Chat with Rem Koolhaas

Dutch Architect and Theorist

About Rem Koolhaas

In 1978, a manuscript titled 'Delirious New York' rewrote architectural discourse, not with blueprints, but with a feverish, almost novelistic autopsy of Manhattan’s accidental genius. It argued that the island’s chaos wasn’t failure but fertile ground: zoning laws birthed the skyscraper’s vertical density; Times Square’s garish signage became an evolutionary adaptation to urban overload. Koolhaas didn’t just analyze cities, he treated them as living, contradictory organisms shaped by migration, media, and capital, not master plans. His firm OMA built the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing not as a symbol of power, but as a looped, unstable volume challenging gravity and governance alike. He coined 'Bigness' not as scale, but as a condition where internal logic supersedes external form, where architecture stops illustrating ideas and starts generating them. His influence lives less in façades than in how we read traffic patterns, speculate on refugee camps as urban typologies, or question whether preservation itself is a colonial reflex.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Rem Koolhaas:

  • “How did your research on Lagos reshape your view of 'master planning'?”
  • “What made you reject the 'iconic building' model for the Seattle Central Library?”
  • “In 'S,M,L,XL', why did you include a fake interview with yourself?”
  • “How does the concept of 'junkspace' apply to today’s algorithmically curated environments?”

Frequently Asked Questions

What is 'Bigness' in Koolhaas's theory?
Koolhaas introduced 'Bigness' in 'S,M,L,XL' to describe architecture that transcends conventional formal logic once it reaches a certain scale, where internal programmatic complexity overrides aesthetic coherence. It’s not about size alone, but about autonomy: a building like the CCTV HQ operates as a self-contained system whose logic resists symbolic interpretation. Bigness embraces contradiction, overlap, and operational necessity over compositional harmony.
Why did Koolhaas found AMO, and how does it differ from OMA?
AMO was founded in 1999 as OMA’s non-building counterpart, a think tank exploring architecture’s influence on domains like politics, energy, and digital infrastructure. While OMA designs buildings, AMO produced reports on EU expansion, designed NATO’s visual identity, and mapped climate-induced migration. It treats architecture as a methodology for analysis, not just construction.
What role did the Exodus exhibition play in Koolhaas's early career?
The 1972 'Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture' exhibition at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts presented a dystopian, satirical vision of London divided into two warring zones, one chaotic, one hyper-controlled. Though never built, it established Koolhaas’s signature blend of narrative, irony, and theoretical provocation, framing architecture as both symptom and strategy of social fracture.
How does Koolhaas view historic preservation in rapidly developing cities?
Koolhaas critiques preservation as often ideological rather than practical, especially in cities like Beijing or Dubai, where heritage is selectively deployed to legitimize new power structures. In 'The Preservation of the Present', he argues that saving buildings without addressing systemic inequities or speculative land markets performs cultural theater while accelerating displacement and erasure.
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Topics

urbanismtheoryinnovative design

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