Dizaina Studija. Telpa Forma Laiks

Rem Koolhaas and the Office of Metropolitan Architecture: Theory and Praxis Re-linked

Serious Architecture Must Actually Desire to be Dangerous

Designing the ideal city is an ancient ambition of utopian visionaries, from Plato to Le Corbusier. But visions of Heaven on earth can easily end up looking like Hell, which is why architects often are hated with a passion reserved for few other professions. We have to live in their flawed dreams. And yet their enterprise remains a source of endless fascination, because architecture, perhaps more than any other art, demonstrates both the grandeur and the fragility of human aspiration.(1)

Very often we tend to think of great architects as people who impose their vision on the world. We call them – starchitects(2) or there is also a familiar and enduring epithet throughout history for architects, at once heroic and hyperbolic: master builder. They come bearing significant forms and whip cities into shape. The Dutch-born architect, Rem Koolhaas, claims himself to be different. He doesn't believe architecture should change the world so much as the world should change architecture. His theory is that “masses are more sensitive and act more freely when faced with new historic situations than architects and intellectuals. The new course of history becomes patent in the expression of their desires, not the manifestations of thinkers.”(3) This Koolhaas’s populism shows his desire to link up with mass culture and belief in its capacity to produce a city that is logical and endowed with an inner raison d’être of its own, however featureless it may look.

Despite this philosophy, Koolhaas is not one of those architects much concerned with producing buildings that defer visually to their surroundings. With his partners in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), the firm he co-founded in 1975 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, he has produced some of the most distinctive buildings of the past 20 years. When Seattle asked for a new public library, OMA delivered the last word in rare volumes – an irregular stack of cantilevered spaces wrapped in angular glass walls and a honeycomb of steel. And his new Beijing headquarters for CCTV, China's state-controlled television network, is a prodigious twist on the idea of a high rise building. He may not want to impose his vision on the world, but somehow his latest realized megaprojects are showing more and more evidence as if he wants it to. Because of his latest architectural achievements and innovative thinking, Koolhaas from time to time is called a utopian visionary. The question remains, however: do his visions represent the experience of Hell or Heaven on earth?

The architect, whose mega-structures in Europe and Asia and other audacious plans earned him the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2000, is also his profession's most ruthless and excoriating critic. Hall Foster calls him “the most gifted architect-polemicist since Le Corbusier; certainly like Corb he possesses great panache in design and writing alike.”(4) After Koolhaas was awarded the Pritzker Prize, the New York Times described him ‘the most influential architect of his generation’. What makes him so special however? Architect Jean-Louis Cohen describes him as serene provocator, silent dynamiter and extraordinary commentator of late twentieth century.(5) Nearly all his projects are full of provocative ideas, choosing visual drama and inventiveness over solidity and tradition. His work has caused lots of polemics and still remains the flashpoint of much disagreement. After receiving the prestigious 2003 Praemium Imperiale Architecture Award, the Japan Art Association referred to Koolhaas as "...an artist in the vanguard of architectural practice [who] breaks all the rules of function and structure, and virtually invents a new architecture. His innovative buildings examine and revise conventional expression and are marked by surprising, yet pragmatic, solutions."(6) Throughout his praxis Koolhaas is continually frustrating what is proper and expected – floors are sliding into walls, rooms are sliding between floors. His architectonic strategies and choices often challenge commonly accepted canons of good taste: e.g. the use of rubber and plastic materials for luxurious coverings, designing buildings that were top-heavy and using shapes that were out of balance.

Even though many of his ideas and theories have been evaluated as realistically impossible – thus utopian by his critics, we should agree with the Japan Art Association which had assigned his architectural solutions the important feature of pragmatism. And this could be our key to his praxis. Of course, Rem Koolhaas is an architect who has grand ideas about how to build big buildings and modern cities. His ideas and theories have been discussed, analyzed, praised and criticized within the discipline of architecture and beyond it, however, he is not a utopian thinker who dwells in his ‘flawed dreams’; he has an astute sense of the limits that architect has to face. In one of his lectures with the future architects at Rice University, Houston, Texas he has described architecture as “a dangerous profession because it is a poisonous mixture of impotence and omnipotence, in the sense that the architect almost invariably harbors megalomaniac dreams that depend upon others, and upon circumstances, to impose and to realize those fantasies and dreams.”(7) On this same note, Sanford Kwinter argues that the core of Rem Koolhaas’s architectural program has always been “to convert optimism into danger and to make that danger speak”(8), but he also admits that any “serious architecture must actually desire to be dangerous”(9). For sure Koolhaas’s architecture, determined enough to forego all the pre-given fixed types and predetermined matter, discrete domains of geometry, masonry, stone and glass, is dangerous enough to deserve the description – utopian. For him it is not the end however. The architect “works these, adapts these through transformations and deformations”(10) in order to achieve what is truly a ‘Koolhaasian’ functionally and formally. And here his pragmatic approach becomes handy. The architect has stated this to his ‘audiences’ not once that:

My work is deliberately not utopian: it is consciously trying to operate within the prevalent conditions without the suffering, disagreeing, or whatever other kind of narcissism we have, all of which may be merely a complex series of alibis to justify certain interior failings. So it is certainly critical of that kind of utopian modernism. But it still remains aligned with the force of modernization and the inevitable transformations that are engendered by this project… In other words, for me the important thing is to align and find articulation for those forces, again without any kind of purity of a utopian project. In that sense my work is positive vis-à-vis modernization but critical vis-à-vis modernism as an artistic movement.”(11)

Theory and Praxis Re-linked
Bigness has been, for nearly a century, a condition almost without thinkers, a revolution without program.(12) In order to understand Koolhaas’s pitch thoroughly, it is essential to analyze his architectural achievements within the conceptual and theoretical framework. Even though the architect himself stands against the term – utopian, certain connections with it could be made: “Koolhaas’s thinking, combined with his building, is practical Utopia; laid down in his writings is the Utopia of incipient reality. … In these times, many people see Utopias as presumptuous. They are wrong. What is perceived as presumptuous here is in reality the disruption of the existing order, which would otherwise throttle itself.”(13)

Among architects, Koolhaas is best known for his concept of the "megastructure," an extra-large building or plan meant to stimulate settlement and activity in a manner analogous to the Manhattan grid. Since the early '90s, OMA has applied this concept in its designs for a vast complex of shops, housing, offices, and master plans for peripheral zones – the wastelands of cities, the neglected industrial zones, and derelict suburban blocs. The concept of bigness incorporates a complex discourse about public architecture, about the way in which urban planning and architecture function socially, about the position of the designer, and design process as an intellectual, creative and social practice. One of his greatest concerns is public life and the extent to which architecture can still be a force to sustain it. “… In spite of its dumb name, Bigness is a theoretical domain at this fin de siècle: in a landscape of disarray, disassembly, dissociation, disclamation, the attraction of bigness is its potential to reconstruct the Whole, resurrect the Real, reinvent the collective, reclaim maximum possibility.”(14) Today when society is becoming increasingly automized and the public domain progressively more is replaced by sophisticated and entertaining forms of the private property, the social deficit appears to be an evident problem of the contemporary urban setting. Koolhaas’s concept of mega-structure presents a potential for re-examination and reorganization of the social world within the city and redefinition and rearrangement of public domain within the architecture as a part of the contemporary urban fabric. In “Delirious New York”, one of the most important works that set the pace for Koolhaas's career, he argues that each building strives to be “a city within a City.” In other writings of the time he claims that “all the latent potential of the skyscraper as a type is exploited in a masterpiece of the Culture of Congestion, a Constructivist Social Condenser…”(15) In a contemporary city where the street increasingly is becoming just a residue, a mere organizational device, development of hybrid spaces within a mega-structure starts undertaking the function of a street or a plaza. In a conceptually essential essay of 1994, he already argues that “bigness no longer needs the city: it competes with the city; it represents the city; or better still, it is the city”.(16)

Lille Master plan, Lille, France, 1994
Koolhaas was given his first extra-large project in 1989 and it was the master plan for turning million square meters within walking distance of old Lille in France into a complex of hotels, restaurants, department stores, offices, parking garages, a congress centre (Grand Palais), and a new railway station. It was called Eurallile. The enormous success of this project can be viewed as a good example of his conceptual approach to the contemporary urban development. His theory of the Generic City is a polemic against European cultural conservatism, which some may interpret as an advocacy project for destruction of old cities to replace them with clusters of hotels and shopping malls. Euralille project proves that Koolhaas is content to leave old cities alone, he just wants to take the load off them and allow them to breathe, freeing them from the intolerable strain to adapt to the urban requirements of modern life. In one of the key essays of his seminal work “S,M,L,XL”, when referring to the “old European city”, Koolhaas writes: “the stronger the identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction. Identity becomes like a lighthouse – fixed, over-determined: it can change its position or the pattern it emits only at the cost of destabilizing navigation.”(17) How much does  physical form have to determine identity, he asks, and he has argued persuasively that an exaggerated belief in the value of the old urban center, far from helping urban identity, has so weakened peripheral areas as to assure their deterioration. 

As an architect, he is fascinated not by Paris, Rome, or Amsterdam, but by Manhattan, Tokyo, and Singapore. He sees the future urban development within the boundaries of a generic city. This is a city without history and qualities, without layers, superficial like a film studio, in a process of never ending self-destruction and renewal. This city is liberated from the captivity of the centre and of identity. In this city you see homogenization, endless repetitions of the same structural module, still more varied boredom, redundancy, and déjà vu, but also a city that is fractal, discontinuous, made up of enclaves, seemingly accidental and disorderly. By making the old city centres peripheral and by taking the load off them, Koolhaas is stimulated by the wastelands of the cities – neglected industrial zones and derelict suburban zones. He sees a rich perspective in “[..] the recent, belated discovery of the periphery as a zone of potential value – kind of pre-historical condition that might finally be worthy of architectural attention…”(18) Here the architecture can afford to be more apologetic, more bold in modernity – more urban.

Before the realization of Euralille, OMA’s conceptual description of the project starts with a revealing statement: “paradoxically, at the end of the Twentieth Century, the frank admission of the Promethean ambition – like for example, to change the destiny of an entire city, is taboo”.(19) OMA’s Titanian attempt to develop Lille’s master plan in 1989 finally broke the taboo. It was described by the Financial Times as "the biggest development project in Europe". Until 1989, Lille was a melancholy dump. The textile and mining industries that once made it prosperous had collapsed, and two World Wars left horrible scars. Lille was a town to avoid until the French and the British finally completed the Channel Tunnel, closing the gap between the Continent and Britain in 1994. In addition, the conception of the idea of TGV (super-fast train) tracks running through Lille, changed the previously urban dump in North France dramatically. The hypothesis of this grand development was to change the 'experience' of Europe beyond recognition. Lille would be little more than an hour away from Paris and London – it had a magical prospect to become a European hub of constant movement. “If this hypothesis turns out to be true the city of Lille – dormant gravity centre of a conceptual triangle – London/Brussels/Paris, will magically acquire a theoretical importance as the receptacle of a wide range of uniquely 'contemporary' activities”.(20)

The vast program of Euralille had to be developed on 120 hectares on the site of the former city fortifications by Vauban – a Gordian knot of infrastructure, which OMA as a selected master planner and architect in chief had to solve. “The site of the former fortification was now a circular highway” that “competed for space with rivers of railway and the new projected underground TGV trajectory”.(21) Six key structures defined the programmatic fulfillment of the project: station as an urban artery, hotel, office tower, world trade center, commercial center and, of course, the Grand Palais or Congrexpo. Five of the structures were produced by other architects: Jean Nouvel designed the commercial centre; the station was designed by Jean-Marie Duthilleul; the office tower built on top of the railway in the shape of a giant armchair was by Christian de Portzamparc; Marie and Francois Delhay designed the hotel and Claude Vasconi did the World Trade Center. OMA saved Congrexpo, the sixth key element, for its own design. “The most important coherence [here] is not formal but programmatic – a continuous pedestrian trajectory: a viaduct leads to the station; the station is conceived as a public arcade; a diagonal axis that connects the city to the end of the new station runs through Nouvel’s commercial center. The towers become part of this urban network.”(22) Here we can see Koolhaas profound interest in program. He sees the program – what actually happens in the building – as a primary generator of the form: in this case the urban fabric of Euralille.

The Lille Grand Palais was a key component in this ambitious urban development project and, indeed, the building is seen as the driving force of Euralille. Hal Foster has compared the shape of the structure with a gigantic “deformed scallop” that combines within itself a programmatic mixture – a large concert hall, three auditoria (the “congress” part), and an exhibition space (the “expo” part). Others compare the huge oblong building with a space-age football stadium. One large exterior wall is built of thin corrugated plastic flecked with tiny pieces of aluminum. This surface creates a hard, reflective shell on the outside, but from the interior the wall is translucent. The building flows with the subtle curves which are a Koolhaas hallmark. The main entry hall has a sharply sloped concrete ceiling. On the exhibition hall ceiling, slim wood slats bows at the center. A staircase to the second floor zigzags upward, while the polished steel side wall slopes inwards, creating a wobbly mirror image of the stairs.

Euralille project, which initially seemed overambitious and chimerical, however turned out to be an enormous success both for OMA and for the old city of Lille. A bold, big, modern architectural development has revitalized a dying old city. The new Euralille did not even have to be ugly to show off the beauty of Old Lille, which is now a thriving area of fine, renovated houses, restaurants, attractive shops, as well as of squares and streets full of life. As Ian Buruma notes: “what is striking about Euralille is not its bigness, but the intricacy and complexity of its design. The different, autonomous parts are so intertwined that the whole looks magnificent in the vast, webbed, human way of a Gothic cathedral.”(23) OMA “had to insert an entirely new city… in a complicated urban condition. This synthetic new city is and isn’t part of the old town. That was the hardest thing… It has not been spawned by Lille; it has landed there.”(24) Today Euralille – this new piece of city – continues to grow at a frantic pace, creating a new economy for the region. Even though the completion of Euralille is a 14 year old history, the project, as a comparative base, is important within the current urban developments taking place in Riga.

Riga Port City, Riga, Latvia, 2006

Koolhaas’s argument that the exaggerated belief in the value of the old urban center has, in fact, caused considerable weakening of peripheral areas so assuring their deterioration, in a sense reflects the story of a territory that has been sitting unattended and neglected for years. And the story is about the former area of the Riga commercial port, known Andrejsala, the Eksporta district and some additional lots, which total in 123 hectares of land on the right bank of the Daugava. “The Riga Port is one of the last remaining dockland areas in Europe to be redeveloped. With effective planning, the relatively late discovery of the potential of this dockland can be turned into a key competitive advantage – an opportunity to avoid the mistakes of predecessors”, states OMA’s description of Riga Port City (RPC) project. Based on their expertise and rich experience in urban planning and contextual analysis, OMA was invited to prepare a conceptual blueprint of the territory in 2006. Later, by suggestion of OMA, engineering company VE ARUP & Partners Ltd. and landscape architects Inside Outside were asked to join the team. The project was managed by property development company Jaunrīgas attīstības uzņēmums Ltd (JAU). OMA’s involvement in the conceptual development of RPC project is important because it allows analyzing and explaining the architect’s theoretical concepts and praxis within a local context.

Even though Lille’s important strategic location, serving as a gravity center of three metropolises – Paris/London/Brussels, within European context is not compatible with the developmental program of RPC, the local contexts of both projects are quite similar. “In Riga the same as in Lille, a completely new and modern urban territory is going to be developed in a very close proximity to the historic center of the city. Parallels can be drawn in the program and size of the planned development, e.g. approximately 800 000 square meters in Lille and theoretical maximum of 700 000 square meters in Andrejsala. Also, the development of Andrejsala envisions an entirely new urban space (that would be) created in a very close contextual discourse with the historic center. The concepts are similar – to establish a meaningful dialogue between the old and the novel”.(25) In Koolhaas’s case, as we know from Lille, such dialog may be rooted in a sharp contrast. 

Once again, this was one of the projects where architect could express his fascination of the periphery as a zone of potential architectural value. His theoretical approach and polemic with the Old City was echoed within the conceptual blueprint of the project, affirming the Koolhaas’s position that in such places architecture, not being confined by the restrictions of identity, can afford to be more apologetic, more bold in modernity – more urban. Question, however, remains: how this polemic was received among Latvian specialists and professionals and how the developed conceptual blueprint was accepted within the further development process of the master plan of the area? Aigars Kušķis, JAU architect and the head of the development department, emphasized that the essence of the developed concept very much reflected the mission of the project: to establish a multifunctional and high-quality urban territory in the area cleared from port operation, along with the development of Riga centre towards the river Daugava.(26) It is planned that RPC will materialize in several stages, the first of which is the Andrejsala development extending in 36 hectares. The second stage, involving the Eksporta district and its adjacent lots, is planned to take place during 25 years. The Andrejsala development is envisioned as a continuous process. As Mr. Kušķis explains, “the first stage of the RPC project has currently finalized the territory's master plan and it has been submitted to Riga City Council for the final revisions and approval”.(27) Andrejsala's master plan is based on the key principles of the RPC concept developed by OMA. After public discussions and analysis of the visual impact of the proposal, the innovative vision of OMA was revised however. Most of the alterations were related to the organic integration of the new constructions in Andrejsala with the surrounding parts of the city. Was it too confrontational and overtly polemic with the identity of the Old City to be passed as such? Mr. Kušķis admits: “It seams that Rem Koolhaas is guided by the assumption that the 21st century and the global ideas have the right to freely express themselves in the new space even though if it is being developed within the traditional and site specific urban context. He is introducing a radical and attractive dialogue of two cultures and is not thinking of complying with the historical context, but, instead, he provokes or catalyzes events. Will there be a synergy or one element will dominate over the other? Koolhaas refers to the context, however, it looks that for him it is enough to take out a single element from it and to manifest it…” somewhere in the exterior while “the rest of the building is a spaceship-like structure in the 18th century city plaza”.(28) As JAU architect further explained, there were three major points that were changed. First, “the biggest alterations in the master plan were related to Koolhaas’s dynamics of the amplitude of the architectural silhouette, which was shaped by lower buildings and quite a number of high-rise structures. It was envisioned as very expressive yet it conflicted with UNESCO’s guidelines for Riga Historical Centre (RHC) as a protected cultural heritage”.(29) Secondly, organizational principle of the built territory was revised in Andrejsala, particularly in the territory that lies closer to the river Daugava. Kušķis clarified that “OMA envisioned this stretch as a park-like space accommodating free standing buildings. Expanse of the space would be balanced by the slim tower-like structures. Institutions responsible for protection and conservation of RHC however believed that it would be risky to allow such free standing building principles to be realized in so close proximity to the regular structure of RHC. They suggested that a regular grid of outdoor spaces would be more fitting. As a result, free standing building scheme is not excluded, but this freedom is instead organized by an urban grid that guarantees a certain relationship with the urban fabric of RHC”. And, thirdly, unlike the proposed compositional silhouette of the landscape, which was based on a strict formal system of the built territory and accents, “the overall height that corresponded with the height of the RHC was established. After a careful analysis of the visual impact, location areas of dispersed accentuated volumes were traced in order to secure the scenery of Old Riga silhouette and its composition with the chimneys of the old power station. Maximum height of the accentuated volumes now cannot surpass the height of RHC buildings, as well as power station’s chimneys that have been specified as the dominant elements of the vertical composition.  In such a way also the compliance with UNESCO’s guidelines was achieved”.

OMA’s conceptual blueprint of RPC once again illustrated that Rem Koolhaas is thinking BIG. The concept was challenging in its monumentality and grand scale, as well as in the projected big scale mixed use program the goal of which was to attain a synergy effect among several functions. Even though after the development of the conceptual blueprint OMA is not involved in the further process of RPC project, Koolhaas’s design for the Museum of Contemporary Art (CAM), which is projected as one of the key structures of Andrejsala, seams will be realized in form. The former thermal power station (TEC) had already since 2004 been marked as the new and multifunctional site of the future CAM(30). This was the physical material that architect had to work with, incorporate and, in a sense, give new life.

Andrejsala is a district located within former territory of industrial port next to the city center and the development vision of the territory foresees its transformation into a modern, multifunctional and attractive urban district, comprising high quality architectural features. Currently it has developed into a significant art, culture and entertainment center featuring exhibition halls, clubs, workshops, studios, a cafe and a hotel, function within the existing infrastructure. During the implementation of the RPC project, a particular attention will be paid to creation and maintenance of the environment that facilitates materialization of the values of contemporary art and culture. The role of the future CAM thus will be that of a harbor of arts and culture. As in most of his projects, Koolhaas has added to this vision a new dimension. His buildings are designed to be open to social and programmatic evolution. Koolhaas’s desire as an architect is to design the stage, not to write all of the lines to be spoken on it. “It is an open secret that the presentation of art is not the only ‘function’ of the contemporary Museum. The very success of the institution – a pivotal centre of contemporary society – has accrued additional interests and powers that require their own infrastructure, in addition, but independent from the viewing of art”(31), states OMA’s conceptual approach of the project. And he offers a new conceptual framework, imagining the museum in two parts that function in a complete mutual dependency with a maximum interface between them: “the existing power plant houses the educational, media-related and production sections of the museum. It houses a variety of experiences from video to research to public programs and performances: organized around the art without necessarily implying a direct confrontation with the art objects. The exhibition space and the museum shop are located in an extended perimeter surrounding the existing power plant: a single continuous neutral space with a flat roof and a glass façade, embedding the old in the new making the power plant work for the museum in a utilitarian rather than symbolic way”.(32)

When describing the offered design solution for the future museum, Astrīda Rogule, Head of  CAM Collection Development Department, admits that the surprising and innovative in Rem Koolhaas’s and OMA architects’ design was “the piety against the industrial heritage – the former thermal power station (TEC) and its equipment. There is nothing surprising or extraordinary in regard to the design idea itself. The concept of the building is very simple – to create a shell for the existing historical body inside of which are concentrated the zones accessible for the visitors”. When discussing the success or failure of the design features, she adds that: „It is possible to argue about good taste and, of course, all the Koolhaas’s ideas cannot be passed as ‘a priori’ extraordinary. The sketch [and the concept] is one thing, but architectural congruence with set museum functions is completely a different issue. We have reached just a halfway in our collaboration. For the new museum building (in order) to become not just an example of excellent architecture, but also a structure that is comfortable for both the employees and the visitors of the museum, the idea still should “gain some flesh” and attain the maximum practicality”.(33)

One of the principal differences between the two projects (Euralille and RPC), however, is that one of them had been completed already 14 years ago, turning out to be a ground breaking success, but the other is just in a stage of conceptual development. What is the future of the projects at this point and how realistic is their completion? Aigars Kušķis seams optimistic and emphasizes, “in order to realize the project, the fundamental provision is a justified demand for the development of this kind of territory. The developmental possibilities of Andrejsala have been analyzed broadly and there is a reason to think that the prepared development concept is well-grounded. Even OMA’s blueprint included the prevision that the development can also sequentially take place within smaller parts of the territory” and an example here is CAM project development, representing one of the defining and key structures of Andrejsala. Astrīda Rogule also emphasizes “that there are more of those who are interested in the museum rather that those who oppose its becoming a reality and that’s why I hope that there will be a museum. In December 20, 2008, we will receive the economic impact evaluation, institutional and business plan of the museum, which have been developed by Lordeurop specialists (French branch). We are also working on the development of the program of museum design requirements”. Still, utopia or reality is the question? In this case, it seams, the possible result is not restrained by the flawed visions of the architect, but the volatile politic and economic environment of the country.

Freedom and Architecture
The discovery and empowerment of the relation that can be established between architecture and liberty is one of the cores that features the praxis and writings of Koolhaas. “Let us free architecture of the responsibilities that it can no longer assume and let us aggressively explore this newly released freedom.”(34) Koolhaas believes that architecture finishes freedom, exhausting it: “Where there is nothing, everything is possible. Where there is architecture, nothing (else) is possible.”(35) Through such a contradiction between architecture and program, he calls for a maximum of program and a minimum of architecture, as if saying that today the architect should erect buildings that do not restrict freedom of action and the freedom of movement that characterizes contemporary culture. Seattle Central Library is a striking example that reflects this Koolhaasian dynamics between architecture, program and freedom.

Koolhaas embarked on a long study of libraries and what they might mean in the digital age before designing the new public library for Seattle. His conceptual approach to the Seattle public library was to answer the question of what the library will become in the 21st century? "New libraries don't reinvent or even modernize the traditional institution; they merely package it in a new way."(36) Today “the library represents, maybe with the prison, the last of the uncontested moral universes. The moral goodness of the library is intimately connected to the conceptual values of the book: the library is its fortress…”(37) Rapid technological development of the 21st century, however, presents a serious threat to this last standing citadel, which, if not yet in a stage of shattered mind or schizophrenia, experiences a serious identity crisis – “the library seems threatened…” by this “marauding hoard of technologies”.(38) OMA’s ambition therefore was to redefine the library as an institution no longer exclusively dedicated to the book, but “as an information store where all potent forms of media – new and old – are presented equally and legibly. In an age where information can be accessed anywhere, it is the simultaneity of all media and the curatorship of their contents that will make the library vital.”(39)

Koolhaas's new Seattle Library could confirm his reputation as the most influential architect in the world. During his career, library as a social, even populist project have taken a special interest. For him they represent not just giant “information warehouses”, but also comprise more complex discourse about public architecture, about the way in which urban planning and architecture function socially. In response to the “erosion” of the public domain, succumbing to ever increasing appearance of the private, the library stands as the last repository of the free and the public. The incorporation of an indoor public space therefore was one of the most important programmatic provisions.

When OMA designed the building, they did what architects often do – they made a diagram: “it was, essentially, five boxes”, each representing a programmatic cluster. “The book stacks were one box, the administrative offices were another, and there were boxes for staff work areas, meeting rooms, and below-ground parking. Then they did something remarkable. For all intents and purposes, they built the diagram. They sketched the boxes floating in space and placed the large public areas – the Living Room, the Mixing Chamber, and the Reading Room – above and below them, surrounded by glass. Turning a diagram into an actual architectural form seems like something of a parlor trick.” The building is divided into eight horizontal layers, each varying in size to fit its function. A structural steel and glass skin unifies the multifaceted form and defines the public spaces in-between. The building has a logic to it: functional sections are the starting point, but they are placed so that the spaces between them are large enough and spectacular enough to produce powerful architectural effects. The glass skin is thrown over the entire structure, like a blanket. The diamond pattern in the skin is actually seismic bracing, engineered to protect the building in the event of an earthquake or strong winds. Stairs and escalators represent vertical circulation or trajectory of the structure. They are painted bright yellow, except for a grand staircase that leads, through a mouth-like opening, to the public meeting rooms. These stairs, in contrast, are painted bright red, as are the cavernous corridors off which the meeting rooms open.

“While Frank Gehry remains the most famous architect in the world, for more than a decade Koolhaas… has been the most influential. A few architects have a sharper theoretical edge than Koolhaas, and a few create more exciting spaces. But nobody – not even Gehry – produces buildings that are simultaneously so intellectually ambitious and so shamelessly populist."(40) And this is the meaning of the Central Library. It thinks its way beyond our dualistic tendency to polarize things. The interplay between the two elements is present in every space of the library. One of the programmatic platforms, called the Books Spiral, epitomizes this approach. Designed to place roughly 75 percent of the library's collection in accessible, open space, this is the largest of the five platforms. It is a continuous, square ramp, four levels in height that provides ease and clarity of circulation as well as storage for books. “Instead of a simple stacking of floors, sections of each level are manipulated to touch those above and below; all the planes are connected by a single trajectory, a warped interior boulevard that exposes and relates to all programmatic elements. The visitor becomes a Baudelairean flaneur, inspecting and being seduced by a world of books and information – by the urban scenario.”(41) It is possible to recognize this feature from an un-built library he designed in the early 1990's for the Jussieu campus of the University of Paris on the Left Bank where critics thought that “the spiral concept defied gravity, common sense and safety. As realized, it is an entirely pragmatic solution to a common institutional problem: how to accommodate an expanding collection of books without having to divide particular fields of information over more than one floor. The form was fabricated using parking lot construction technology”.(42)

Above the stacks area, on the tenth floor, is a spectacular reading room, with slanted glass walls. The room has an unusual perspective on the Seattle skyline. Just below the stacks is a room full of computers. Koolhaas calls it the Mixing Chamber. The Mixing Chamber is simply a reinterpretation of the traditional library reference room. People who visit it are directed to the books they need. Koolhaas has a special verbiage for the programmatic platforms of the library. He calls an expansive, atrium-style lobby the Living Room. The Living Room is a splendid vestibule that anoints the act of reading with grandeur and civic pride.

There is a public route through the library, providing connection between Fourth Avenue and Fifth. OMA’s partner in charge, Joshua Ramus, explains, “we wanted to create a sense of moving between urban spaces and not spaces in a building". And, it seams, they have succeeded, creating a narrative like building. Herbert Muschamp suggests that “it may be useful to see the Central Library as a series of episodes in urban space. There are crowd scenes and moments of intense solitary absorption. Intense vertigo gives way to erotic stimulation. Over here, you're an actor, over there a spectator.”(43)

The library's exterior is an angular composition of folded planes. Walls are of glass, supported by a diagonal grid of light blue metal that covers almost the entire surface. At first glance, the irregular angles, folds and shapes seem arbitrary. Its four elevations are different and the profile changes constantly. Tapered facets create the effect of forced perspective, altering the apparent dimensions of the building envelope. Planes that initially look rectangular are seen on closer inspection to be trapezoidal. Its design suggests movement and energy – the vocabulary is modern, but it is an exuberant modernism, colorful and intense and full of shifting, complex geometries. In Seattle, he is trusting in a powerful form of copper mesh in a glass façade to create a physical space exciting enough to make the library, once again, a kind of common room for a larger community. Here, as in so much of his work, he is using architecture to create real space that will be compelling enough not just to exist in the age of virtual space, but to ennoble it.

Master of Hybrid or Disney Spaces?

As with Seattle Public Library, Koolhaas has studied shopping and consumerism before taking on the project of creating a new generation of retail stores for Prada. His Prada designs are based on the notion that the store is increasingly becoming a place of events, a place of theater. He is taking this one step further and making the store literally an environment for performances.

Already for some time OMA had been working on new buildings for Prada in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other metropolises of the world. Even though there are already scores of Prada stores, the Italian fashion company wanted to experiment with new environments that can enhance the appeal of its brand. OMA's answer to the request involved stores that are beautiful public spaces offering local benefits – and are largely free from labels. The Los Angeles Prada will have no name on it; New York's will incorporate cultural activities separate from the retail areas. Anybody can rip off a look, but a highly specific environment that offers something to the public without imposing a sales pitch – in other words, a local landmark – is a way to make a brand seem more substantial.

In Prada’s projects, Koolhaas applies a deconstructive method of rhetorical reversal of special identities: if the museum tends toward the store today, Koolhaas asks in Prada book, why not a store that serves, at least in part, as a museum? One of the key concepts for the stores was a variety of spaces within a store: what if the shopping experience were not one of impoverishment, but of enrichment? What if the typologies were reversed, introducing non-commercial special elements. And now the store functions as a Galleria, Street, a Public Area for other activities.

Los Angeles store is a piece of architecture whose most dramatic gesture is invisible: the building is completely lacking a storefront in the traditional sense. “The façade towards Rodeo Drive is literally non-existent – without the classical storefront and glass enclosures, the entire width of the store opens up to the street and merges public with commercial space. The climatic separation is achieved through an air-curtain system, invisible security antennas guarantee the control of the store.”(44) As Koolhaas himself has commented, “we wanted to use this absence of façade to let the public enter absolutely freely, to create a hybrid condition between public and commercial space.”(45)

The firm explored a similar public-private mixture in its Manhattan flagship for Prada, which occupies a prominent corner in SoHo. Here he has designed a display room by day that can be used as a performance theater at night. Evaluating this Koolhaas’s ambition, critic Hal Foster describes it as more “Disney Space” than alternative space however. The idea in New York was to shake up Prada's reputation as one of the most exclusive brands in fashion by stressing an openness, even what Koolhaas calls an ''easy'' and ''welcoming'' quality.

Through his Prada stores Koolhaas has tried come up with a hybrid space, describing the store, for instance, a reinvention of the retail experience and even as a new sort of public space.

Architectural Petri Dish
Today, from the point of view of the discipline, Asia can be described as an architectural Petri dish where unprecedented level of modernization and urban development occurs and Koolhaas, “a showman, architecturally and intellectually… clearly enjoys a big stage.(46) It seems more likely that in the coming years we shall see him spending more time in China and other quickly developing nations, where architectural spectacle thrives and clients demand bold, signature buildings. In regard to this tendency, Koolhaas, however, points out a distinction: “as far as the experience of building goes, the strongest impulse will undoubtedly come from China and the Middle East, and probably from India, as well. Things get more complex when it comes to thinking. The intellectual force of the West is still dominant, but other cultures are getting stronger. I expect that we will develop a new way of thinking in architecture and urban planning, and that less will be based on our models. The unanswered question is whether our cooperation, this internationalization, will result in a common language of architecture, whether we will speak two different languages or whether there will be a mixture of the two.”(47)

In one of his meetings with UC Berkeley architecture students he revealed unpleasant truths about contemporary building practices. He informed the students, who spend years in school and then more years in grueling apprenticeships, that, in China, 40-story buildings are designed on Macintoshes in less than a week. In the context of this hyper-development, the traditional architectural values – composition, aesthetics, balance – are irrelevant. The speed of international demands is completely out of pace with the ability of traditional designers to respond. Each year in the Pearl River Delta, he told them, 500 square kilometers of urban substance are created. Western architects, by comparison, build nothing. They are virtually extinct.

The building boom in China particularly has provoked an ethical debate within the discipline. Globalization takes its own route though and many architectural companies, including OMA, direct their attention toward large-scale urban developments that the foreign markets offer. Beijing is an excellent example and Koolhaas’s designed headquarters of China Central Television (CCTV) has already acquired a status of city’s landmark.

The new building involves two 'L' shaped high-rise towers linked at the top and the bottom at an angle to form a loop, which has been described as a 'Z' criss-cross. This radical, looping structure stands as an antidote to the typical skyscraper, as well as its programmatic vision makes a direct link to the architect’s greatest concern – public life and the extent to which architecture can be a force to sustain it. By creating this unique icon of Beijing, Koolhaas is, as if     investigating new typologies of skyscrapers. Time magazine suggests that this tetrahedronal structure, a virtual factory whose direct purpose is to make information flow in bulk, will be the most radically re-imagined tall building in the world. Does that mean that skyscrapers, the icons of the 20th century, are on their way out? Koolhaas has his own pitch in this. He explains that “there were many typologies of building in the early 20th century. Today we have essentially only two of them: the house and the tower, and nothing in between. I see few indications that this is changing. In fact, we are experiencing a veritable apotheosis of the tower in Russia and China. But perhaps some typologies only experience their mystification when they are in fact already dead.”(48)

Rising at 768 feet , the 5.1 million square foot building comprises a pair of towers sloping 6 degrees on both X and Y axes, a 9 story base connecting the two towers, and a 13 story overhang that connects them starting at the 36th floor. Ole Scheeren, OMA’s partner in charge of the project and head of the firm’s Beijing office, calls the overhang an “urban plateau” “that lifts space off the ground but also makes it accessible to the public”.(49) The concept of the project is to create connectedness – through, first, architectural program and, second, formal features of the building. And here Sullivan’s "form follows function" fits perfectly. “CCTV combines administration and offices, news and broadcasting, program production and services – the entire process of TV-making – in a loop of interconnected activities. Two structures rise from a common production platform that is partly underground”.(50) The idea here is to breakdown organizational silos and spark creativity and collaboration. Scheeren also explains that “the linear principle of hierarchy is dissolved in a circuit of equal parts without beginning or end, without top or bottom. [..] the idea of  connecting the program in an equal way without any one section dominating was the starting point of the architecture”.[51] CCTV, yet to be completed(52), represents one of the best examples of Koolhaas’s mega-structure along with its conceptual potential for re-examination and reorganization of the social world within the city and redefinition and rearrangement of public domain within the architecture as a part of the contemporary urban fabric.

(1) Ian Buruma, “The Sky’s the Limit.” In Veronique Patteeuw (edit.), Considering Rem Kolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, 2003), p. 54.
(2) Starchitect [star + architect] is a term used to describe architects whose celebrity and critical acclaim have transformed them into idols of the architecture world.
(3) Moneo, Raphael. Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects (The MIT Press, 2004), p. 311.
(4) Foster, Hal. Design and Crime (and Other Diatribes) (Verso, 2002), p. 45.
(5) Jean-Louis Cohen, “The Rational Rebel, or the Urban Agenda of OMA” in: Jacques Lucan (ed.). OMA/Rem Koolhaas (New York, 1991), p. 9.
(6) “Rem Koolhaas Praemium Imperiale,” Architecture Week. 06 August 2003, page N1.1
(7) Kwinter, Sanford (ed.). Rem Koolhaas: conversations with students (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), pp. 12 – 13.
(8) Ibid, p. 68.
(9) Ibid, p. 68.
(10) Ibid, p. 69.
(11) Kwinter, Sanford (ed.). Rem Koolhaas: conversations with students (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), p. 65.
(12) Koolhaas, Rem and Mau, Bruce. S, M, L, XL (The Monacelli Press, 1995), p. 499.
(13) H.J.A. Hofland “Identity as Handicap.” In Veronique Patteeuw (edit.), Considering Rem Kolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, 2003), p. 48. Emphasis is made by author (D.D.).
(14) Koolhaas, Rem and Mau, Bruce. S, M, L, XL (The Monacelli Press, 1995), p. 510.
(15) Koolhaas, Rem, “Life in the Metropolis, or, The Culture of Congestion,” Architectural Design 5 (1977), p. 320.
(16) Ibid, p. 511.
(17) Koolhaas, Rem and Mau, Bruce. S, M, L, XL (The Monacelli Press, 1995), p. 1248.
(18) Ibid, p. 1248 – 49.
(19) Euralille project description. Available on: www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_projects&view=project&id=211&Itemid=10. Accessed on: June 15, 2008.
(20) Euralille project description. Available on: www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_projects&view=project&id=211&Itemid=10. Accessed on: June 15, 2008.
(21) Koolhaas, Rem and Mau, Bruce. S, M, L, XL (The Monacelli Press, 1995), p. 1162
(22) Ibid, p. 1184.
(23) Ian Buruma, “The Sky’s the Limit” in: Jacques Lucan (ed.). OMA/Rem Koolhaas (New York, 1991), p. 70.
(24) Koolhaas, Rem and Mau, Bruce. S, M, L, XL (The Monacelli Press, 1995), p. 1160.
(25) Interview with Aigars Kušķis. Interview conducted by author in August 28, 2008.
(26) Ibid.
(27) Ibid.
(28) Here Mr. Kušķis refers to Koolhaas’s Casa de Musica in Porto.
(29) High-rise buildings are not permitted in this protected sector.
(30) All information and facts about Andrejsala project development are obtained from its official website: www.andrejsala.lv.
(31) Riga Contemporary Art Museum project description. Available on: www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_projects&view=project&id=211&Itemid=10. Accessed on: June 15, 2008.
(32) Ibid.
(33) Interview with Astrīda Rogule. Conducted by the author in September 9, 2008.
(34) Rem Koolhaas quoted in Aurora Cuito (ed.), Rem Koolhaas: OMA (Te Neues Publishing Company, 2002), p. 6.
(35) Koolhaas, Rem and Mau, Bruce. S, M, L, XL (The Monacelli Press, 1995), p. 199.
(36) OMA’s Concept Book quoted in: Such, Robert, “Seattle Public Library,” Architecture Week. 20 April 2005, p. D1.2 .
(37) Conceptual description of the Seattle Public Library.
(38) Ibid.
(39) Ibid.
(40) Hawthorne, Christopher. “Going Dutch.” Slate. Available at: slate.msn.com/id/2098574/. Viewed on August 12, 2008.
(41) Koolhaas, Rem and Mau, Bruce. S, M, L, XL (The Monacelli Press, 1995), pp. 1318 – 1324.
(42) Herbert Muschamp. “ARCHITECTURE; The Library That Puts on Fishnets and Hits the Disco”. The New York Times. May 16, 2004. Available on: query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9507e1dd103cf935a25756c0a9629c8b63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=3. Accessed in: July 20, 2008.
(43) Ibid.
(44) Description of Los Angeles Prada store. Available at OMA official website: http://www.oma.eu. Accessed in August 2, 2008.
(45) Rem Koolhaas quoted in: Christopher Hawthorne “Capt. Koolhaas  Sails the New Prada Flagship”. The New York Times. July 15, 2004. Available on: query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E4D6163AF936A25754C0A9629C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2. Viewed in: July 15, 2008.
(46) Hawthorne, Christopher. “Going Dutch.” Slate. Available at: slate.msn.com/id/2098574/. Viewed on August 12, 2008.
(47) Interview with Rem Koolhaas. Interview conducted by Stephan Burgdorff and Bernhard Zand. “An Obsessive Compulsion towards the Spectacular”, Spiegel Online International. Available: www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,566655-2,00.html. Viewed on: August 15, 2008.
(48) Ibid.
(49) Tuchman, Janice. “China Central Television. OMA and ARUP reimagine the skyscraper as a giant loop rather than a tower.” Architectural Record. No 7, 2008, p. 126.
(50) Project description at: www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_projects&view=project&id=55&Itemid=10
(51) Ole Scheeren quoted in: Tuchman, Janice. “China Central Television. OMA and ARUP re-imagine the skyscraper as a giant loop rather than a tower.” Architectural Record. No 7, 2008, p. 126.
(52) The CCTV is set for completion at the end of 2009.