Koolhaas likes to subvert expectations. He trained as an architect by way of journalism, a hybridization of professions that has made him hungry for unusual and exciting collaborations. In this conversation with German filmmaker and writer Schindhelm, Koolhaas discusses how he continues to realize his work in the miasma of a cynical, developer-driven market, primarily by taking projects that seem to pose the very problems he wishes to avoid. His extensive work in Asia has granted him new insight on the reality of the global marketplace, and shifting cultural forces therein. As he reveals, maintaining his idealism allows him to work under seemingly impossible conditions, creating buildings that not only enhance, but arguably redefine, the global public realm. 

The Present Cultural Revolution: Art, Space and Social Contract in the Current Urban Condition, in Asia and Beyond

The conversation took place in the context of Seismograph: Sensing The City – Art in the Urban Age, on January 23, 2016 at the South East Asia Forum (a program by Art Stage Singapore) between Rem Koolhaas, Architect, Partner in OMA, and Professor, Practice of Architecture and Urban Design, Harvard University Graduate School of Design and Michael Schindhelm, cultural Advisor, filmmaker, researcher, and writer.

Can you share with us some major elements of your experience being involved with the CCTV tower project in Beijing?

We have observed that one of the major effects of the market economy has been to separate architects from the public good. It used to be that architects worked for public bodies, where it is assumed that you have the interests of mankind at heart. Over the last 30 years, this situation has almost completely disappeared. Architects now typically serve developers, and money ends up being the most important consideration.The way I have dealt with this situation has been to look for public projects in many different countries, knowing full well that morally they are not always without issue. Working for the Dutch state is something completely different than working for the Chinese state, for instance. Nevertheless, we have maintained an interest in working for the public sector; the CCTV project is exemplary of this attitude.one of the major effects of the market economy has been to separate architects from the public good

Related to this is our interest in the Japanese Metabolists, which were most active in the 1960’s, with architects like Arata Isozaki, or Toyo Ito. They had a huge impact on Singapore in the 1970’s and 1980’s. It was an instance where the Japanese state systematically promoted ideas from architects, and was dedicated to changing the nature of Japan, modernizing it in its entirety, making it less vulnerable to earthquakes, etc. For me it was a prototype of the state having a degree of imagination, and capacity for mobilization of that imagination. That is what we have always been interested in, and what I felt the Chinese state offered in 2001, when we began to work on the CCTV project. Looking at the cultural sector, we are about to complete the TPAC [Taipei Performing Arts Center] theater later this year. It is a combination of 3 theaters, and is a radical rethinking of what a theater can be, which also is a building for the state. There has always been a nervousness about how influential money has become. I therefore search for partners that are interested in projects that have an idealistic or experimental dimension.

In China we see a blurring of borders between public and private, even more so in Hong Kong. How public are these efforts really? From a western perspective, to what extent can you apply the term public to the efforts of these governmental organizations?

We should be careful not to discuss Asia as an exception. This blurring between public and private that you are talking about is also increasingly present in Europe. Asia is not in an exceptional situation that needs to be brought up to Western or European standards, rather what happens in Asia ends up affecting the West. This whole sentiment that the West is somehow leading is a view that has become completely misplaced. In the last 20 years, the lead of the West has been replaced by at least an interaction or mutual influence between the two, and at most an influence of the East on the West.If there is one position that I really dislike, it is the position of an expat doing expat projects in foreign countries

If we are indeed experiencing a shift from public to private funding for the arts even in the West, what will the effects be on culture itself, and how long will it last?

Everything is temporary of course. We must therefore avoid being disappointed, and really investigate and participate in the transformations taking place, which we would otherwise have to abstain from with a mixture of arrogance and bitterness. I follow all of the recent developments that you have mentioned, but do so with a critical mindset, as a critical participant, which I find a very satisfying way of being engaged. We do not live in a perfect world, but what is fascinating is seeing how new sources of intelligence can emerge, as is the case in art. You can be skeptical about its financial incentives, but the fact is that different kinds of organization are increasingly part of it. It turns into a new typology of interaction that I really find inspiring.

It is possible to participate in an idealistic way in events that you do not completely endorse.

The issue is whether or not you stay idealistic during the process. We are still participating in this project, which means we have not lost our idealism while attempting to making something happen.

It is not an issue of wait and see, it is also about actually making it happen. 

We were sometimes criticized because we were working for non-democratic leaders. Many of these projects were so-called “top-down” projects, where critics would usually say that they would never work because of their top-down nature. What is your opinion about this? 

It is an inevitable and justified criticism, but we have chosen our battles. For instance, we were openly criticized by German newspapers for our participation in the CCTV project for working with dictatorships. The view was that in China, you could work on a hospital, social housing, or maybe a cultural building, but never something for the state. My intimate conviction remains that what is happening in China is incredibly crucial and decisive for the well-being of the world. Because of this, it a good thing to participate in projects that are perhaps controversial, dangerous, or important, because it is only by engaging on that level that there is any real interaction or real effect. That remains my conviction. What of course the world does not see is all the work we did not do for enterprises that we did not believe in, or for countries that we thought were not evolving into a more desirable situation.

In terms of design, how did you attempt to support the notion of the free flow of information in a country like China?

I am not sure I was able to symbolize the flow of information, because I think it is very difficult to symbolize flow. One of the inherent qualities of the CCTV tower however is that the building is completely unstable, and does not look the same from any direction. It looks powerful from certain angles, but also very weak and even awkward from others. The Chinese state is interested above anything else in stability, in a self-evident and powerful image. We were thus able to introduce a challenging presence that was playing with the most fundamental expectations of the Chinese state in the heart of Beijing. Furthermore, we even succeeded in making it an emblem of Beijing. In order to realize and implement this project, we needed to engage many domains of Chinese thinking, for instance thinking about structure. We were really able to innovate and introduce a new way of thinking about structure, which clearly is enormously to the benefit of Chinese architecture as a whole.what is happening in China is incredibly crucial and decisive for the well-being of the world

How is the building used now? How much do you study the buildings you produce after they are completed?

CCTV now is an incredibly modern company. It seems like a whole layer of its more old-style collaborators has almost disappeared. We integrated a public loop into the building, but it is not yet open to the public, rather it is currently being used as an exhibit on the history of CCTV. I think that in 4 or 5 years it will be open, as such things are often slow to happen in China.

How much do you engage with local artists or experts, like for instance Herzog and De Meuron’s collaboration with Ai Weiwei for the Beijing Olympics?

My entire professional life has been a systematic search for collaborators. There is not a single work of mine that has not been in some way defined by collaborations. On the other hand, I already had a lot of interests that I pursued before I was building in China. Ten years before even thinking about these competitions, I had a group of three or four intimate friends or collaborators who speculated together on the direction of China, and what we would do there should we decide to build something there. Quingyun Ma, now Dean of Architecture at USC [University of Southern California] in the USA, also played a big role in the negotiation and navigation of Chinese culture. If there is one position that I really dislike, it is the position of an expat doing expat projects in foreign countries.

You actually grew up partly in Indonesia, arriving at the age of 8 and living there for four years with your parents. You never worked here, but you never lost interest in the place. 20 years ago, you released an essay entitled Singapore Songlines: Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa (1995), which is about this city and its development. Looking back on Singapore since 1995, what has changed not only in the city itself, but also in your perception of it?

In 1994, I was planning a book which was supposed to be called The Contemporary City. My motivation was that I felt that the terms in which cities were described were hopelessly useless in terms of describing those urban developments that were the most acute and radical. We had a the whole idea of a modern city is no longer a Western idea, rather an Eastern one that is being defined on its own termsvocabulary about boulevards, plazas, and other compositional entities, but it was also incredibly clear that Asian cities were evolving at a speed that had never happened before, and according to entirely different principles. I felt we had to do a book about a specific number of cities to reinvent the vocabulary to discuss cities as they happen rather than as they should be. I wanted to write about Tokyo, Beijing, and Singapore. I ended up only writing about Singapore, because it was perhaps the most radical example of these situations, to the extent that the entire island had been conceived as a project or work of art. Every single aspect of the city was redefined in a very short time by a regime that also had enormous organizational competence, clear intentions, and ability to execute those intentions.

The desire to understand an environment that was generated according to these new principles, to see and experience how it feels, was my motivation in going to Singapore. I was also interested in the result of cities being built by regimes that, by Western standards at the time, would not be called democratic. The article is an investigation of all those factors at the same time. I was trying to be precise rather than critical, but hopefully without the typical condescension that was de rigueur when talking about the city at that time.

Reading this article, you find the passage “the Western is no longer our exclusive domain”. Could you elaborate on what you mean by this?

You could say that after the enlightenment, the West launched a series of values, techniques, and apparatuses (like the microscope or camera), all of which define our contemporary world. We ironically consider these inventions Western, but they have become so ubiquitous that it would be absurd to maintain a sense of copyright about them. Their very success now makes them universal. Given the fact that we in Europe barely build any cities anymore, the whole idea of a modern city is no longer a Western idea, rather an Eastern one that is being defined on its own terms. It was also announcing the modesty and irritation with our own continuous sense of centrality in a culture which has become global and ubiquitous. This situation is the result of globalization, and part of this result is that we have become a lot less important.

The essay also tries to find out about a newly-emerging social model. Years later, what is your position on this? How does it relate to the Western model?

We should probably stop the comparison for the time being. On the issue of new models of society, I am often looked to as someone who can judge and comment on where it is going in the next 20 years. There is an enormous amount of developments and inventions that make our global society completely different to what it was in 1995. One of them is certainly a kind of emancipation of the civilization of Singapore, but even greater is an effect of homogenization that can be attributed to those inventions like the internet, the mobile phone, etc. These technologies, whether we like it or not, created an almost global layer of sophistication that are more determined by age than by education, and here existing in a starker form than in western society.

You claimed in 1995 that Singapore stands out as a highly efficient alternative to a landscape of almost universal pessimism. How do you see this today?

It is very true; I have not met a single pessimistic government representative here in Singapore. There is still an enormous belief in changing things deliberately, mixed with a new awareness of fragility. This fragility is in certain cases paralleled with interest in shifting parts of decision-making to larger parts of the population.These technologies created an almost global layer of sophistication that [is] more determined by age than by education

In the same text, you have written that “the next round of Eastern-Western tension is whether democracy promotes or erodes social stability”. In the meantime, social stability is quite obviously in decay in many Western countries, people are disgusted in our governments, and political innovation is barely existent in relation to economic change. How do you see this in Asia?

Part of the 2014 Architecture Biennale in Venice was an exhibition called Elements of Architecture. There we looked at the history of every single architectural element such as ceilings, walls, floors, windows. People were initially mystified by the banality of such an effort, but what we were able to show was, after thousands of years of more or less stable existence, almost every single one of these architectural elements is being modified in very serious ways by modern technologies. Sensors have entered architectural elements, such as floors that record if people have fallen down and can alert the authorities. There are sensors that are embedded in every car that continuously collect data, and that enable you to pay lower insurance premiums if you allow the insurance company to constantly monitor them. The implication of all these mutations, which are typically sold in terms of increased comfort, safety, and reduced risk, is a decay of the possible range of risk-taking and adventure that you can take in democracy.

Whether it is called sensor or sensitivity, it is a kind of collective political correctness. This of course is exactly the place where authoritarian and democratic regimes meet each other.

We are in a city where many people have different cultural and religious backgrounds, where arguably this aspect of not talking about certain aspects emerges. Does this help to create a society that is multicultural and also productive?

I do not know if this is how people interact here. It cannot be true that not talking to each other is the way Singapore proceeds. In the case of Qatar for instance, only 20% of the population are originally Qatari. In the case of Singapore, the city is based on the premise of collectively deciding to eliminate some of the salient features of many languages in favour of the shared language of English. Those are experiments that really impress me, and where I cannot really say that it is at the expense of not raising certain issues. These issues are certainly raised all the time, and if not felt all the time, then at least dealt with all the time.

Globalization has certainly changed our understanding of both security and freedom. We probably have to renegotiate this relationship, but it is always a question of how a society allows this process to take place.

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