It was a book [George Packer written on our presence in Nigeria] that was killed by the response … - Rem Koolhaas

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It's harder that in looks," I told him when I finally got back in the car. "Most things are.

Rem Koolhaas

It was a book [George Packer written on our presence in Nigeria] that was killed by the response of other people. Which sounds quite cowardly, perhaps, but it was the first manifestation of what is currently a really big issue: how political correctness defines the limits of what you can do. In that sense, it was super-exciting and maybe the most magical project we did, but at the same time fraught with mixed feelings.

Book, Correctness, Issues, People, Presence, Same

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Why I talked about political correctness: the colonial is now such a major taboo that any achievement of the colonial period, or any generosity implied in colonialism, is again fundamentally neglected or fundamentally not recognised. That's crazy, because history is a series of layers, and you cannot say, "This layer I support and this layer I cancel. " History is history and you cannot retrospectively manipulate it.

Achievement, Correctness, Crazy, Generosity, Political, Support

The Grid makes the history of architecture and all previous lessons of urbanism irrelevant. It forces Manhattan's builders to develop a new system of formal values, to invent strategies for the distinction of one block from another. The Grid's two-dimensional discipline also creates undreamt-of freedom for three-dimensional anarchy. The Grid defines a new balance between control and de-control in which the city can be at the same time ordered and fluid, a metropolis of rigid chaos.

Block, Cities, Fluid, Lessons, Ordered, Two

Architecture is a rare collective profession: it's always exercised by groups. There is an essential modesty, which is a complete contradiction to the notion of a star.

Essentials, Exercised, Groups, Modesty, Star, Stars

There is no plateau of resting or stabilising. Once you are interested in how things evolve, you have a kind of never-ending perspective, because it means you are interested in articulating the evolution, and therefore the potential change, the potential redefinition.

Evolution, Interested, Mean, Perspective, Plateau, Potential

Most old cities are now sclerotic machines that dispense known qualities in ever-greater quantities, instead of laboratories of the uncertain. Only the skyscraper offers business the wide-open spaces of a man-made Wild West, a frontier in the sky.

Business, Frontier, Men, Sky, Space, West