Summary: The book presents an ethnographic account of the design rhythm in the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Written as a collection of short stories, it draws on the mundane trajectories of models and architects at the OMA. Includes photo documentation on various projects: the Seattle Public Library, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), la Casa da Musica in Porto, etc.
The long-anticipated monograph on OMA New York by Shohei Shigematsu and Jason Long is sure to be the design and architecture book of the season. Presenting more than 20 radical architectural projects from a new generation of the firm, this mammoth volume is the first compendium by OMA, since Content and Rem Koolhaas’s S, M, L, XL. Well into its fourth decade, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), founded by Rem Koolhaas in 1975, remains one of the most influential and successful practices of its kind. OMA describes itself as “a firm operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism that applies architectural thinking to domains beyond.” OMA New York, has grown from an American outpost to a full-fledged operation with its own attitudes, contributing to the evolution of the globally acclaimed office. Through a diversity of projects, the firm has transformed our understanding of the city and our evolving relationship with art, fashion, food, sustainability, and other quintessentially twenty-first-century preoccupations. The works presented here elaborate on OMA’s philosophy even as they expand its portfolio geographically. Featured projects (led by partners Shohei Shigematsu and Jason Long) include residential skyscrapers in New York, Miami, and San Francisco, mixed-use developments in cities from Tokyo to Houston, and projects like 11th Street Bridge Park in the public realm, alongside more intimate spaces such as the studio for renowned Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang. Permanent structures, such as Milstein Hall at Cornell University, the new galleries of Quebec’s Musée National des Beaux-Arts, a cultural forum and neighborhood for Faena in Miami, and the expansion of museums such as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo and the New Museum in Manhattan, contrast vividly with temporary interventions such as the Manus x Machina exhibition at the Met Costume Institute and the sculptural installation of soaring concrete columns for An Occupation of Loss. In between projects are dialogues with leading policy makers, museum directors, artists, fashion designers, musicians, chefs, and curators—Christopher Hawthorne, Lisa Phillips and Massimiliano Gioni, Taryn Simon, Iris van Herpen, Virgil Abloh, David Byrne, Alice Waters, and Cecilia Alemani—who provide insight onto areas of the firm’s interests and preoccupations beyond the realm of architecture.
Edited by Veronique Patteeuw. Essays by Aaron Betsky, Okwui Enwezor, Neal Leach, Matthew Stadler, Bart Verschaffel, H.J.A. Hofland and Bruce Sterling. Excerpts by Michael Sorkin, Jean Attali, Anthony Vidler, Fredric Jameson, et al.
4e de couv. : "The activities of Rem Koolhaas and his numerous collaborators have been widely discussed, even before the foundation of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975. The work of OMA, including Koolhaas's written oeuvre, is at the root of an important part of the Western discourse on architecture from the past half century. The book compiles about 150 texts - interviews, essays, articles, reviews, letters, introductions, polemics, appraisals, and competition reports - that in many cases have been translated for the first time. As a reader covering the work of OMA/Rem Koolhaas from Delirious New York to S, M, L, XL, it provides a fresh and critical view on one of the most complex architectural oeuvres of recent times. At the same time, the book presents an account of the debates on architecture and the city that remain significative today."
A Financial Times Best Book of the Year A Guardian Best Architecture Book of the Year “Sharp, revealing, funny.” —The Guardian “An original and even occasionally hilarious book about losing ideals and finding them again... [De Graaf] deftly shows that architecture cannot be better or more pure than the flawed humans who make it.” —The Economist Architecture, we like to believe, is an elevated art form that shapes the world as it pleases. Four Walls and a Roof turns this fiction on its head, offering a candid account of what it’s really like to work as an architect. Drawing on his own tragicomic experiences in the field, Reinier de Graaf reveals the world of contemporary architecture in vivid snapshots: from the corridors of wealth in London, Moscow, and Dubai to the demolished hopes of postwar social housing in New York and St. Louis. We meet ambitious oligarchs, developers for whom architecture is nothing more than an investment, and layers of bureaucrats, consultants, and mysterious hangers-on who lie between any architect’s idea and the chance of its execution. “This is a book about power, money and influence, and architecture’s complete lack of any of them... Witty, insightful and funny, it is a (sometimes painful) dissection of a profession that thinks it is still in control.” —Financial Times “This is the most stimulating book on architecture and its practice that I have read for years.” —Architects’ Journal
In its mood and subject matter, Content reflects recent shifts in geo-politics, particularly since 9-11. The book's content follows Koolhaas's expanding interests, mixing architecture with politics, history, technology, and sociology. Topics are arranged according to geography.
Almere, the Netherlands' newest town, took a significant step towards maturity with its recently completed city center, designed by Rem Koolhaas, leader of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.), the Netherlands' most internationally oriented architectural practice. Compared to such high-profile O.M.A. achievements as Euralille and Generic City, Koolhaas' scheme for Almere is an interesting departure as it succeeds both in the contexts of old Dutch towns and contemporary metropolitan design. The scheme for the Almere city center shows Koolhaas at work in the context of the old Dutch townscape and the dynamic of the "polder model": it shows how O.M.A absorbed Dutchness -- and still stuck to its principles. In addition to documenting the city center design, this book explores the design process involving the city, the property developers, and the project leaders. Also included are the designs made to flesh out the master plan, amongst them a theater by Kazuyo Sejima, housing by Claus & Kaan and Frits van Dongen, William Alsop's pop/rock center, Benthem Crouwel's business center, O.M.A.'s parking garages and cinema, and the public space design by DS Landschapsarchitecten.
Metabolism was a movement launched in Japan that took inspiration for buildings and cities from biological systems. With interviews and commentary and hundreds of images, Project Japan unearths a history that casts new light on the key issues that both enervate and motivate architecture today.
