"Irrational exuberance" seems to me an apt introduction to an understanding of Rem Koolhaas in the '90s and beyond; it foregrounds his great success in navigating the intersection of the pragmatic corporate sector, on the one hand, and the “delirious” and volatile realm of desire and possibility, on the other. ... Koolhaas has encouraged his followers to shed the crippling shackles of critical theory and pick up a surfboard upon which to ride the shock waves of the new economy. — Places Journal
For decades Rem Koolhaas has been not only a leading global architect but also a restless provocateur. On Places, in a chapter from the forthcoming book Architecture and Capitalism, Ellen Dunham-Jones explores Koolhaas's protean career, from the early fantastical projects to the big books and bigger buildings of recent years. It's a career that has come to embody, she argues, "the inevitable contradictions in trying to marry art and capitalism, radicalism and pragmatism, icon-making and city-making."
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On a cursory glance, I have no doubt, 'Architecture and Capitalism' will be another work of borrowed authorship (which also says much about Rem's authorship), in this case, from Tafuri's seminal, 'Architecture and Utopia. Design and Capitalist Development, but without significant insights into mechanics of modern economy (market based or speculative capitalism) and its unbalanced relationship to built environment; the relationship further perverted by popular media, ubiquitous criticality, and mass apathy.
That being said, the phrase "irrational exuberance" is redundant; to be exuberant means indifference to rational measures of excess; to be exuberant means irrational.
We should embrace the philosophy of indifferent pragmatism as part of the larger discourse in contemporary architecture and urbanism that includes global economy and mass media, whether they are significant, nominal, or exuberant, and dispense with making martyr of the bald dutchman.
Rem is really good at creating justifications for whatever "wave" he happens to be riding at a given time.
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