Rem Koolhaas in context : a theoretical analysis of six key projects by OMA

Abstract

In architectural design it is quite common to reuse conceptual ideas and strategies found in precedents in order to arrive at new solutions. This evolutionary design model employs earlier design types as a source of knowledge and is thereby a method of dismantling and deconstructing the elements, less by interpreting the single positions than calling for new perspectives and applications. The key questions of this investigation are to identify which elements, qualities, and strategies of the design projects of Rem Koolhaas and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) are transferred and re-used from one design to the next, and how these traits change during the process of adapting them time after time to different programs. Koolhaas registers fifteen fictional patents describing the inventors, an abstract, and the initial application of the concept, though, here, the term is used because a certain design solution represents principle structures and intentions beyond the specific frameworks, outlining a continuous development of concept and strategies. The sequence of the chapters is in a chronological order, so that the role of the case studies is to demonstrate how the proposition of design concepts is used, tested, changed, adapted in a series of versions to a individual site. This architectural practice makes use of the existing knowledge and archive material of models and drafts, no matter what purpose they were previously used. What may appear as a bricolage or mixture of elements, fragments from the field of art and architectural history, works rather like a laboratory for processing knowledge.<br />The intention of this study is to examine the intertwining between the theoretical concepts and strategies proposed in Koolhaas' writings and the architectural practice in his designs for in competition entries, projects and built structures. In the historiography he tends to be either assigned to structuralist or postmodern theory and design practice, aligned with constructivist and surrealist sensibilities, or presented, in the traditional manner of architectural hagiography, as an original genius without identifiable discursive connections. The case studies are, like experiments, empirical inquiries that investigate a particular design project embedded in a particular historic framework but with an influence on the current discourse. This approach involves studying the object in its real-life setting in relation to the amount of sources, influences, and intersections with contextual factors. It discusses the key conditions and principles that govern the process in order to rewrite the sequence of historical fragments in some underlying hidden master narrative.<br />