Under his tutelage, designers learn to privilege approach over style. Rather than work with drawings, like most traditional architecture firms, OMA employees first "Diagram" a building—identify the structure's basic components and how they fit together—and then proceed to build it. It's an analytical method that results in buildings that are sometimes ungainly but never unexciting and reject the signature styles associated with many other renowned architects. — online.wsj.com
6 Comments
Putting FR-EE in the category of these other offices is just...wrong.
The way Bernstein explains OMA's process sounds like a parti.
I think it's funny that the article says "... for the first time... finds himself competing against his own former employees for commissions." Without mentioning that this must be the greatest achievement of all - to have numerous people starting successful firms after working for you. What is the impact of one great architect? The goal should be to have as many great architects out there as possible working to make a difference in the world and impact the discipline.
The incredible thing is that these are just a small selection of the firms nurtured at OMA. There's Studio Gang, MVRDV, Farshid Moussavi, Mass Studies, JDS, HQ Architects... The list goes on. I'm continually astonished when looking up architects and seeing that they went through the doors of OMA.
I wish the article had more deeply explored some of the underlying structural reasons for OMA's effect rather than just turning into a collection of short puff piece profiles of the different firms. Maybe that's expecting too much.
One one level i appreciate the thinking-man's architecture that OMA represents, but many times it goes too far into the typical too-cool for buildings mentality. And rather douchey (see picture). Perhaps it is better to think of OMA as a part of the Dutch scene. Moving away from all of the politics, media and nonsense, if we are talking about architectural ideas, I prefer Ada Louise Huxtable's assessment in "Going Dutch."
"The Dutch have reembraced modernism, in a way that respects and builds on it an blows it wide open. Returning to the basic elements of space and enclosure, they explore and manipulate the building program for creative and unconventional plans with an immediate sensory impact. On the outside, cool, neutral containers celebrate the sleek virtuosity of advanced structural technology with exquisite, impersonal precision. Inside, it is open season on everything from the quirky to the sublime--but always with that ineffable Dutch logic, even in the most blatant send-up of the rules."
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