fall on the oma side of the fence also:
I hear you, but I just don't see the ugliness in his projects
that everyone has been talking about lately, which really
is a difficult term to apply to both cctv & epfl.
I do see a huge change in scale from earlier projects
mentioned - also, the program/form of a tower is difficult
to change that much, or justify it to the bill payer - see
the wtc redevelopment.
I do see a recurring reliance on a very muscular structure
that is resulting in strong iconic forms - but the forms are
always shaped by a larger concept regarding the organization.

rambling now - my two cents...we're seeing some really incredible
production from oma now.

there's a great dialogue on this subject at agglutinations -
a conversation with bruno latour - www.agglutinations.com
it's toward the bottom third

ok , let me withdraw the term ugliness which might seem unprofessional and an emotional statement, but hello can anyone tell the difference between the cctv and the epfl projects..
i am a big fan of his works as i mentioned but barely can tell the difference between both projects.. was it a copy paste by mistake.??@??

funny - i was just thinking more about this...before seeing your
response....don't retract the ugly term, it's interesting that so
many people are terming the work ugly.

i think that he's trying to move into the material without moving
into materials that are confirmed as beautiful. at the same time there's
a strong play to have materials which are not "luxury"...but he
will position them as the new luxury. content has a great small article
on materials, my favorite being the gold-leafed plywood - I'm ready to
call it ugly, but holding back from my initial visual reaction to it.

I was coming back to say - that the house in borduex is borderline ugly
to me - but it's that quality, the awkwardness that makes it so exciting,
especially since it's a house. the materials also add to this....don't get me
wrong, like the project a lot - but I'm trying to find my ugly in his work.

i thought the same initially when i saw the epfl - but it's a continuation of the
discourse brought about in cctv - it's pretty new and not that worked over and already is light years ahead of the cctv development - but that may just be the slick rendering....anyway. they are similar, which is a good thing for me, not just dropping a set of ideas and moving on but developing them.

i don't like the pointyness of it though - that's defn. something they could have learned from cctv. please forgive the sloppy writing - coffee didn't
stick yet.

any less lazy more technical bloggers please put a cctv next to a epfl
and a casa de music next to the y2k house - would be greatly appreciated!

no prob. lol
i have to say i am convinced by some of the points u've made but still strongly affirm that i do not c epfl as a continuation neither as a development of the same idea , since we are not used to that from koolhaas..... the article u have mentioned in content i love, and i do think that content although the smallest in size of all others , is the most dense in information, and INTERPRETATIONS as well.
anyways , it's only an opinion.....
BUT I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT WE SHOULD NOT ALWAYS FOLLOW X OR Y ARCHITECT'S PROJECTS JUST BECAUSE THEY HAD A COUPLE OF GOOD PROJECTS, WE ALL MESS UP SO DO THEY.. AND THAT'S WHAT YOUNG ARCHITECTS SHOULD KNOW.
thanks

word

you're my first call and response here- thanks for the
morning dialogue and keep up the interesting posts!!

best

well u're my second lol... anyways im grigodms50@hotmail.com
add me if u wish the dialogue would be more spontaneous let's say and faster :)

well u're my second lol... anyways im gringodms50@hotmail.com
add me if u wish the dialogue would be more spontaneous let's say and faster :)

the EPFL project shows that sometimes architects just riff:

-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
OMA


-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-
DSR

thanks mason white for the pics since i didn't knwo how to attach them here....

I may be wrong here... but although Koolhaas created OMA... helped created OMA NY, and loosely created OMA Asia... the latest projects are mostly the work of the principals and design teams of the respective firms. For example, the Samsung museum in Korea is sub-par for an OMA project, but that's because it was a project created by OMA Asian, not specifically Koolhaas himself.

Sorry, OMA Asia... not in typing mood.

Basically people have the wrong perspective about OMA. Koolhaas is a face and a voice... at least that's what OMA claims. OMA is the architecture firm in charge of carrying out the "architecture".... not really Koolhaas. Am I wrong?

well to be honest can't tell, but would u sign any art work if u didn't agree???????????????????/
think about it being a painting.. very simple...
no?

james -
koolhaas = oma. in all facets.
his hand is on every project. it is not your typical large office structure with steeped heirachy a la SOM.

gringodms50 -

you can attach pics by writing [ i m g ] "image url . jpg" [ / i m g ]

(without any of the spaces between letters)

When I see that EPFL project image (since that's all we have to judge by) it just looks like an image, a sculpture first, which was made to "fit" the program. their brief must have been all about creating a campus icon... a rejection of typology.

and mason, comparing those two D+S+R images is definetely revealing... somehow I didn't make the connection at the time but it is really obvious... a real fixation with cantilevers and wooden stair platforms. you also have to wonder also how these things work structurally.

Hola gringo,
I agree.
Never understood the SMLXL hype, but Content truely amazed me. I also visited the content exhibition in de kunsthal Rotterdam which also was superb.
Several OMA projects in Holland recently opened and visiting them was slightly dissappointing, although still great architecture they seem to rely a lot on the standard OMA-tricks.

One project that got famous in NL in a negative way is the tramtunnel in The Hague...a crossover between a metro and a tram-system.
Officially it is know as souterrain, the people name it tramtunnel, but it's usually referred to as the Swimtunnel (b'cos of the leaking) and as the TramTanic.
(for those who don't know: tram=streetcar)

Take a look: tramtunnel

thx rutger,
for the information on the tram tunnel... well haven't been there to judge , but i always was amazed by the spaces of that project which actually looked to be more complex than ever... and it may be that transparency and simplicity in recent Koolhaas projects is the main reason that got us to question his late work.

gringodms50, my first encounter of Koolhaas was his article in "Koolhaas in conversation with students". Specifically Koolhass' article entitled: Flying The Bullett. Brilliant writing that inspired my thesis. 6 months later, I see his seattle library. What happened?

I'm not sure one can judge a project by one perspective, but personally, i'm into the gesture they submitted for the epfl project. sanaa, who won, seem to also be riffing on their own previous stuff...i still think it's great. the zaha building really impressed me, maybe because some of the previous schemes (like the glasgow museum) were so dull.

Do you really think SANAA are riffing on epfl? i think they have created a work for EPFL that is unique to the site and subsequently unique to their work. They may be using similar organizational ideas to past projects (such as IIT proposal), but exploring it through a different site condition, form and organization.

Though it seems (and you are right, one image doesn’t tell the whole story) as though OMA and DSR are recycling past formal ideas into new forms. OMA with the lattice-like structural skin (SPL and CCTV) and DSR with the cantilevered plate + sloped plane (ICA Boston). Understandably architects develop a language all their own that they may employ on several different projects.

I guess I would say that SANAA have employed a design ‘strategy’ (horizontal mat-like program) into a different form with their project rather than purely recycling surface properties or formal components. I would say that re-using similar organizational ideas and similar forms/surfaces are different. But again, we don’t know enough about the OMA and DSR projects other than the “money shots” they provided. But maybe in a way that in itself is telling.

mason - you got me there... i remember seeing sejima present a similar project and it seemed more than just an organizational idea resemblance. if i had the croquis i'd pull it out to see, but i'm not too certain. the holes in the swiss cheese were much more regular than epfl's .

maybe it was the kanazawa museum...? not sure, sorry.

hmm. i have that croquis, and i dont see any 'swiss cheese' schemes. if anything, it is maybe more akin to a planar dispersed mediatheque (ITO), but that would be influence, not riffing.

anyway, i guess it just bugs me that architects have this great opportunity to create something reacting to a program and a site and they just re-employ a (reassembled) 'image' of a previous project. I expect more from the OMA and DSRs of the world. I mean if they want someone to give attention to the project, why not hire one of us, right? Me and you, Jvier, would do a bang-up job for EPFL.

high-fives Mson! Honestly, I think it's a constant theme in the arch world...the culture breeds a failure-paranoia that leads firms to jump into anything and everything and they can spread thin.

Archined made english version of the tramtunnel-article:
tramtunnel
and
Seoul

A few weeks ago another oma project opened, a cinema-complex in Almere part of oma's masterplan for Almere...didn't take a visit yet, somebody else did?

his latest book "content" is a quite novel approach to an architecture book IMO. treating the design of buildings and the interactions with clients like weekly news where you get a snapshot of the many things going on in the world and how it affects architecture...

quite interesting..