © OMA

“Architects have long aimed to provide the hospital with a final solution. This proposal starts from the opposite end: viewing the hospital as the type of building that is forever under construction, as an organism for which space and time must be considered equally,” de Graaf said in a statement.

Image © OMA

The development is anchored by a two-story building that houses a teaching hospital, women’s and children’s hospitals, ambulatory care, and clinical facilities. The new hospital will have capacity for 1,400...

OMA's Morden Wharf master plan in Greenwich, London gets planning consent

2021-09-09T19:18:00-04:00

OMA’s mixed-use development for London’s Greenwich Peninsula has been granted planning consent from the Royal Borough of Greenwich’s Planning Committee. The master plan, called Morden Wharf, will sit on a 2.4-hectare site adjacent to the O2 Arena.

Image by Pixelflakes, Courtesy of OMA

As stated in the architect’s announcement: “OMA’s scheme for developer U+I follows a years-long design and consultation process. Key to its development is maximizing the potential of the riverfront for public use and access. The site’s industrial past is reflected in the proposed mix of uses, balancing new residential development with employment and community uses. The existing warehouse on the site is preserved and will house small enterprises and creative businesses. Along the Thames’ edge will sit Morden Park, a 1.6-hectare public park, harkening back to the site’s marshland beginnings.”

Image by Pixelflakes, Courtesy of OMA

The development will add 1,500 new homes, in 12 residential buildings, of wh...

Is architecture still in a state of denial?

2019-08-02T17:57:00-04:00

In his book Four Walls and a Roof – The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession, Reinier de Graaf paints an honest picture of what it is like to work as an architect today. De Graaf, who is a partner at OMA and director of AMO, the office’s think tank, provides engaging stories about the banal, everyday reality of working for an acclaimed firm.

When pursuing a life of architecture, it's hard not to become jaded by the peculiarities of the profession. A career path not for the faint of heart: architects often dream of using their skills to "change the world." However, as mystical and alluring the profession may appear to be, architects like Reiner de Graaf have expressed strong perspectives on the profession.

Reiner de Graaf speaking during his Strelka Talk. Image still courtesy of Strelka Institute

A partner at OMA and director of the firm's think tank AMO, de Graaf sheds some light on the profession in his book Four Walls and a Roof - The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession. Two years after its publish date, do de Graaf's assertions about the profession still remain true? Having re-read his article and interview coverage by fellow Archinect senior editor Orhan Ayyüce, it begs me to question: Has this sense of denial grown stronger? Have newly licensed architects taken on this method of thinking?

Luxury housing at Holl...

OMA-designed nhow Amsterdam RAI Hotel tops out

2019-02-11T15:56:00-05:00

Construction on the future largest hotel in the Benelux just reached another milestone: the behemoth 25-floor, 650-room nhow Amsterdam RAI Hotel, designed by OMA/Reinier de Graaf, has reached its highest point of construction at a height of 91 meters (nearly 300 feet).

"The shape of the 91-metre building draws from the triangular advertising column on the Europaplein which was once so prominent on the site but now has been overtaken by the many office buildings that have been erected in its vicinity," explains the project description.

Photograph by Walter Herfst, Courtesy of OMA

The new gastronomy complex is located near the RAI Amsterdam Convention Center and connected via an underground concourse.

OMA won the architectural competition for the hotel in 2015 with Reinier de Graaf and Rem Koolhaas as partners-in-charge.

Reinier de Graaf: “Architecture is in a State of Denial”

2017-11-08T17:43:00-05:00

I never realised how nostalgic I am, until I started writing. An architect is not supposed to be nostalgic but forward-looking. But I’m nostalgic for a time when mankind was a lot more forward-looking than it is today; for a gradual optimism about the future. That’s the paradox.

"In his book Four Walls and a Roof – The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession, Reinier de Graaf paints an honest picture of what it is like to work as an architect today. De Graaf, who is a partner at OMA and director of AMO, the office’s think tank, provides engaging stories about the banal, everyday reality of working for an acclaimed firm. These vivid, uncompromising narratives are contextualised with shrewd essays about architecture’s lost ideals, its false pretentions, and utter dependence on forces far more powerful than design. We sat down to talk about housing and political mobilisation, his compromises, and his radical pursuit of the mundane."

An excerpt,

Mark Minkjan: The book’s journal-like descriptions of encounters with politicians, bureaucrats, real estate developers and celebrated architects are highly entertaining – and often depressing. I had to laugh more than once, for example when reading your account of a meaningless talk by Richard Rogers in Abu Dhabi, in whic...

Reinier de Graaf: "The western architectural ivory tower has become a theatre of the absurd"

2015-11-05T18:02:00-05:00

As the evening progresses, the event turns into a painful X-ray of the current state of American academia: a strangely insular world with its own autonomous codes, dominated by some antiquated pecking order with an estranged value system and no hope of a correction from within. The often grandiose character of the debate stands in stark contrast to the marginal nature of that which is being debated.

Reinier de Graaf, partner at OMA, delivers a scathing takedown of the current state of architecture academia as represented by the participants of the ArchAgenda Debates, a panel in which he was also a participant. Alongside Jeff Kipnis, Patrik Schumacher, Peter Eisenman, and Theodore Spyropoulos, de Graaf was meant to discuss "a potential agenda for 21st-century architecture." The panel was a periphery event of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

But for de Graaf, the all-male panel of architects "from a part of the world to which – unless all current indicators are completely misgiven – the 21st century will not belong" failed to deliver an agenda or achieve relevance. Check out the op-ed on Dezeen.

‘Architecture is now a tool of capital, complicit in a purpose antithetical to its social mission’

2015-04-26T18:40:00-04:00

As large housing estates are being demolished and the age of great social democracies recedes, taking with it any notion of an architecture for the public, OMA partner Reinier de Graaf asks if there is any alternative to building capital