Curious to hear feedback from those who have worked or know someone who has worked at these celebrated architects who got their start at OMA. Obvs marketing is mostly what we happen to see on outside but each of these pretend to be something very different. I'm thinking of BIG, Rex, MVRDV, Gang, Buro Ole Schereen, etc.
Do they each live up to the marketing? What's the vibe? Nepotism still a thing? Big $ developer projects vs celebrated 'architecture' projects?
Don't get me wrong about 'restaurateur'. He owns and runs a restaurant the locals and his friends know. You go in through an orange-colored industrial vinyl curtain you would see in a welding shop and there's the deck type of place with varied seating arrangements. The design has a distinction but is achieved with pure-how-it-feels-works type of design decisions. The space is private or public depending on the company and occasion. But the food is delicious, festive, affordable, and often shared. He also buys and sells good wine. He told me a few good stories about OMA and its babies coming from their heroic years when Rem established his practice and did big, expensive projects. And, was accepted as an architectural diety. Friend's experience of the office was a very enjoyable time since he didn't have the same ambitions as his colleagues who had the corporate market handling chops in the Rotterdam mothership. We already know who they are and they now produce best of the market architecture. Corporate cultural buildings, corporate office spaces, corporate residential developments, corporate legacy projects and so on. There's more but I have to save some for something else.
Would you be asking if they lived up to the marketing if you thought the buildings did? After all that's all that really matters, right?
The vibes? The vibes are bad, man. How could they be anything but? Those kinds of projects don't get done on 40 hour weeks by happy employees in this economic reality.
What would suggest that nepotism would be any less of a thing at a firm because the founder worked for some bald dutch fuck who wrote few ditties on architecture?
Big $ vs celebrated architecture? You answered your own question, yes of course there is still the divide. If you want to see some great nepotism, look at who works on one project vs the other within the offices.
The last Rem-colyte who won a Pritzker was Zaha, who was a badass (and incredibly toxic) architect in her own right. I don't think we're going to see anyone you listed coming through with one soon. Rem already toed the line between corporate and avant garde, and his progeny have somehow learned all the wrong lessons from that.
Or perhaps the world has moved on and now sees the marketing differently when everything is so pessimistic.
Yea, I ask because I've observed cultish congratulatory white people behavior from all of them, not dissimilar to OMA. But then they also come out with projects like BIG's Amagar Bakke that despite it's over-the-topness could do some good in the world from a sustainability standpoint besides a narrative (marketing) or a beautiful object. Maybe the marketing got to me.
I want to have hope that these people learned to improve something from the baseline they learned other than a politically correct spin on things. I was disappointed to hear the nepotism for GSD students in Gang's and BIG's office. Also all these office culture outings and celebrations cost money and I'm curious as I assume employees salaries are what balance out the cost.
I'm hoping there is someone out there among them that is at least decent and not as two-faced in marketing. Just hoping to be proven wrong in this pessimistic outlook.
I recall back in the days there was talk about how a lot of these spin-offs had some major connections (network) to large clients with a lot of money, while still in school. Most from Harvard or the like, then went to OMA for work. Think of them as BoBo's, Bohemian Bourgeois. Having enough money and connections while allowing your mind and heart to only focus on the art/work under a machine of an office such as OMA. As a BoBo you cut your teeth there, learn the ins and outs and then apply it to the real world on your own. To some it could be seen as young geniuses working under a master, but in the economy from that period (not too much different from today), it's young architects with a lot of money in search of power and using others time and energy to execute their ideas while working under a master such as Rem.
Rem differs in that he was truly innovative by writing about his ideas to develop a fresh way to approach architecture. I can't say much for the offices that spun-off as Rem's DNA is still seen in their ideologies while trying really hard to have their own voice. For instance BIG and several others building the concept diagram. The diagram is the story with some fun characters, which then becomes the building. Rem coming from a writing background I can see how his methods can be traced into architecture. Rem also understood the business of architecture, enough to hate it. Just go back to SMLXL to see the crypted messages within the essays of the modern unintelligent client telling the academic architect what to do. One could argue that these spin-off are still designing with a PoMo ideology.
These spin-offs are able to capture how big money and power operates and what they need to do to play in that game, and if that means still having a grueling office culture then so be it. I'm still looking around for that easy going, well tempered developer/client who has time to wait for the design to cook within a 9-5 work week and then approve the cost of these expensive materials because it's what makes the building last over time, while allowing for complete transparency.
REX and the decline of OMA NY really showed who was running the show prior to Ramus' departure. The OMA NY of today is doing well as a business, but the quality of work is closer to Gensler than BIG. They've gone from genuinely innovative buildings to rehashing Koolhaas motifs as a house style.
Who is the next OMA though? Like I understand the glamour of working for Rem back when they were popping off, architecturally speaking. Still a brilliant firm, but it feels like more of a name on your resume rather than a long-term desirable workplace.
Herzog and de Meuron comes to mind as a non-OMA offshoot, but maybe it continues down the lineage of BIG or Studio Gang. I could legitimately see OXMAN as well if they did more actual buildings and are able to get past the plagiarism.
Gang is a dead end of formalist facades wrapping generic US developer building product. BIG messed up by focusing on NYC where their work gets hopelessly watered down by client greed and banal programs.
I hate to agree with this perception of Studio Gang but it's fair. I think we'll see how good they are when we see projects with more friction. I'm curious to see how that airport turns out. I think that'll be their biggest legacy.
As far as BIG. I think there was some potential. NYC is where all architects go to sell out.
It's difficult to say as technology is advancing at a much faster pace then when FOG used Catia for building/construction advancement. Today you can look at AZP's argument that Architect's need to focus on the reality of Architecture to produce for the local with a global impact. I can't think of an office who is using data-mining to produce a more advanced type of architecture for society to become more advanced.
@middlearcht a couple friends of mine at Studio ORD are working on the airport (none with studio gang, but with their collaborators), it might never finish - I think the last time I visited they were in "final dd phase" lol
That's wild. I did a bit of googling after your post. Well hopefully they are taking the project and its consequences seriously. That project is the biggest footprint in the US - most impact they will ever have. Sustainability will be a must.
I have a close friend and mentor who worked at the Copenhagen office for a bit in the early aughts. Generic positive review.
OMA (in its peak) is only as important as you make it out to be IMO. In my circles (academic and professional) it's just not relevant enough to have strong feelings about it any one way. Perhaps there was some connection between the intellectual output and the operation of the business but it might be more difficult to tell than it's worth. It's very possible that Rem is what people describe above, but we only know about it because of a very specific media climate at that time. There could be plenty of Rems out there working today, but we just have a very different set of relationships between offices, clients, media, and municipalities. The interior workings of an office is terribly opaque, even to those working in it. That's kind of on purpose, but I won't get into that here...
All this to say that your hope, OP, need not rely on recovering some storied ideal. There's plenty to do better. Doing good work can absolutely happen in a healthy work environment, it just hasn't happened much. That's the hard part. And figuring out how to do it takes a lot of rolling around in the muck.
That's what I'm telling myself these days at least! Cheers.
I think the design that happens in a healthy work environment is more quiet and less assuming but still good design, and it is out there happening.
My experiences have been - the starchitect principal who will drive their employees to bad health with 80 and 100 hour weeks is an unmitigated asshole, but they aren't doing it on purpose, so to speak. It is a byproduct of the focus on design (whatever their design shtick is...) but the positive side of that is things that actually do improve the projects.
These are the demanding "take-it-or-leave-it" attitudes on schedule, budget, contractor and client relationships and management, etc... If the small regional offices had the balls to make the same demands (or we had professional organizations worth a damn) then those small attentive firms claw back 50% or more of the advantage of a starchitect firm.
Hard work and long hours are good when the cause is worthy. It feels like we’re living in a time where the cause is in limbo or being very repressed due to socio-economic factors. Mark Lee said it quite well (and I’m paraphrasing) in that the difference between two “star-architects” can be quite drastic, such as OMA and Robert Venturi, however these two are still way more different than a local building by a local architect. If more architectural offices focus on the local and beyond then the right cause will emerge, even if it means building your own designs.
The question then becomes how to focus our attention to the local agendas while completely disengaging our attitudes and ideologies about the next OMA (or star-architect). With this approach us Architects can become more vital and having our objective and subjective voices heard. It will still need to be determined if it’s approached in a local individual method or as a collective method. Right now, it still comes across as Architects trying to out do the other architect because of some personal agenda or worse because they get lured by the client’s greed. The client is wanting some faux panel finish, or the hideous stone finish to represent their hubristic life style, or some crazy gymnastics to the structure for the sakes of the image, or the tallest to become the next icon. These reasons are what causes for a lot of architects to work over 60 hours a week to then not even get some honest gratification but rather burning out and feeling bitter about the industry and society in general. Architecture has become like fast-fashion, fast-food or junk franchise movies, to then only become yesterday’s topic and then considering of tearing down the building after its been paid off.
I’m in the camp that technology has advanced enough to where small offices can operate very effectively with less than 6 people. I graduated before the 2008 recession so a lot of my generation is missing in the profession and I argue that those left from my generation is what allowed us to take the upper hand in running an office, because our past bosses or mentors were still chicken-pecking on the keyboard to send an email and god forbid they open Revit, Rhino, Adobe, ChatGPT, Discord, etc…. Unfortunately, I still see a lot of these large corporate offices being operated by generation X or Baby Boomers, where they have to ensure they maintain profits above the margin while not understanding the process to produce what the client is expecting. The detachment is so prevalent that the person working over 60 hours has no authority but to only make ends meet to afford payment on a mortgage, rent, food, children, or some illusion of a life style to then only climb the corporate ladder or leave the industry all together.
The OMA Legacy: Offshoots and where they are now. Are they any better? Different?
Curious to hear feedback from those who have worked or know someone who has worked at these celebrated architects who got their start at OMA. Obvs marketing is mostly what we happen to see on outside but each of these pretend to be something very different. I'm thinking of BIG, Rex, MVRDV, Gang, Buro Ole Schereen, etc.
Do they each live up to the marketing? What's the vibe? Nepotism still a thing? Big $ developer projects vs celebrated 'architecture' projects?
One of the best ones I know of became a successful restaurateur here in L.A.
Don't get me wrong about 'restaurateur'. He owns and runs a restaurant the locals and his friends know. You go in through an orange-colored industrial vinyl curtain you would see in a welding shop and there's the deck type of place with varied seating arrangements.
The design has a distinction but is achieved with pure-how-it-feels-works type of design decisions. The space is private or public depending on the company and occasion. But the food is delicious, festive, affordable, and often shared. He also buys and sells good wine.
He told me a few good stories about OMA and its babies coming from their heroic years when Rem established his practice and did big, expensive projects. And, was accepted as an architectural diety.
Friend's experience of the office was a very enjoyable time since he didn't have the same ambitions as his colleagues who had the corporate market handling chops in the Rotterdam mothership. We already know who they are and they now produce best of the market architecture. Corporate cultural buildings, corporate office spaces, corporate residential developments, corporate legacy projects and so on.
There's more but I have to save some for something else.
Love that place. Is he also associated with the bahn mi shop down the street? I heard something about it also having OMA roots, the space is smart.
I also love that place! Makes so much more sense knowing that it's owned by an architect....
Would you be asking if they lived up to the marketing if you thought the buildings did? After all that's all that really matters, right?
The vibes? The vibes are bad, man. How could they be anything but? Those kinds of projects don't get done on 40 hour weeks by happy employees in this economic reality.
What would suggest that nepotism would be any less of a thing at a firm because the founder worked for some bald dutch fuck who wrote few ditties on architecture?
Big $ vs celebrated architecture? You answered your own question, yes of course there is still the divide. If you want to see some great nepotism, look at who works on one project vs the other within the offices.
The last Rem-colyte who won a Pritzker was Zaha, who was a badass (and incredibly toxic) architect in her own right. I don't think we're going to see anyone you listed coming through with one soon. Rem already toed the line between corporate and avant garde, and his progeny have somehow learned all the wrong lessons from that.
Or perhaps the world has moved on and now sees the marketing differently when everything is so pessimistic.
Who cares...
You do. ;)
Yea, I ask because I've observed cultish congratulatory white people behavior from all of them, not dissimilar to OMA. But then they also come out with projects like BIG's Amagar Bakke that despite it's over-the-topness could do some good in the world from a sustainability standpoint besides a narrative (marketing) or a beautiful object. Maybe the marketing got to me.
I want to have hope that these people learned to improve something from the baseline they learned other than a politically correct spin on things. I was disappointed to hear the nepotism for GSD students in Gang's and BIG's office. Also all these office culture outings and celebrations cost money and I'm curious as I assume employees salaries are what balance out the cost.
I'm hoping there is someone out there among them that is at least decent and not as two-faced in marketing. Just hoping to be proven wrong in this pessimistic outlook.
Oh you sweet naive child. Lol.
middle, maybe not take this shit too seriously?
I recall back in the days there was talk about how a lot of these spin-offs had some major connections (network) to large clients with a lot of money, while still in school. Most from Harvard or the like, then went to OMA for work. Think of them as BoBo's, Bohemian Bourgeois. Having enough money and connections while allowing your mind and heart to only focus on the art/work under a machine of an office such as OMA. As a BoBo you cut your teeth there, learn the ins and outs and then apply it to the real world on your own. To some it could be seen as young geniuses working under a master, but in the economy from that period (not too much different from today), it's young architects with a lot of money in search of power and using others time and energy to execute their ideas while working under a master such as Rem.
Rem differs in that he was truly innovative by writing about his ideas to develop a fresh way to approach architecture. I can't say much for the offices that spun-off as Rem's DNA is still seen in their ideologies while trying really hard to have their own voice. For instance BIG and several others building the concept diagram. The diagram is the story with some fun characters, which then becomes the building. Rem coming from a writing background I can see how his methods can be traced into architecture. Rem also understood the business of architecture, enough to hate it. Just go back to SMLXL to see the crypted messages within the essays of the modern unintelligent client telling the academic architect what to do. One could argue that these spin-off are still designing with a PoMo ideology.
These spin-offs are able to capture how big money and power operates and what they need to do to play in that game, and if that means still having a grueling office culture then so be it. I'm still looking around for that easy going, well tempered developer/client who has time to wait for the design to cook within a 9-5 work week and then approve the cost of these expensive materials because it's what makes the building last over time, while allowing for complete transparency.
REX and the decline of OMA NY really showed who was running the show prior to Ramus' departure. The OMA NY of today is doing well as a business, but the quality of work is closer to Gensler than BIG. They've gone from genuinely innovative buildings to rehashing Koolhaas motifs as a house style.
Who is the next OMA though? Like I understand the glamour of working for Rem back when they were popping off, architecturally speaking. Still a brilliant firm, but it feels like more of a name on your resume rather than a long-term desirable workplace.
Herzog and de Meuron comes to mind as a non-OMA offshoot, but maybe it continues down the lineage of BIG or Studio Gang. I could legitimately see OXMAN as well if they did more actual buildings and are able to get past the plagiarism.
Oxman isn't interested in architecture at the scale of buildings - she's smart to stick to her unique niche.
Gang is a dead end of formalist facades wrapping generic US developer building product. BIG messed up by focusing on NYC where their work gets hopelessly watered down by client greed and banal programs.
I hate to agree with this perception of Studio Gang but it's fair. I think we'll see how good they are when we see projects with more friction. I'm curious to see how that airport turns out. I think that'll be their biggest legacy.
As far as BIG. I think there was some potential. NYC is where all architects go to sell out.
It's difficult to say as technology is advancing at a much faster pace then when FOG used Catia for building/construction advancement. Today you can look at AZP's argument that Architect's need to focus on the reality of Architecture to produce for the local with a global impact. I can't think of an office who is using data-mining to produce a more advanced type of architecture for society to become more advanced.
BIGs work (at least that we see published these days) has gotten so damn bad. Even the 2 bit "corporate boutique" office i work for does better stuff.
sameolddoctor, maybe not take this shit too seriously?
Damn, I'm getting pulled into it..
@middlearcht a couple friends of mine at Studio ORD are working on the airport (none with studio gang, but with their collaborators), it might never finish - I think the last time I visited they were in "final dd phase" lol
That's wild. I did a bit of googling after your post. Well hopefully they are taking the project and its consequences seriously. That project is the biggest footprint in the US - most impact they will ever have. Sustainability will be a must.
I have a close friend and mentor who worked at the Copenhagen office for a bit in the early aughts. Generic positive review.
OMA (in its peak) is only as important as you make it out to be IMO. In my circles (academic and professional) it's just not relevant enough to have strong feelings about it any one way. Perhaps there was some connection between the intellectual output and the operation of the business but it might be more difficult to tell than it's worth. It's very possible that Rem is what people describe above, but we only know about it because of a very specific media climate at that time. There could be plenty of Rems out there working today, but we just have a very different set of relationships between offices, clients, media, and municipalities. The interior workings of an office is terribly opaque, even to those working in it. That's kind of on purpose, but I won't get into that here...
All this to say that your hope, OP, need not rely on recovering some storied ideal. There's plenty to do better. Doing good work can absolutely happen in a healthy work environment, it just hasn't happened much. That's the hard part. And figuring out how to do it takes a lot of rolling around in the muck.
That's what I'm telling myself these days at least! Cheers.
I think the design that happens in a healthy work environment is more quiet and less assuming but still good design, and it is out there happening.
My experiences have been - the starchitect principal who will drive their employees to bad health with 80 and 100 hour weeks is an unmitigated asshole, but they aren't doing it on purpose, so to speak. It is a byproduct of the focus on design (whatever their design shtick is...) but the positive side of that is things that actually do improve the projects.
These are the demanding "take-it-or-leave-it" attitudes on schedule, budget, contractor and client relationships and management, etc... If the small regional offices had the balls to make the same demands (or we had professional organizations worth a damn) then those small attentive firms claw back 50% or more of the advantage of a starchitect firm.
Hard work and long hours are good when the cause is worthy. It feels like we’re living in a time where the cause is in limbo or being very repressed due to socio-economic factors. Mark Lee said it quite well (and I’m paraphrasing) in that the difference between two “star-architects” can be quite drastic, such as OMA and Robert Venturi, however these two are still way more different than a local building by a local architect. If more architectural offices focus on the local and beyond then the right cause will emerge, even if it means building your own designs. The question then becomes how to focus our attention to the local agendas while completely disengaging our attitudes and ideologies about the next OMA (or star-architect). With this approach us Architects can become more vital and having our objective and subjective voices heard. It will still need to be determined if it’s approached in a local individual method or as a collective method. Right now, it still comes across as Architects trying to out do the other architect because of some personal agenda or worse because they get lured by the client’s greed. The client is wanting some faux panel finish, or the hideous stone finish to represent their hubristic life style, or some crazy gymnastics to the structure for the sakes of the image, or the tallest to become the next icon. These reasons are what causes for a lot of architects to work over 60 hours a week to then not even get some honest gratification but rather burning out and feeling bitter about the industry and society in general. Architecture has become like fast-fashion, fast-food or junk franchise movies, to then only become yesterday’s topic and then considering of tearing down the building after its been paid off. I’m in the camp that technology has advanced enough to where small offices can operate very effectively with less than 6 people. I graduated before the 2008 recession so a lot of my generation is missing in the profession and I argue that those left from my generation is what allowed us to take the upper hand in running an office, because our past bosses or mentors were still chicken-pecking on the keyboard to send an email and god forbid they open Revit, Rhino, Adobe, ChatGPT, Discord, etc…. Unfortunately, I still see a lot of these large corporate offices being operated by generation X or Baby Boomers, where they have to ensure they maintain profits above the margin while not understanding the process to produce what the client is expecting. The detachment is so prevalent that the person working over 60 hours has no authority but to only make ends meet to afford payment on a mortgage, rent, food, children, or some illusion of a life style to then only climb the corporate ladder or leave the industry all together.
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