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The staging was called the Ideal House, and it was a fully furnished modern home, but one with an audience, a runway wrapped around it, and “windows” projected on the walls with scenes of the outside world. It was the latest in many intricate and avant-garde pairings between Prada and OMA...
The 12-piece furniture collection, designed by OMA for Knoll, will debut at the Salon Internazionale del Mobile in Milan in April.
— blogs.artinfo.com
Indicating his ambitions for the next showcase in 2014, Koolhaas said he planned to ‘give a new look’ to architecture’s basic elements ‘to see if we can discover something new about architecture.’
The festival’s board, chaired by Paolo Baratta, formally appointed the star architect to the role today.
— architectsjournal.co.uk
The series of videos below offers a fascinating insight into how this generation of "starchitects" behaves under pressure, as they each pitch to win one of the most high-profile competitions in recent years: a new tower for L&L Holding Company on Park Avenue in New York. The site has such daunting neighbours as Mies van der Rohe's Seagram building, and it will be the first full-block office tower to be built on the street in almost half a century. — guardian.co.uk
“For us, it was really a blend of what’s the right concept for Park Avenue, a place that has not had a new building for almost 50 years, an avenue that is quite possibly the most important commercial boulevard in New York City, quite possibly the United States, and what is the place of a new build down the street from Seagrams and Lever House, two of the greatest buildings ever built,” Daivd Levinson said. — New York Observer
Four very different schemes for an office tower in New York. Who's your pick? View full entry
Thieves broke into a Rotterdam museum on Tuesday and walked off with works from the likes of Picasso, Monet, Gauguin and Matisse potentially worth hundreds of millions. "Those thieves got one hell of a haul," said Chris Marinello, who directs the Art Loss Register. — NYT
thieves broke into rem koolhaas' iconic Kunsthal building in Rotterdam early Tuesday, making off with a number of paintings. while details of the break-in have not been disclosed yet, the collection that the paintings were a part of were being displayed in public for the first time. i wonder what... View full entry
Building upon a short Wednesday evening presentation he gave at Rice, Koolhaas opened with discussion of historical preservation, a topic that elicited mixed emotions for the architect while, at the same time, offered a window into his approach to the built environment.
"Preservation is a highly artificial term," he explained. "History happens and leaves its traces . . . I have to say, I prefer history without preservation."
— houston.culturemap.com
Scriptwriting also taught him something about architecture. "If you write a script, you try to stitch episodes together so that, at the end, you have a sort of suspense to a conclusion or a climax," he says.
"Architecture is very similar: You create a series of spatial moments and find a way to relate them to each other with the same purpose. An architect writes scripts also, but for people, not for actors."
— cnn.com
CNN's "Great Buildings" series asks famous architects about their favorite self-designed projects. Today they feature Rem. View full entry
“We are grateful to each of the firms for the thoughtfulness and creativity they demonstrated throughout the process. There is no doubt that each group was fully capable of helping us realize our vision of a 425 Park Avenue tower that redefines the modern office environment while also respecting and enhancing the timeless allure of the Plaza district.” — New York Observer
In one of the most unusual assignments around, Foster, Rogers, Koolhaas and Hadid were asked to tackle a New York City office building on Park Avenue. A famous address with two famous towers, but really, the rest of them stink. The catch for 425 Park, one of those middcentury stinkers, is that... View full entry
Rem Koolhaas is to receive the 2012 Jencks Award, announced the Royal Institute of British Architects. The Jencks Award is given annually to an individual (or practice) that has recently made a major contribution internationally to both the theory and practice of architecture. — bustler.net
It’s hard to know whether you regard this as nightmare or opportunity, I tell him. “That has been my entire life story,” Koolhaas said, “Running against the current and running with the current. Sometimes running with the current is underestimated. The acceptance of certain realities doesn’t preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs. — Smithsonian magazine, September 2012
Some classic Nicolai Ouroussoff-piece - so expect an up-and-too-close-personal portrait, explicit hints of retro-active admiration, generic and gullible phrasing, all-over-the-place platitudes and creepy catchphrases - on Rem Koolhaas. Worth a read, but only for the quotes. For those that do not... View full entry
News broke about a collaboration between OMA and American luxury retailer Coach. With OMA partner-in-charge Shohei Shigematsu leading the design work, two new Coach flagship stores are scheduled to open in New York and Tokyo in the next few months and unveil the new concept. Coach Omotesando... View full entry
The building has two colossal, uneven leaning towers (the highest rises 768 feet) that are conjoined at the top by an enormous angular bridge. Conservative estimates put the cost at nearly $900 million; Koolhaas, for his part, says he has “no idea” of the price. What is certain is that the CCTV building now dominates the skyline of Beijing, just as it dominates the airwaves of the country. — thedailybeast.com
Attached are some photos of the CCTV building that I recently took while in Beijing. View full entry
The developer David W. Levinson could have set for himself the simple task of commissioning a better-designed tower for 425 Park Avenue than the one that’s been there since 1957.
But that would have been a very low bar.
He has engaged four of the world’s leading architects to compete for the job: Norman Foster of Foster & Partners, Zaha Hadid of Zaha Hadid Architects, Rem Koolhaas of OMA, and Richard Rogers of Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners.
— cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com
CLIPS OF SEATTLE LIBRARY: INTERVIEW WITH HOMELESS MAN AND SHOTS OF STRUCTURE.
This footage is part of a feature length Documentary film that I am making about my father Rem Koolhaas.
— vimeo.com
Low resolution rough cut of footage I shot at the CCTV building in Beijing in Feb 2012. This footage is part of a documentary I am making about my father Rem Koolhaas. — Tomas Koolhaas, via vimeo.com
