The Swerve
The late Koolhaas is not a Koolhaas lite. Having turned seventy, and forty years after founding his Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975, the Dutch architect and writer has given his vital and intellectual path a new turn. Architecture, howev
Looking for Koolhaas
This monograph was begun twenty years ago, started to take shape ten years later, and finally comes to light now, when all of us involved in it have changed, and so has the world. An explanation of the delay is in order, along with some information o
Twenty Works
Prada Epicenter, New York
The New York Prada Epicenter is a conversion of a space in SoHo previously belonging to the Guggenheim. The Wave – a curving space scooped out of the ground floor and opening it up to the basement – is the main element facilitating experimentation in
Guggenheim Hermitage & Las Vegas, Las Vegas
The Guggenheim Las Vegas and the Guggenheim Hermitage, at The Venetian Hotel-Casino of Las Vegas, opened in 2001 and closed in 2003 and 2008, respectively. The first one, a ‘large box’ of 6,000 square meters, with a stately central staircase in a lim
Netherlands Embassy, Berlin
After the Fall of the Berlin Wall, planning guidelines for the reconstruction of Berlin demanded that new buildings reflect the local 19th century architectural style. Located in Mitte, in the old East section and by the Spree, the project proposes a
McCormick Tribune Campus Center, Chicago
The aim of the project was to reinvigorate the IIT Campus, planned by Mies van der Rohe in the 1940s. Over the years the campus had sprawled but lost half its population, and was separated by elevated railway tracks. The competition called for a new
Seattle Central Library, Seattle
Within a city plan to extend and modernize the public network of reading centers, the project sets out to redefine the concept of archive, creating a civic space for the circulation of knowledge in all media, and an innovative organizing system for a
Seoul National University Museum, Seoul
Defined by its location on the side of a hill and close to the entrance to the university, the building’s form was conceived as a basic rectangular box, with a diagonal cut that adjusts to the incline of the hill. The form is then raised over a centr
Casa da Música, Oporto
Despite the attempts to escape the shoebox-shaped auditorium, experience shows that this type of concert hall offers the best acoustics. In this case, the design chosen reinterprets the type, redefining the relationship of the concert hall with the e
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion 2006, London
Each summer since the year 2000 London’s Serpentine Gallery raises a temporary pavilion by its building in Kensington Gardens. The Serpentine commissions experimental pieces to internationally acclaimed architects. Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind, Toyo
Ruhr Museum and Visitors Center, Essen
The Zollverein mine was closed in 1986 and had become since then a sanctuary of industrial architecture, which Unesco declared a World Heritage Site in 2001. OMA was hired to develop the master plan to give the complex a contemporary use. The largest
Prada Transformer, Seoul
Located in the gardens of Gyeonghuigung Palace in the Korean capital, the Prada Transformer pavilion was conceived as a lightweight and adaptable piece that could accommodate a broad range of fashion, art and movie events during 2009, and whose image
Dee and Charles Wyly Theater, Dallas
Una configuración escénica flexible es la protagonista de este prisma de aluminio estriado, cuyo interior acoge una serie cajas apiladas de diferentes alturas que contienen el programa.
Milstein Hall at Cornell University, Ithaca
Milstein Hall is the first new building to go up for Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art and Planning in a hundred years. Without succumbing to stylistic mimicry but at the same time avoiding isolation in the environment, the building i
Rothschild Headquarters, London
Settled in London since 1809, when Nathan Meyer Rothschild left Manchester and established residence in the city, Rothschild’s premises are located in an urban area with a rich architectural heritage, in the heart of the City of London, adjacent to S
CCTV Television Station and Headquarters, Beijing
Located in the Central Business District, the 473,000-square-meter building houses the production and control phases of over 250 channels. The complex also includes a public cultural center with a hotel and the Media Park, a gardened area for filming
The Interlace, Singapur
On an eight-hectare plot in Southern Ridges, the residential complex rounds off a nine-kilometer green belt filled with parks and recreational facilities. Thirty-one apartment blocks, each six stories high and of the same length, are stacked in a hex
Shanzhen Stock Exchange Headquarters, Shenzen
With its rigorous prism of offices on a podium floating 36 meters above ground, Shenzhen’s new stock exchange mirrors the no less afloat nature of financial capital. It rises 254 meters and 46 floors with a usable area of 265,000 square meters (85,00
De Rotterdam Building, Rotterdam
De Rotterdam is conceived as a vertical city: three interconnected mixed-use towers accommodating offices, apartments, a hotel, conference facilities, shops, restaurants, and cafes. The towers are part of the ongoing redevelopment of the old harbor d
G-Star Raw Headquarters, Amsterdam
Situated in an industrial area southeast of Amsterdam, the new headquarters for G-Star Raw will consolidate disparate facilities into a single building that aims to stimulate interaction between various departments. The 27,500-square-meter horizontal
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow
El Museo Garage en Moscú da cuenta del interés de Koolhaas por el patrimonio, y sugiere un modo desacomplejado de trabajar con las ruinas de la arquitectura moderna.
Prada Foundation, Milan
Cobijada entre los muros de una vieja destilería, la nueva sede milanesa de la Fondazione Prada da lecciones inesperadas sobre cómo intervenir sin complejos en el patrimonio.
Ten Projects
Taipei Performing Arts Center, Taipei
The Taipei Performing Arts Center takes on an innovative role as cultural container for big events. While the world of theater and the performing arts has evolved a lot over the last century, the design of performing centers maintains the traditional
Bryghusprojektet, Copenhague
Bryghusprojektet is a mixed use building that takes up a strategic position in the historic waterfront of the city, between the culturally rich Slotsholmen district and the city center. The project creates new links between these areas, respecting tr
Stadskantoor, Rotterdam
The Stadskantoor is a new building for the city hall that will accommodate services, offices, residential units, shops and parking in the center of Rotterdam. Attached to another municipal building from 1953, the new building wishes to adjust to its
Campus de la Universidad Chu Hai, Hong Kong
On a verdant hill overlooking Castle Peak Bay in Hong Kong’s New Territories, the new campus of Chu Hai College comprises three faculties (with ten departments), two research centers, staff housing and education facilities for students such as librar
Musée National des Beaux-Arts (MNBAQ), Quebec
The extension of the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec sits amid the other three existing buildings, already belonging to the institution, and that make up a complex on the edge of the park. The project tries to establish new relationships betw
Alexis de Tocqueville Library, Caen (project stage)
Located on one of the docks over the River Orne as it flows through Caen, the Bibliothèque Multimédia à Vocation Régionale (BMVR) sits at the tip of a peninsula historically devoted to the port activities and that is now undergoing a redevelopment pr
Parc des Expositions (PEX), Toulouse
The new Parc des Expositions of Toulouse, known as PEX, sits on a 60-hectare site of agricultural land at the edge of the city, near an international airport and one of the largest and economically important Airbus factories. This area on the outskir
Lab City at the École Centrale Paris, Gif-sur-Yvette
Located on the outskirts of the French capital, the École Centrale Paris is one of the oldest and most prestigious engineering schools in the country. Within an internal restructuring program, the school called a competition in 2012 to build a new sc
Campus Axel Springer, Berlin
The German publishing group Axel Springer is currently shifting from print to digital media. To launch this move the company decided to call a competition to extend its Berlin headquarters with a new building that would act both as a symbol and as a
11th Street Bridge Park, Washingon DC
The competition for the design of a garden bridge over the park at Anacostia Crossing, bordering on the river of the same name as it goes by the urban center of Washington DC, aimed to promote sustainable urban transit and to connect the green areas
Twelve Takes
Exquisite Corpse
The cynical lucidity of Rem Koolhaas is fascinating and perverse. An apologist of urban chaos and metropolitan congestion, this Dutchman born in Rotterdam in 1944 has placed a sharp pupil and a muscular mind at the service of a cruel mission. The Lil
Silver Brick
This enormous book is small when compared to the ambition of its author. Its nearly three kilograms will sprain the reader’s wrist, and its 1,400 pages of mental, graphic, and typographic torment will tax his patience, but forms and ideas which are s
Asian Fever
Jiang Zemin was cheered on Wall Street and jeered at Harvard University. But the New York Stock Exchange had that same week suffered its greatest shock of the past ten years on account of the drop of share prices in the old British colony of Hong Kon
Herod in Jerusalem
The controversial Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas received the year 2000 Pritzker Prize in front of the ciclopean walls of the city of Jerusalem.
Bitter Heroes
These are times of toxic talent and bitter heroes. The French novelist Michel Houellebecq and the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas fall under this category of mediatic figures who practice social criticism through extreme integration in a landscape they
Learning in Las Vegas
History will absolve RobertVenturi.The great American architect and theorist preached, back in the sixties and seventies, a pop architecture that was more attentive to the ordinary than to the heroic, more sensitive to common tastes than to the refin
The Show Must Go On
The new art museums of Koolhaas in Las Vegas eloquently express the commercialization and trivialization of high culture in the contemporary world.
Asia on One Hand, Europe on the Other
And New York in the distance. The results of the Ground Zero competition were announced on 27 February, and the next day The New York Times graciously divided its front page between a picture of an ecstatic Daniel Libeskind beside the model of his pr
The Butterflys Fate: In Praise of the Oxymoron
I'am glad it’s all over. This joint venture between Rem and Jacques was doomed from the start. — You mean to say you were hoping it would fail. Mixing fire and water never appealed to you. — On the contrary! Rem thought that many were waiting to be d
Foam Rubber Avant-Garde
With the exhibition and book Content, Rem Koolhaas strikes again. The provocative Dutch architect sums up the past seven years of his career with a show in Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie that scatters 300 objects and models in the interior of Mies van
Estética Stealth
Jacob will never forget the day Rem Koolhaas introduced him to the pleasures of meat. The son of the director of the Seattle Public Library had decided to give up his vegetarian diet and the architect treated him to dinner at Wild Ginger, ordering al
Hovering Volumes
Porto now has an icon. The Casa da Música of Rem Koolhaas will soon appear in tourist brochures and attract the usual flux of architecture-savvy visitors. The enthusiasm for emblematic constructions that the ‘Guggenheim effect’ has awakened in polit
Luis Fernández-Galiano
El giro The Swerve
Luis Fernández-Galiano
Buscando a Koolhaas Looking for Koolhaas
Veinte obras Twenty Works
Prada Epicenter, 2000-2001, Nueva York (Estados Unidos)
Prada Epicenter, 2000-2001, New York (United States)
Guggenheim Hermitage & Las Vegas, 2001, Las Vegas (Estados Unidos)
Guggenheim Hermitage & Las Vegas, 2001, Las Vegas (United States)
Embajada de los Países Bajos, 1997-2003, Berlín (Alemania)
Netherlands Embassy, 1997-2003, Berlin (Germany)
Centro de estudiantes IIT McCormick Tribune, 1997-2003, Chicago (Estados Unidos)
IIT McCormick Tribune Campus Center, 1997-2003, Chicago (United States)
Biblioteca Central, 1999-2004, Seattle (Estados Unidos)
Central Library, 1999-2004, Seattle (United States)
Museo de la Universidad Nacional, 1997-2005, Seúl (Corea del Sur)
National University Museum, 1997-2005, Seoul (South Korea)
Casa da Música, 1999-2005, Oporto (Portugal)
Casa da Música, 1999-2005, Porto (Portugal)
Pabellón de la Serpentine Gallery, 2006, Londres (Reino Unido)
Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, 2006, London (United Kingdom)
Museo del Ruhr y centro de visitantes, 2006-2007, Essen (Alemania)
Ruhr Museum and Visitors Center, 2006-2007, Essen (Germany)
Prada Transformer, 2008-2009, Seúl (Corea del Sur)
Prada Transformer, 2008-2009, Seoul (South Korea)
Teatro Dee y Charles Wyly, 2004-2009, Dallas (Estados Unidos)
Dee and Charles Wyly Theater, 2004-2009, Dallas (United States)
Milstein Hall en la Universidad de Cornell, 2006-2011, Ithaca (Estados Unidos)
Milstein Hall at Cornell University, 2006-2011, Ithaca (United States)
Sede de Rothschild, 2005-2011, Londres (Reino Unido)
Rothschild Headquarters, 2005-2011, London (United Kingdom)
Canal de televisión y sede de la CCTV, 2002-2012, Pekín (China)
CCTV Television Station and Headquarters, 2002-2012, Beijing (China)
The Interlace, 2009-2013, Singapur (Singapur)
The Interlace, 2009-2013, Singapore (Singapore)
Sede de la Bolsa, 2006-2013, Shenzhen (China)
Stock Exchange Headquarters, 2006-2013, Shenzhen (China)
Edificio De Rotterdam, 1997-2013, Rotterdam (Países Bajos)
De Rotterdam Building, 1997-2013, Rotterdam (Netherlands)
Sede de G-Star Raw, 2012-2013, Amsterdam (Países Bajos)
G-Star Raw Headquarters, 2012-2013, Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Museo Garage de Arte Contemporáneo, 2012-2015, Moscú (Rusia)
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, 2012-2015, Moscow (Russia)
Fundación Prada, 2008-2015, Milán (Italia)
Prada Foundation, 2008-2015, Milan (Italy)
Diez proyectos Ten Projects
Centro de Artes Escénicas, 2008-, Taipéi (China)
Performing Arts Center, 2008-, Taipei (China)
Bryghusprojektet, 2008-, Copenhague (Dinamarca)
Bryghusprojektet, 2008-, Copenhagen (Denmark)
Stadskantoor, 2009-, Rotterdam (Países Bajos)
Stadskantoor, 2009-, Rotterdam (Netherlands)
Campus de la Universidad Chu Hai, 2009-, Hong Kong (China)
Chu Hai College, 2009-, Hong Kong (China)
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (MNBAQ), 2010-, Quebec (Canadá)
Musée National des Beaux-Arts (MNBAQ), 2010-, Quebec (Canada)
Biblioteca multimedia, 2010-, Caen (Francia)
Multimedia Library, 2010-, Caen (France)
Parque de Exposiciones (PEX), 2011-, Toulouse (Francia)
Parc des Expositions (PEX), 2011-, Toulouse (France)
Lab City de la École Centrale Paris, 2012-, Gif-sur-Yvette (Francia)
Lab City at the École Centrale Paris, 2012-, Gif-sur-Yvette (France)
Campus Axel Springer, 2014-, Berlín (Alemania)
Axel Springer Campus, 2014-, Berlin (Germany)
11th Street Bridge Park, 2014-, Washington DC (Estados Unidos)
11th Street Bridge Park, 2014-, Washington DC (United States)
Doce tomasTwelve Takes
Luis Fernández-Galiano
Un cadáver exquisito Exquisite Corpse
Un adoquín de plata Silver Brick
La fiebre asiática Asian Fever
Herodes en Jerusalén Herod in Jerusalem
Los héroes amargos Bitter Heroes
Aprendiendo en Las Vegas Learning in Las Vegas
El espectáculo debe continuar The Show Must Go On
Asia a un lado, al otro Europa Asia on One Hand, Europe on the Other
El destino de la mariposa The Butterfly’s Fate
Vanguardia de gomaespuma Foam Rubber Avant-Garde
Estética Stealth Stealth Aesthetic
Volúmenes en vilo Suspended Volumes
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