Top Rem Koolhaas Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Rem Koolhaas Biography

Remment Lucas "Rem" Koolhaas (Dutch pronunciation: [rɛm koːlɦaːs]; born 17 November 1944) is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. Koolhaas studied at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London and at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Koolhaas is the founding partner of OMA, and of its research-oriented counterpart AMO based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In 2005, he co-founded Volume Magazine together with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman.

Read about Rem Koolhaas in Wikipedia

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Rem Koolhaas Quotes

One cannot completely avoid this landmark character with large buildings such as these. But the city itself is also gigantic.

Character, Cities, Building, Gigantic, City, Large

I studied in London in 1968. Our school had a separate department of tropical architecture. Of course it was totally unfashionable, partly because nobody wanted to think about colonialism, but basically what you learned there was that, OK, the sun is here, so you should create natural ventilation here - an unbelievable amount of really sound principles that have been completely abandoned, so now everything is air conditioned with big machines.

Air, Architecture, Everything, School, Thinking, Unfashionable

The luxury of our position now is that we can almost assemble any team to address any issue.

Issue, Issues, Luxury, Team

When air conditioning, escalators, and advertising appeared, shopping expanded its scale, but also limited its spontaneity. And it became much more predictable, almost scientific. What had once been the most surprising became the most manipulated.

Advertising, Air, Conditioning, Expanded, Limited, Shopping

Architects work in two ways. One is to respond precisely to a client's needs or demands. Another is to look at what the client asks and reinterpret it.

Client, Look, Looks, Needs, Reinterpret, Two

But now sustainability is such a political category that it's getting more and more difficult to think about it in a serious way. Sustainability has become an ornament.

Become, Category, Ornament, Ornaments, Political, Thinking

That has been another interesting discovery: that basically a city [Lagos] could recover from a really deep, deep, deep pit.

Discovery, Cities, Interesting, Recover, Pit, Lagos

Lagos was not very inviting even to Lagosians. It was considered a no-go zone, almost in its entirety.

Entirety, Inviting, Lagos, Zone

What is now called 'green architecture' is an opportunistic caricature of a much deeper consideration of the issues related to sustainability that architecture has been engaged with for many years. It was one of the first professions that was deeply concerned with these issues and that had an intellectual response to them.

Issues, Years, Intellectual, Sustainability, Caricature

All important architecture of the last century was strongly influenced by political systems. Look at the Soviet system, with its constructivism and Stalinism, Weimer with its Modern style, Mussolini and, of course, the Nazis and Albert Speer's colossal structures. Today's architecture is subservient to the market and its terms. The market has supplanted ideology. Architecture has turned into a spectacle. It has to package itself and no longer has significance as anything but a landmark.

Colossal, Important, Nazis, Political, Style, Terms

Lagos was a city that had been turned against itself. There was a bridge that became the perfect trap for crimes, which began with nails being scattered to cause flat tyres. If the driver stopped, the car would be dismantled in 20 minutes and the parts thrown overboard [to people waiting below]. The system had turned into a kind of destructive device that could be used against people. That was the narrative.

Bridge, Bridges, Car, Cities, Dismantled, Nails

You need to look at inequality as a typical condition of modern society.

Looks, Modern, Needs, Society, Typical

Our society can no longer tolerate ugliness. You see that in cars, sofas and women. [But] ugliness also has a right to exist.

Car, Longer, Our Society, Sofas, Ugliness

Journalists seem mostly interested in what brand of shoes I wear.

Shoes, Journalist, Brands, Journalists, Brand, Mostly

The people from the suburbs are bringing along their suburban values: cleanliness, orderliness, safety - dullness, in other words. As a result, urban areas are being hollowed out. Just look at Times Square in New York. No more sex shops, no drugs, no homeless people. The area is clinically clean and incredibly dull.

Sex, New York, Squares, Square, Suburban, Cleanliness

The beauty of my profession [architecture] lies in its randomness and surprise. And don't think I can choose my projects. I have to build what's offered to me.

Architecture, Beauty, Lying, Randomness, Surprise, Thinking

Nigeria was a blank on the map - there weren't even any maps. The US State Department, everyone said don't go there. It was courageous of Harvard University: the notion was that we would match Harvard students with Nigerian students, so that every student would have a guide, creating a guarantee of intimacy with the city.

Creating, Cities, Guarantees, Department, Student, City

We discovered a person in Lagos who had a fish stall, and within a single square metre she carried two children all the way to Harvard. She supported an unbelievable escape of her children into education. In that sense it was a city completed pixillated, and every pixel contained amazing stories.

Children, Cities, Metre, Person, Squares, Stories

Find optimism in the inevitable.

Inevitable, Optimism

Manhattan is an accumulation of possible disasters that never happen.

Accumulation, Disaster, Disasters, Manhattan, Possible

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