Follow this tag to curate your own personalized Activity Stream and email alerts.
I am determined not to talk about Europe in terms of crisis or anxiety. I hope that the forces that allow Europe to continue developing constructively can coalesce and collaborate. But it would be foolish to make any predictions about what will happen next. For the first time in my life I don’t understand what is going on in Britain. — Rem Koolhaas
With all the uncertainty surrounding Britain's future, Rem Koolhaas recently shared his thoughts with The Guardian on how he watched the country improve when it first became part of the European Union. In light of the EU elections to encourage people to vote, Koolhaas took part in the Eurolab... View full entry
“For us, [Vriesendorp] has always been a central figure in the production of architectural ideas and discourse,” says Eva Franch i Gilabert, the director of the AA. Between 1982 and 1992, Vriesendorp taught at the AA. In 2015, the school hosted her 70th birthday. “She is a seminal voice of the institution,” Franch says. “She is all about opening up people’s imagination, regardless of age, disciplinary labels or expertise.” — The Guardian
When accepting the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize that recognizes women who have made significant contributions to architecture, the 2018 winner Madelon Vriesendorp shared of having to defend her legacy. Like many women in the profession, the artist and co-founder of OMA has been written out of the... View full entry
There was no programme, there were no plans. It was a tectonic exploration of form, articulation and presence—the gratification to work on a form by virtue of its own rules: scale, proportions, aspect, consistency. — DRAWING MATTER
"The triptych itself started with an A3 drawing of the building, gradually expanding it with the growing context and plot. Rem came with the idea of featuring different aspects of the whole project in one drawing. I devised a series of overlays floating over the main image to visualize all kinds... View full entry
Seventeen years after publishing his thoughts on 'Junkspace' in October Journal, Rem Koolhaas is seeing his theories reprised through an unexpected medium. The Tempers, the New York-based Synth-pop band, dedicated their latest album to Koolhaas' cynical paper in which he defined much of... View full entry
In the construction of the new Yugoslavia, modernist thinking and design were deployed to guide the country’s rapid urbanization and industrialization as well as to unify the ethnically, religiously, and culturally diverse population. — Places Journal
In columnist Belmont Freeman's latest article for Places, he examines the exhibition “Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980,” now on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and finds a rigorous and revealing survey of Yugoslavia’s extraordinary built... View full entry
Yet it is Ms. van Loon’s innate sense of openness that allows her to think freely, particularly as a woman in a male-dominated profession. She said she had seen an improvement in the number of women in the profession, along with the increasingly important roles they play, and their influence on the design of buildings.
[...] “Now at OMA, we’re 50/50 men and women, though let’s hope there are a few more female partners in the future."
— The New York Times
The New York Times introduces OMA's only female partner, Dutch architect Ellen van Loon, who recounts her first fascination for Rem Koolhaas and looks at some of her recent high-profile projects, such as the new Qatar National Library, Rijnstraat 8 in The Hague, and the recently completed 'Blox'... View full entry
OMA’s Blox project stacks a museum, offices, gym, restaurant and housing in a provocative attempt to condense the thrilling energy of a city into a single structure – but the result is a gloomy glass monolith [...]
It is OMA’s first ever playground, and it doesn’t look as if having fun comes naturally.
— The Guardian
Photo: Rasmus Hjortshøj – COASTThe Guardian architecture critic, Oliver Wainwright, reviews OMA's new 'Blox' building in Copenhagen, and it's easy to see that he isn't a fan. Like at all. "From the outside, it doesn’t look promising. Far from suggesting unpredictable intrigue, the building... View full entry
Today OMA announced the completion of Torre, the third new structure the firm has completed in the Fondazione Prada arts compound, a former gin distillery in Milan. Standing at 60 meters tall, the white concrete Torre is a vertical art gallery that “is devoted to the development of a new... View full entry
The Qatar National Library in Doha officially opened its doors on April 16th. Designed by OMA, the new building encompasses the National Library, the Public Library, the University Library, and the Heritage Collection, which consists of valuable texts and manuscripts related to the... View full entry
A long summer season with well over 100,000 visitors and 477 free events over 133 days recently wrapped up for the OMA-designed MPavilion 2017 in Melbourne. The structure will now commence a new, more permanent life after it has been announced that the pavilion will move from its temporary site... View full entry
OMA/Rem Koolhaas have released plans for their redesign of Moscow's New Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val. As one of Russia's largest museums, the space hosts 20th century Russian and Soviet art including works by Malevich, Kandinsky, Chagall, and Soviet artists such as Aleksandr Deyneka and Vera... View full entry
There is a good case for listing Thomas Hardy amongst the greatest of all conceptual architects — the prophet, well before the fact, of a particular type of speculative, imaginary architectural project which would boom a century later. — Places Journal
The 19th-century author Thomas Hardy has never been considered much of an architect. Yet as Kester Rattenbury shows, his creation of Wessex was an architectural project - one that drew on the ideas of his time, but also predicted some of the most inventive architectural work of our own age. Hardy... View full entry
MONU magazine's current issue #27 on "Small Urbanism" shows how small things can have a great impact on city life and planning, exploring themes such as micro-occupations as political protest, urban furniture to recover public spaces and fight criminality, acupunctural interventions for refugee settlements or tiny models used for military strategies. — MONU
There are architectural spaces that capture you through their smallest details. Almost five years ago, I visited the Crematorium building by Asplund in the Woodland Cemetery, in Stockholm. After crossing the artificial landscape along a seemingly introverted building, I remember entering a... View full entry
Last year, the New Museum announced that Rem Koolhaas and Shoehei Shigematsu would be heading the institution's expansion that will nearly double their footprint in New York. The contemporary art museum has been situated at 235 Bowery in a building designed by the Japanese firm SANAA since... View full entry
In her latest interpretation of the material, Prada asked the architects Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron — with whom she collaborates regularly — to design something in nylon for the show, and to select another talent from their field to do the same. They chose, respectively, the German designer Konstantin Grcic and the French designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. T spoke to each of them about their designs. — The New York Times Style Magazine
Prada just wrapped up its anticipated fall/winter 2018 show, which the fashion powerhouse held in a converted warehouse in Milan, designed by AMO. "The building is organized in sectors that each correspond to a specific theme," a Prada statement describes the venue conversion. "Boxes, crates and... View full entry
