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The Irrational Exuberance of Rem Koolhaas: Places: Design Observer

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Posted 04.02.13 | PERMA LINK | PRINT

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ESSA Y: ELLEN DUNHA M-JONES

The Irrational Exuberance of Rem Koolhaas

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From Content, by O M A /Koolhaas (T as c hen, 2 0 0 4 ).

The 1990s saw the end of the cold war, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of C hina,
the dot.com boom and the expansion of neoliberalism, globalization, the Internet and the

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"New Economy. C apitalism had won, and growing enthusiasm for its ability to raise living
standards, promote democracy and advance technology increasingly squelched what little
remained of mid-20th-century critiques of its crueler consequences. Instead, corporate
ideologies co-opted countercultural revolutionary songs and slogans from the '60s to cheer
on '90s-style reengineering for the information age, marketing individualism and
commodifying dissent. [1] Did architectural discourse similarly morph 1960s radicalism into
1990s icon-making during this period of rising faith in free markets and digital technology?
What happened to architectural criticism in an era that saw the end of welfare as we knew
it in the U.S. and acceptance of the widening gap between rich and poor as an unfortunate
but necessary by-product of modernization and a healthy economy? Was it only in the '90s
that Rem Koolhaas could ride this global socio-economic restructuring and emerge as one

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of architectural cultures leading avant-gardists while at the same moment celebrating

capitalism?

Mayo C linic: The le ading he alth care confe re nce whe re de sign
m atte rs.
R e giste r today >>

Equating capitalism with modernization and change, Koolhaas identified early on how global
capitalism created dynamic, highly speculative urban conditions that were transforming the
contemporary city. As he pointed out in his acerbic writings of the time, these same forces
were destabilizing and liberating architectural thinking from staid preconceptions, providing
an audience and a market for the kind of radical, iconic buildings being designed by
his Rotterdam-based practice OMA. This powerful combination of '60s irreverence and '90s
relevance catapulted Koolhaas to star status; it also revealed the inevitable contradictions
in trying to marry art and capitalism, radicalism and pragmatism, icon-making and citymaking. Nonetheless, over the decade, his writings and designs contributed significantly to
shifting design discourse away from critical theory toward post-critical, non-judgmental
research, and from autonomy toward engagement albeit engagement largely with the
elite beneficiaries of the New Economy, now often described as the 1%. From our
contemporary perspective, it is thus worth asking: What is Koolhaass legacy vis--vis
progressive practice?
Let's begin with one of the durable descriptors of the era. "Irrational exuberance," as
Robert J. Shiller notes, has come to epitomize a heightened state of speculative fervor. [2]
Shiller, a professor of economics at Yale University, explains that the phrase famously

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originated two years into the dot.com boom, in a December 1996 speech given by Alan
Greenspan, then chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, at the American Enterprise
Institute. After recounting the debates about the banks power and the various indicators
by which it determines whether to tighten or loosen monetary supply, Greenspan stated:
When industrial product was the centerpiece of the economy during the first two-thirds of
this century, our overall price indexes served us well. [3] He then asked: What is the
price of a unit of software or a legal opinion? ... How do we know when irrational
exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected
and prolonged contractions ...? [4] As Shiller emphasizes, the question itself had a
powerful impact, leading immediately to a slump in stock markets worldwide. Yet the
phrase has stuck; it was evoked when the technology boom went bust in March 2000, and
again in 2008 when the housing bubble burst and the market crashed, triggering the Global
Financial C risis.

O M A /Koolhaas , Seattle C entral L ibrary (2 0 0 4 ). [P hoto by T homas H awk]

"Irrational exuberance" seems to me an apt introduction to an understanding of Rem

Koolhaas in the '90s and beyond; it foregrounds his great success in navigating the
intersection of the pragmatic corporate sector, on the one hand, and the delirious and
volatile realm of desire and possibility, on the other. Keenly aware of these inherent
contradictions, Koolhaas revels in their creative friction. A compelling contrarian, he excels
at flipping our expectations. He uses his timely positioning of bigness, shopping, and the
$ regime in order to promise a realignment with neutrality" and to liberate architects
from the socially conscious obligations of the past. [5] Instead of critiquing capitalist
society, bolstering the civic and the public, or ministering to the needs of the impoverished,
he justifies the idea that architects, even if not especially avant-garde, are now free to
serve the market. Koolhaas is not alone in these tendencies, but his essays and projects of
the '90s smoothed the way for the parade of starchitecture object-buildings that followed.
They also spurred his protgs to embrace the idea of the post-critical and the speculative.
[6] In effect Koolhaas has encouraged his followers to shed the crippling shackles of critical
theory and pick up a surfboard upon which to ride the shock waves of the new economy.
[7]
Countercultural Roots
A self-proclaimed soixante-huitarde, Koolhaas was a 24-year-old journalist and scriptwriter
living in Paris in May 1968, when student protests and labor strikes brought the French
economy to a standstill. He witnessed, though did not participate in, the marches and
violence that sought to reform the rigid national bureaucracy, persistent class
discrimination, low working-class wages and unequal access to universities. But rather than
internalizing the lessons of class struggle, Koolhaas developed an acute resistance to the
restrictions of planned societies and a commitment to promoting individual freedom. That
fall he enrolled at the Architectural Association in London.
Education at the AA was then informed by a rich anti-establishment mix, ranging from
Archigram techno-pop to Superstudio parodies to affordable housing for the tropics. In
1970, Bernard Tschumi another 24-year-old fresh from Paris where he too had observed
the '68 riots joined the faculty and began to teach a course, Politics of Space,
introducing students to the French Situationist and post-structuralist critiques of the
discipline's complicity with corrupt capitalist society. Tschumi's students read the avantgarde literary journal Tel Quel, and learned about the post-'68 transformation of the cole
de Beaux Arts about the student sit-ins and the construction classes held in forced
occupations of banking offices where discriminatory loan practices were discussed. [8]
Design was dismissed as irrelevant to the more important matter of reforming the overly
technocratic structure of the state. Modern functionalist planning, which was allied with
bureaucracy, was deemed la Jean-Paul Sartre to be alienating. Via the writings of
Henri Lefebvre, Jean Baudrillard and Guy Debord, students were taught to challenge
capitalist rationality and the commodification of everyday life, and to resist the
complacency of the society of the spectacle.

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L eft: D ec ember 1 9 7 0 is s ue of Tel Quel, featuring G eorges Batailles 's L e berc eau de l'humanit. Right:
Spring 2 0 0 9 is s ue of Prada: A n exploration of the c ollec tion's domain of ins piration by A M O : divinity,
tribalis m and primitive s ymbolis m, graphic ally repres ented through the dialogue of referenc es between
fas hion and imagery.

Tschumi was fascinated in particular by the 1920s-era anti-establishment writings of

George Bataille. A rebellious surrealist, Bataille had cited architecture as the source of the
repressive social order, arguing that great monuments are erected like dikes, opposing
the logic and majesty of authority against all disturbing elements: it is in the form of
cathedral and palace that C hurch or State speaks to the multitudes and imposes silence
upon them. [9]
For Koolhaas, his definitive Bataille-soaked moment came toward the end of his AA
studies, when he documented and analyzed the Berlin Wall:
In the early seventies, it was impossible not to sense an enormous reservoir
of resentment against architecture, with new evidence of its inadequacies
its cruel and exhausted performance accumulating daily; looking at the
wall as architecture, it was inevitable to transpose the despair, hatred,
frustration it inspired to the field of architecture ... Were not division,
enclosure (i.e., imprisonment), and exclusion which defined the walls
performance and explained its efficiency the essential stratagems of any
architecture? In comparison, the sixties dream of architectures liberating
potential in which I had been marinating for years as a student seemed
feeble rhetorical play. It evaporated on the spot. [10]
Batailles writings influenced both Tschumi and Koolhaas to seek to liberate architecture
from itself, to destabilize and deconstruct the discipline's will to order space and society.
[11] In their design projects in the '90s, both architects pay particular attention to ramps,
spaces of movement and sculpted voids indeterminate, unprogrammed sites for
transient events. Both employ montage, text and translucent materials in order to deemphasize formal boundaries; and perhaps most innovative of all, both promote
programmatic instability in order to counteract architectural rigidity. Tschumi articulated
this strategy in terms of what he described as cross-programming, trans-programming and
dis-programming. [12] Koolhaas has focused more on counterposing monolithic exterior
forms with interiors populated by highly diversified spaces and activities. Expanding beyond
the design of buildings, Koolhaas and OMA established a research wing, in 1999, called
AMO; according to the firms website, their services now include media, politics, renewable
energy and fashion. For Tschumi, the point has been to create an architecture against
architecture. [13] In similar fashion Koolhaas has referred to a post-architectural
modernity, [14] to after-architecture, [15] and to his search for another architecture.
[16]
Delirious Capital
In the search for another architecture, Koolhaas traveled to New York C ity. There,
instead of the imposing and oppressive language of church or state, he found a crowdpleasing, market-based modern architecture unburdened by either the moralizing
functionalist rhetoric that had accompanied the Bauhausian dreams of a classless society,
or the 1960s critiques of the spectacle society. His 1978 book Delirious New York
documents with evident delight what he called Manhattanism as he saw it, an
entrepreneurial blend of fantasy and pragmatism (which has indeed inspired much of his
own design work). In the book, Koolhaas shows how the city has come to embody capitalist
rationality through the regularity of the gridded streets and gridded facades, the integration
of elevator technology and the technical precision of the Rockettes kick line, while at the
same time it has responded to the surreal, diverse and often erotic desires of the

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metropolitan collective unconscious especially as revealed in the fantastical artifice of
elite interiors, in dramatic skyscrapers and Salvador Dali interventions. In Delirious,
Manhattans untheorized, unplanned genius is presented as the resolution of these
contradictory dynamics, as their intensification into a dense, socially liberating "culture of
congestion." [17] As the book jacket proclaims, Manhattan, from the beginning, has been
devoted to the most rational, efficient, and utilitarian pursuit of the irrational.

E xamples from Delirious New York: D owntown A thletic C lub, s ec tion (1 9 3 0 ); and Radio C ity M us ic H alls
Roc kettes . [P hotos by T homas H awk, top, and A ndrew D allos , bottom]

Through detailed histories and speculative psycho-histories of period architects and building
projects, of the grid, the skyscraper, C oney Island, Rockefeller C enter and the United
Nations, Koolhaas lovingly portrays a non-reductivist architecture and urbanism at once
modern and romantic. He argues that both the buildings and the city are the results not of
top-down artistic or political dicta but rather of the markets ability to elicit and respond to
desire. Thus Manhattan has produced an architecture that is at once ambitious and popular
... a shameless architecture that has been loved in direct proportion to its defiant lack of
self-hatred, has been respected exactly to the degree that it went too far. Manhattan has
consistently inspired in its beholders ecstasy about architecture. [18] Tellingly, the threat
to this ecstatic culture of congestion is embodied by the villain in the story: Le C orbusier
and his rationalist towers in the park proposals. In a nod to his contemporaries, Koolhaas
asserts that Le C orbusier was thwarted by over-reliance on theory and inadequate
attention to the importance of metaphor and the unconscious in the developent of
Manhattan.
Indeed, Koolhaas argues that the more artificial and surreal the city has become, the
greater the role of the unconscious in making sense of it. Here he offers Salvador Dalis
Paranoid-C ritical Method as a tool that can enable a delirium of interpretation" and counter
the unprovable certainties of C artesian rationality. For Koolhaas, the PC M serves both as a
method for resolving market dynamics with the fabrications, grafts and urban ambitions
that characterize his own design work, and as an indirect parody of the critical theory of
the era.
With Delirious New Yorks not-so-subtle critiques of the increasingly insular and unpopular
realm of avant-garde architecture for architects, Koolhaas differentiated himself from
both the high-modern minimalism of '70s corporate design firms and the theoretical
gymnastics of the Oppositions crowd. And his ongoing countercultural strategy has evolved
to critique what he calls the exhausted purist doctrines of architecture culture. By the
1995 publication of his massive monograph S,M,L,XL, rather than presenting his work as an
autonomous art, he instead foregrounds the competing realities of client-based practice in
a capitalist economy. [19] His point is not simply to shock; although he does, and does so
again in 2003 with the follow-up catalog-as-tabloid Content. Rather his point is to recognize
architecture as the contradictory confluence of art and commerce, fantasy and
pragmatism, the pretensions of creative omnipotence and the realities of clients and
constraints. And while such a position was radically out-of-step with the structuralist and
post-structuralist discourse of his peers in the '70s, it set him up beautifully to work with

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high-profile clients like Prada, the Guggenheim, and Universal Studios in the '90s.
The trope that holds together the contradictory forces in his design projects is another
legacy from Delirious New York: the metropolis. Teeming with ambition, modernity and
difference, metropolitan culture, in the Koolhaasian perspective, functions as a modernizing
force; and the architect has consistently sought out its latest manifestations around the
globe. When he and three partners set up shop in 1975 that is, in an era when cities
were emptying out and post-modern historicism was ascendant they went against the
grain by calling their practice the Office of Metropolitan Architecture. And right from the
start, in the spirit of Bataille, OMA has rejected what it sees as the rigid, repressive and
divisive order of architecture in favor of the fluid, dynamic and productive disorder of the
capitalist, market-driven metropolis. This is most evident in how the firm's projects from
individual buildings to urban plans interweave diverse programs as a way to induce the
culture of congestion. But they break from Bataille and from the culture of critique in
their ultimate embrace of the power of capitalism to drive change.

T op: Rem Koolhaas at the U nivers ity of Southern C alifornia, 2 0 0 7 , dis c us s ing A M O s EU Barcode. [P hoto
by Sam Felder] Bottom: C ollec tion of Wired magazines and Koolhaas s S,M,L,XL. [P hoto by mis kan]

The New World Order and the New Economy

Ironically, just as the Berlin Wall launched Koolhaass critique of architecture, it was the
demolition of the Wall in 1989 that amplified the relevance of his ideas. Another accelerant
was Deng Xiaopings opening up of C hinese markets in 1992 with the exhortation: "Enrich
yourselves!" Not only was capitalism triumphant; the spirit of '68 was defeated. Marxist
agitators and labor unions were seemingly swatted away by the rising neo-liberal
consensus that favored free markets. Appeals to the idea of the public good were
challenged, increasingly swept away by privatization and an emphasis upon individual
responsibility. In the New World Order, discussions of social justice and social equity
between developed and developing nations were increasingly dominated by questions of
market access and economic liberalization. For those in "the new economy," digital access
to information would, it was believed, lead inevitably to markets characterized by infinite
growth and the end of business cycles. Markets were deregulated, state-owned enterprises
were privatized, free trade agreements flowed, and globalization was heralded as the path
to progressively improving living standards. The journalist Thomas Friedman advanced
what he called the Golden Arches Theory of C onflict Prevention, observing that no two
countries with a McDonalds franchise had ever gone to war against one another. [20] The
World Trade Organization, the Maastricht Treaty and NAFTA promised to expand peace and
prosperity by facilitating the trade of goods and ideas. In the process, they also expanded
the size and power of cities and corporations. And along the way Koolhaas was one of the
few architects to call attention to the implications of this massive economic and political
restructuring for the profession of architecture. His contribution was to theorize the virtues
of what he labeled Bigness.
In 1994, just as his 800,000-square meter Euralille project and groundbreaking 1,346-page
monograph S,M,L,XL were coming to completion, Koolhaas wrote three essays.
C ollectively, they excoriate his profession for inadequately coming to grips with the New
World Orders massive investments in urbanization, generic cities and big buildings. [21]
But rather than serving as a rallying cry to better direct investment and shape the
metropolis, the essays argue for the irrelevance of architecture and urbanism, for the
disciplines' inability to influence society. Dismissing illusions of involvement and control,"
Koolhaas instead proposes variations of go with the flow, and he positions himself as the
lead surfer on the post-1989 wave of modernization that was constructing a New Europe.

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[22]
After several near misses in European design competitions in the early 1990s, his first big
commission was Euralille. A business center, shopping mall and convention center, created
as part of a new high-speed rail station with international connections, Euralille straddled
the highway and rail lines on the periphery of Lille, France. In addition to describing the
project in several publications, Koolhaas wrote Bigness or the problem of Large to
articulate a theory and start a public relations campaign for bigness of this scale.
Although literally referring to big buildings, Bigness indirectly extends to the big business,
big government, big firms and big money required to make them. In other words,
Koolhaas, the hip soixante-huitarde, was throwing in his chips with the authoritarian
establishment. And although he maintained some of his rebel street cred by bandying the
phrase fuck context and heaping derision on his peers, he argued that the rest of the
profession needed to follow his lead in order to restore the credibility of the field. [23]

E uralille, Franc e, mas terplan by O M A /Koolhaas (1 9 9 4 ), photographed in 2 0 1 2 . [P hoto by A dam

G impert]

Was this Koolhaas at his most contrarian? Or pre-emptive justification for his next phase?
For anyone who had become concerned, in the '90s, by the increasingly inflated scale and
predominance of big-box stores, mega-malls and edge cities, Koolhaas's topic was right on
target. But his claims for the benefits of Bigness were surprising, if not downright
unconvincing. Accepting the inevitability of large-scale development, Koolhaas extols
optimistically how Bigness instigates a regime of complexity, a promiscuous
proliferation of events that generates programmatic alchemy between diverse elements
and inspires the creation of new possibilities. [24] Recognizing another Bataille-soaked
opportunity to undercut the authority of architecture-as-exclusion, he further claims that
the art of architecture is useless in the context of Bigness, and that Bigness competes
with and preempts the city itself, ultimately surrendering the field to a scraped, tabula rasa
after-architecture.
Koolhaas likes the tabula rasa, the identity-less vacant lot, those nothingnesses of infinite
potential. [25] They are emblematic of the bulldozing that is inherent to modernizing the
metropolis; they also evoke the neo-liberal celebration of capitalist creative destruction.
[26] Dont stand in the way of progress! Koolhaas continues to defend Bigness even when
the after-architecture it produces is the Generic C ity. As he writes in his second essay
from 1994, "The Generic C ity is all that remains of what used to be the city. [27]
Emphasizing its unhealthy qualities, he says: C ompared to the classical city the Generic
C ity is sedated, usually perceived from a sedentary position ... The serenity of the Generic
C ity is achieved by the evacuation of the public realm ... Its main attraction is its anomie.
[28]
He likens the anonymous interchangeability of buildings in the Generic C ity to mass global
migration, and speculates that they are more welcoming to new immigrants than dignified
medieval city centers with their strict behavioral codes and air of exclusion. [29] Sprawling
Atlanta, Disneyfied European historic centers, the instant cities of Asia: all are examples of
the Generic C ity. And despite his low opinion of these examples, he argues that
modernization, like Bigness, demands and perpetually reproduces the Generic C ity. In the
globalized world, everything is accessible, everything is information, everything is generic.
[30] The ever-expanding metropolis has outgrown the capacity of the urban center to
remain central. But instead of lamenting the loss of identity, Koolhaas provocatively
suggests that this expansion liberates the periphery from second-class status: What if we
are witnessing a global liberation movement: down with character! [31]
Having thus underscored the uselessness of the art of architecture in the market-driven
Generic C ity of Bigness, Koolhaas next targets the planning profession. In What Ever
Happened to Urbanism?, he criticizes the sterile efforts and lost battle of urbanists to
either plan or control the unfolding metropolis. He is especially dismissive of the
postmodernists and New Urbanists.
Pervasive urbanization has modified the urban condition itself beyond
recognition. "The" city no longer exists. As the concept of the city is distorted
and stretched beyond precedent, each insistence on its primordial condition
in terms of images, rules, fabrication irrevocably leads via nostalgia to
irrelevance. [32]
For Koolhaas the key issue is not whether the development patterns of the historic center
or the periphery are good or bad. [33] Similarly, he never really questions the costs or
benefits, the winners or losers, of the forces of modernization and global capitalism. He
accepts these as given; and in the process he discredits all prior architectural and
urbanistic thinking. Mainly he is interested in establishing the relevance of modernization
and its perpetual instability and dynamism; and he proposes that instead of trying to shape
the wave of modernization, the best that architects can do is ride the wave. Instead of
trying to fix the damage left in the wake, he scans the horizon for the next wave. Instead
of empowering communities to envision and administer their future, he calls for a Lite
Urbanism," the design equivalent of deregulation. [34] And much like the Wall Street
campaign for banking deregulation, Koolhaas bathes Lite Urbanism in liberatory and
progressive rhetoric, while ignoring the risks of abuse inherent in restless mobile capital

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and short-term interests.
If there is to be a new urbanism it will not be based on the twin fantasies of
order and omnipotence; it will be the staging of uncertainty; it will no longer
be concerned with the arrangement of more or less permanent objects but
with the irrigation of territories with potential; it will no longer aim for stable
configurations but for the creation of enabling fields that accommodate
processes that refuse to be crystallized into definitive form; it will no longer
be about meticulous definition, the imposition of limits, but about expanding
notions, denying boundaries not about separating and identifying entities, but
about discovering unnameable hybrids; it will no longer be obsessed with the
city but with the manipulation of infrastructure for endless intensifications and
diversifications, shortcuts and redistributions the reinvention of
psychological space. [35]

O M A /Koolhaas , Shenzhen Stoc k E xc hange (2 0 1 3 ). [P hoto by J os hua L ]

Big Books
In 1996, Koolhaas accepted a tenured position at Harvard University; there he set up a
research project focused on the mutations of the contemporary city. The '90s work of the
Harvard Project on the C ity was eventually published in three big books from 2001 and
2002: Great Leap Forward, The Harvard Guide to Shopping, and Mutations. More recent
studies have concentrated on Lagos, Moscow and Beijing. C ollectively, the publications aim
to address the theoretical, critical, and operational impasse in urbanism by introducing a
number of copyrighted terms, which represent the beginning of a conceptual framework to
describe and interpret the contemporary urban condition. [36] More spectacle than
substance like some of their subjects the big books are jam-packed with photographs
from the fieldwork of Koolhaas's thesis students as well as graphic displays of data,
statistics, timelines, and maps; they also include short historical and analytical essays.
C riticism is largely absent. Less polemical than his earlier publications and much more
reliant on graphic evidence, the books corroborate his observations on Bigness, the
Generic C ity, and the seeming invulnerability of global capital to architectural intentions or
critique. One big difference is that Koolhaas is starting to shift focus from the New Europe
to the emerging global markets.
C hinas Pearl River Delta was his inaugural subject: The Great Leap Forward might have
been titled Delirious Shenzhen. Documenting the phenomenal pace of modernization
resulting from C hinas experiments with special economic zones along the Pearl River
Delta, the 800-page book chronicles the surreal delights produced by the new market
economy. The format is immersive but hardly comprehensive. Readers are treated to
descriptions of the 500 twenty-four-hour golf courses, the worlds longest waterfront
promenade, the theme park at the center of the city, and the parking garage that after six
months became inhabited by many different programs. C ontradictions are the sine qua non
of urbanism for Koolhaas, and so Great Leap Forward documents the city of exacerbated
differences, focusing more on money and program than on the sprawling physical pattern.
In his lectures on this work, Koolhaas seems less able to maintain the book's tone of
journalistic neutrality. He clearly relishes the seemingly absurd juxtapositions of activities
and the dizzying kaleidoscope of the C hinese city as unauthorized event. Although critical
of the repetitive and shoddily constructed housing complexes, he finds the dynamism and
unpredictability of real estate development in the socialist market economy a source of
freedom. [37] This is modernization at an unprecedented speed and scale, and Koolhaas
is thrilled by the chaotic ferment created by the sudden infusion of state and foreign
capital. Yet Great Leap Forward is remarkably silent on the conditions of the factory
workers upon which the amazing new market depends.

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Rem Koolhaas at KU L euven, Belgium, 2 0 0 7 . [P hoto by mars man]

This omission is telling, for the economy of contemporary Shenzhen the first Special
Economic Zone, or SEZ, in the People's Republic has been based upon export-oriented
production similar to the maquiladoras of Mexico or the Export Production Zones of
Indonesia, and thus reliant upon a vast supply of cheap and non-unionized labor to produce
everything from bootleg compact disks to electronic components for multinational
corporations. And although workers in Shenzhen have gained more rights in recent years,
and many have improved their living standards, the system remains strict: local laws are
suspended in the SEZ, and governance and justice are administered by the corporations.
Thus it would be a mistake to equate the new participation in free trade with the spread of
personal freedom. Yet while Great Leap Forward celebrates the freedom of developers,
planners and architects, working at a feverish pace to create the new cities, it remains
apparently blind to those who labor in the Asian sweatshops.
If Great Leap Forward focused on globalizing real estate, the second tome in the series, the
Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, gets down to the nitty-gritty; with evident
enjoyment it takes seriously a subject that the architecture elite has snobbishly dismissed
and in the process disqualif(ied) designers from participating in the twentieth centurys
biggest contribution to urbanism. [38] As the frontispiece announces: shopping is
arguably the last remaining form of public activity and one of the principal if only
modes by which we experience the city. The Guide then documents in exhaustive detail
the ways in which retail has penetrated our lives and places (including airports, museums
and churches); it also documents the explosion of data on consumer transactions, the rise
of branding, the logistics of store expansion, comparative building types, and so on. By and
large, the information is presented factually, with little probing or analysis. The proliferation
of vacant space, for instance, is presented as a crisis for the industry, but there is no
related critique of the phenomena of over-retailing and the impact of dead malls on
communities; nor do the authors explore how the design of these buildings might either
hasten their obsolescence or encourage their reuse. Nor is there any real analysis of the
increasing consumerism of diverse societies, or of the implications the books provocative
thesis: that shopping is our last public space. The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping
seems to accept the status quo as inevitable, a fait accompli beyond challenge.
So given all the research documented in the big books, we might well ask: Is Koolhaas
interested in transgressing the logics he exposes? On the one hand, he more or less singlehandedly brought to the disciplines attention the burgeoning urban landscapes produced by
the evolving global economy of the late 20th and early 21st century: Atlantas consumerist
sprawlscape, the rapidly urbanizing Pearl River Delta, the informal economies of Lagos, the
invasive nature of shopping space. While most architecture publications, university lecture

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series and museum exhibitions remained focused on singular building designs or theories
produced by celebrated individual architects, Koolhaas injected the discourse with highprofile, too-big-to-ignore spreads on the larger globalizing world beyond. Koolhaass books
have provided valuable and compelling documentation of the impact of mobile capital on
the new and economically linked but physically segregated landscapes of consumption
and production. [39]

T op: Content exhibition c atalog, by O M A /Koolhaas , des igned by &&& (T as c hen, 2 0 0 4 ). Bottom: Content
exhibited at Kuns thal, Rotterdam. [P hoto by Roel M eurders ]

Koolhaas has also gone much further than most architects in framing his work in terms of a
global, social, political and economic contexts. Content, the catalog to a 2003 exhibition,
parodies his celebrity status by imitating the format of a tabloid magazine filled with
sensational articles. The cover depicts President George W. Bush (wearing a hat made
from McDonalds Freedom Fries), Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il (as part cyborg), and

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President Saddam Hussein (as Rambo), all positioned in front of OMAs design for the C C TV
tower in Beijing. The cover also trumpets such mock headlines as Perverted Architecture,
Sweatshop Demographics, Big Brother Skyscrapers, and Homicidal Engineering.
Inside, articles about OMA projects are interspersed with numerous advertisements for
Prada one of OMAs repeat clients as well as Gucci and eBay; some of the ads appear
to be fake. A timeline of the $ Regime 1989 2003 tracks the performance of the Dow
Jones Index, the rise and fall of political revolutions, and the production of architectural
icons; cynically, the introduction notes that Architecture contributed a surprising sequence
of masterpieces to this drunken party ... [40] All the while the saturated format bombards
the reader with the graphics of commercial advertising, while the content speaks to
issues of art and culture.
Architecture has always been both an art and a business, and instead of privileging one or
the other, as most architects do, Koolhaas embraces the creative contamination of both
spheres. Whether the results are subversive or ambivalent can be debated; but has any
other contemporary architect so forcefully had his finger on the pulse of global
development patterns and directed attention to the role of capital in design? [41] And yet
despite all the full-bleed photographs, all the data and detail, the charts and essays, his
research projects, especially those featured in The Harvard Project on the C ity, contain
remarkably little assessment or analysis. His refusal to criticize seems not simply a
reactionary response to critical theory or to his own early career in journalism, with its
ethos of disinterested reportage. So perhaps the big books have been intended not so
much to make the insular architecture elite more aware of the larger world, but rather to
make the larger world more aware of architecture? Perhaps, inspired by Dalis ParonoidC ritical-Method, the former scriptwriter is betting that the best way to get the worlds
attention is to hold up a mirror. Rather than formulating esoteric architectural ideas in
language understood only by other architects (an occupational hazard), Koolhaas aims the
lens on whats happening in the world beyond architecture. He doesnt draw a flattering
picture, but nor does he alienate or criticize his subject. And so he emerges as well
positioned to assist his subject in becoming more appealing. Indeed, he emerges as the
only architect willing to take that risk since, as he says repeatedly, architecture and
urbanism have failed to address the dynamic needs of the larger world. But, as in a mirror,
the reflection that Koolhaass works his buildings portray is more au present than
avant-garde.
The logics that Koolhaas is interested in transgressing are not those of the larger social,
economic and political world. In fact, he argues that most of the utopian efforts of
architects have been disastrous. [42] Rather, the logics he is interested in transgressing
are those internal to architectural and urban discourse. Koolhaas rejects the proposition
that architecture can aspire to lead society toward a better future; he insists that at best
architecture can mirror the flux of the larger world in unprecedented designs and processes
intended to defy predictable societal relationships. His architecture holds out the possibility
that new, social configurations might emerge but also that they wont. Heavily reliant on
new technologies and forms, his buildings provide the New World Order with the
appearance of progressive change without the need for any real commitment. I see
Architecture as an endangered brand," Koolhaas has said, by way of justification, "and Im
trying to reposition it. [43] His buildings, like his books, rebrand avant-garde architecture
as spectacle.

O M A /Koolhaas , P rada T rans former, Seoul (2 0 0 9 ). [P hoto by M aurizio M uc c iola]

Rebranding the Avant-garde

What are we to make of Koolhaass endorsement of commercialism? He wasnt the only
'60s radical to become a '90s capitalist. In One Market Under God, the political and cultural
critic Thomas Frank sums up the '90s by telling the story of "Deadheads in Davos," or the
story of how former counterculture folks and corporate leaders found common ground in
the shared the belief that markets create organic connections between people and that
governments are fundamentally illegitimate. [44] In Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, the

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Marketing of Culture, the New Yorker writer John Seabrook tells similar tales of the
merging of high-brow art and literary culture with low-brow commerce and money. In
1994, Tschumi began urging architects to accelerate capitalism. [45] By this time both he
and Koolhaas were ensconced in tenured positions at Ivy League schools. Both had been
exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in prestigious one-man shows and
published in big fat monographs; and inevitably both were referred to as avant-garde.
One might interpret their enthusiasm for capitalism as a disingenuous move by two
counterculture heroes, a way to justify the mainstream in which they so comfortably found
themselves. Alternatively, it might reflect their discovery in the 1990s that destabilization
one of the great legacies of the counterculture turns out to be best accomplished by
venture capitalists, big business and mobile money markets.
In any case, Koolhaas has positioned himself (much more overtly than Tschumi) to spin the
interdependencies between architecture and the New World Order. And his success at
eviscerating conventional notions of avant-gardism has been remarkable. In theory circles,
as the '90s and the millennium ticked to a close, a new generation followed Koolhaass
lead, declaring the "end of the critical project" and lauding the virtues of being post-critical.
[46] Michael Speaks has described the shift as a move away from theory-based concerns
for truth toward intelligence-based concerns for doing and action. [47] This has been
manifested in various not especially coordinated ways a revived interest in pragmatism;
the notion of projective practices; digital design and fabrication; diagramming and/or
datascapes as the basis of design; and the landscape urbanist focus on evolving processes.
Koolhaass influence pervades all of these tendencies, in the de-emphasis on theory and
formalism and the heightened interest in research, experimentation, performance most
of which are, ironically, internally focused on disciplinary advances rather than externally
focused on events in the broader world (let alone on advocating for social change).
In the profession, the more conspicuous legacy of Koolhaass rebranding is in the
proliferation of large, avant-garde icon buildings which serve to declare the client's
participation in the New World Order and the designers participation in the global economy.
The trophies of globalization have evolved from high-design corporate banks by highprofile corporate firms notably Sir Norman Fosters HSBC Bank Headquarters in Hong
Kong to edgy, cultural facilities such as Frank Gehrys Guggenheim Museum at Bilbao, to
a daring state-owned media company like Koolhaass C C TV Headquarters in Beijing. In the
competitive global game of trumpeting ones progressive cachet, each new entrant tries to
raise the bar and the budget. This is all very far removed from the 1980s when critical
architecture was expected to incorporate some aspect of resistance to capitalist
totalization, compromised though such resistance might be. [48] Today, avant-garde
architecture, big capital and authoritarian states have found very cozy forms of mutual
support. At the global scale, the resulting buildings have successfully signaled the
emergence of new players in the global economy. But at the local level, rather than
challenging the class structure or economic power of the status quo, the new generation of
high design increasingly serves to distinguish its elite patron-class from the status quof of
the man in the street.

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O M A /Koolhaas , C C T V H eadquarters (2 0 1 2 ), from a dis tanc e, from the s treet, and in a Simps ons
epis ode. [P hotos by J im G ourley, top, and T homas Stellmac h, middle]

OMAs design for C C TVs 10,000 employees and thousands of daily visitors exemplifies the
complexities and contradictions of the avant-gardist embrace of Bigness and spectacle. In
a district of skyscrapers, C C TV draws attention by rejecting both the tower and the
corporate campus typologies. The main headquarters is twisted into an asymmetrical
upside-down U-shape; the Television C ultural C enter is L-shaped. Both occupy a 20hectare, four-block site in Beijings expanding C entral Business District, which is not-socentrally located on the Third Ring Road. Remnants of the residential hutongs that once
filled the site remain visible, but will soon be replaced by an award-winning, SOM-designed
network of walkable green boulevards, expanded transit ways, and numerous new sites for
commercial high-rises. Plans call for the plinth of the C C TV to connect to the C BDs
forthcoming boulevards, to a route for public tours, and, via escalator, to the subway
station. But as the headquarters and production facilities for C hinas state-run television
(with capacity to broadcast 250 channels), the buildings are also heavily secured. The main
building sits behind guard booths and security fences along the two primary streets.
Bermed gardens for employees designed to resemble Piranesis C ampo Marzio
dellAntica Roma from the public observation deck above further distance the building
from the streets and local environst. Partly a witty allusion to the imperial tendency to
collect foreign architectures, the gardens also read as the sort of landscape buffer typical
of fenced-off suburban office parks. As such they manage to make a walk around the
building feel not only unwelcoming, but surprisingly boring. C C TV's shape-shifting forms
and daunting seventy-five-meter, thirteen-story cantilever make for stunning views from
within and from a distance; they are least engaging from the sidewalk.
This is a surprise, coming from the author of Delirious New York and a scholar of cities.
Years ago Rem Koolhaas taught us to appreciate the richness of the culture of congestion,
the tight interlocking of the public life in the street with the private lives of the skyscraper
interiors. But at C C TV he trades Manhattanism for the internalized programmatic
promiscuity of Bigness and the old city-killing model of the C orbusian towers in the park.
[49] In a self-fulfilling prophecy, he argues against addressing the street because the
political life that it once supported no longer exists. [50] He treats the existing street as
residue and conceives of C C TV not as in the city, but as a city perhaps the greatest
flaw of Bigness. Bigness not only re-establishes architecture as an agent of exclusion, it
negates any possibility of fostering inclusive congruency.

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In the end, C C TV is a spectacular object simultaneously rational and irrational, exuberant
and withdrawn, monumental and unstable. Sadly, the one contradiction it doesnt resolve is
the choice between icon-making and city-making. Ultimately it rebrands architecture and
avant-gardism in service not to the culture of congestion but rather to the society of the
spectacle.
Is the larger legacy of Koolhaas and the '90s the reframing of architecture not as a source
of authority and order but as an accommodating mirror to the authority and disorder of the
market? "Neoliberalism has turned architecture into a cherry on the cake affair," said
Koolhaas, in a 2011 interview with Der Spiegel. "... Im not saying that neoliberalism has
destroyed architecture. But it has assigned it a new role and limited its range. [51] Is the
role of the avant-garde to cozy up with big capital to produce architecturally daring and
socially unambitious icon buildings whose collective impact is less urbanistic than what
some have likened to an architectural petting zoo? [52] In the emerging markets that
Koolhaas targets, this may well be the case. But where capital is scarce and markets suffer
from the bursting of irrationally exuberant bubbles, architects and urbanists are finding
other highly creative means to advance agendas overlooked by the starchitects, including
proactive improvements to the city. This may be one of the contradictions of capitalism.

Editors' Note

"T he I rrational E xuberanc e of Rem Koolhaas " is adapted from a c hapter in A rc hitec ture and C apitalis m:
1 8 4 5 to the P res ent, edited by P eggy D eamer and forthc oming this s ummer from Routledge. I t appears
here with the permis s ion of the author, editor and publis her.

For related c ontent on P lac es , s ee als o Steve J obs : A rc hitec t, by Simon Sadler; Zone: T he Spatial
Softwares of E xtras tatec raft, by Keller E as terling; Sc arc ity c ontra A us terity, by J eremy T ill; and Seattle
C entral L ibrary: C ivic A rc hitec ture in the A ge of M edia, by A my M urphy.

Notes

1 . See T homas Frank and M att Weiland editors , Commodify Your Dis s ent: Salvos from The Baffler (N ew
Y ork: W.W. N orton & C o., 1 9 9 7 ).
2 . Robert Sc hiller, O rigin of the T erm, D efinition of I rrational E xuberanc e, ac c es s ed A ugus t 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 .
3 . A lan G reens pan, T he C hallenge of C entral Banking in a D emoc ratic Soc iety, T he Federal Res erve
Board, ac c es s ed A ugus t 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 .
4 . I bid.
5 . Rem Koolhaas , Bignes s or the problem of L arge, in S,M,L,XL: Office of Metropolitan Architecture, editor
J ennifer Sigler (N ew Y ork: M onac elli P res s , 1 9 9 5 ), 5 1 4 .
6 . For more detail, s ee H enry Franc is M allgrave and D avid G oodman, C hapter 1 0 : P ragmatis m and
P os t- C ritic ality, in An I ntroduction to Architectural Theory: 1968 to the Pres ent (Wes t Sus s ex: WileyBlac kwell, 2 0 1 1 ), 1 7 7 1 9 3 .
7 . I n 1 9 8 5 , s ummarizing his findings on M anhattan in the c ontext of O M A s ambitions , Koolhaas wrote,
T his arc hitec ture relates to the forc es of the G ros zs tadt like a s urfer to the waves , and c ontras ted it to
the fantas ies of c ontrol that arc hitec ts wallowed in during the 1 9 7 0 s . E legy for the V ac ant L ot,
S,M,L,XL, 9 3 7 .
8 . See M artin P awley and Bernard T s c humi, T he Beaux A rts Sinc e 6 8 , Architectural Des ign 4 1
(September, 1 9 7 1 ): 5 3 3 5 6 6 . See als o L ouis M artin, T rans pos itions : on the I ntellec tual O rigins of
T s c humis A rc hitec tural T heory, As s emblage 1 1 (A pril 1 9 9 0 ), 2 3 3 5 .
9 . G eorge Bataille, A rc hitec ture, Documents 2 (M ay, 1 9 2 9 ) trans . Bets y Wing in D enis H ollier,
editor, Agains t Architecture, The Writings of George Bataille (C ambridge: M I T P res s , 1 9 8 9 ), 4 7 .
1 0 . Koolhaas , Field T rip, A (A ) M E M O I R (Firs t and L as t . . . ), in S,M,L,XL, 2 2 6 .
1 1 . I have argued this in more detail in E llen D unham- J ones , T he G eneration of 6 8 T oday: Bernard
T s c humi, Rem Koolhaas and the I ns titutionalization of C ritique, Proceedings of the 86th ACSA Annual
Meeting and Technology Conference: Cons tructing I dentity Souped-up and Unplugged, (Was hington:
A s s oc iation of C ollegiate Sc hools of A rc hitec ture, 1 9 9 8 ), 5 2 7 5 3 3 .
1 2 . See Bernard T s c humi, A bs trac t M ediation and Strategy, Architecture and Dis j unction (C ambridge:
M I T P res s , 1 9 9 4 ), 2 0 5 .
1 3 . Bernard T s c humi, Cinegramme Folie (N ew Y ork: P rinc eton A rc hitec tural P res s , 1 9 8 7 ), vii.
1 4 . Rem Koolhaas , Sixteen Y ears of O M A , in OMA Rem Koolhaas Architecture 19701990, editor
J ac ques L uc an (N ew Y ork: P rinc eton A rc hitec tural P res s , 1 9 9 1 ), 1 6 3 .
1 5 . Koolhaas , Bignes s or the problem of L arge, in S,M,L,XL, 5 1 6 .
1 6 . Koolhaas , I ntroduc tion, in S,M,L,XL, xix.
1 7 . P erhaps the mos t c onc is e definition of this term is : M anhattan repres ents the apotheos is of the
ideal of dens ity per s e, both of population and of infras truc ture; its arc hitec ture promis es a s tate of
c onges tion on all pos s ible levels , and exploits this c onges tion to ins pire and s upport partic ular forms of
s oc ial interc ours e that together form a unique c ulture of c onges tion. Rem Koolhaas , L ife in the
M etropolis or T he C ulture of C onges tion Architectural Des ign 4 7 , 5 (A ugus t 1 9 7 7 ), 3 1 9 3 2 5 .
1 8 . Rem Koolhaas , Delirious New York (N ew Y ork: O xford U nivers ity P res s , 1 9 7 8 ), 7 .
1 9 . See I ntroduc tion, and the opening endpapers doc umenting the firms inc ome and expenditures ,
employee turnover, and travel, S,M,L,XL, i xiii, xix.
2 0 . T homas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (N ew Y ork: A nc hor Books , 2 0 0 0 ), 2 3 9 2 6 4 .
2 1 . A rc hitec tural dis c ours e at the time tended to foc us ed on either dis mantlement or dis appearanc e,
terms Koolhaas us ed to des c ribe the dec ons truc tivis t attac k on "the whole," or on the digital/virtual

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media attac k on "the real." Koolhaas c has tis es the arc hitec ture profes s ion for mis s ing out on the his toric
opportunity: P aradoxic ally, the Whole and the Real c eas ed to exis t as pos s ible enterpris es for the
arc hitec t exac tly at the moment where the approac hing end of the s ec ond millennium s aw an all- out rus h
to reorganization, c ons olidation, expans ion, a c lamoring for megas c ale. O therwis e engaged, an entire
profes s ion was inc apable, finally, of exploiting dramatic s oc ial and ec onomic events that, if c onfronted,
c ould res tore its c redibility. Koolhaas , Bignes s or the problem of L arge, in S,M,L,XL, 5 0 8 5 0 9 .
2 2 . Koolhaas , What E ver H appened to U rbanis m? in S,M,L,XL , 9 6 5 .
2 3 . Koolhaas , Bignes s or the problem of L arge, in S,M,L,XL, 4 9 5 5 1 6 .
2 4 . I bid., 4 9 7 5 1 2 .
2 5 . I n referenc e to the s ite for the P arc de la V illette des ign c ompetition in P aris . See Koolhaas , E legy
for a V ac ant L ot, in S,M,L,XL, 9 3 7 .
2 6 . J os eph Sc humpeter c oined the term in his 1 9 4 2 book Capitalis m, Socialis m and Democracy, bas ed on
Karl M arxs obs ervations about c apitalis ms need to des troy and rec onfigure exis ting ec onomic orders s o
as to c reate new wealth.
2 7 . Koolhaas , T he G eneric C ity, in S,M,L,XL, 1 2 5 2 .
2 8 . I bid., 1 2 5 0 1 2 5 1 .
2 9 . I nterview with Star A rc hitec t Rem Koolhaas : Were Building A s s embly L ine C ities and Buildings
Spiegel Online, D ec ember 1 6 , 2 0 1 1 , ac c es s ed A ugus t 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 ,
3 0 . Rem Koolhaas , H arvard G SD L ec ture," A pril 2 2 , 1 9 9 8 .
3 1 Koolhaas , T he G eneric C ity, in S,M,L,XL, 1 2 4 8 .
3 2 . Koolhaas , What E ver H appened to U rbanis m? in S,M ,L ,XL , 9 6 3 .
3 3 . I n fac t, he has voic ed different opinions . A fter s tudying A tlanta, Singapore and the peripheries
around P aris in the late 1 9 8 0 s , he des c ribed the work as part of a retro- ac tive manifes to for the yet to
be rec ognized beauty of the late twentieth- c entury urban lands c ape. Rem Koolhaas , P os ts c ript:
I ntroduc tion For N ew Res earc h T he C ontemporary C ity, in Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: An
Anthology of Architectural Theory 19651995, editor Kate N es bitt (N ew Y ork: P rinc eton A rc hitec ture P res s ,
1 9 9 5 ), 3 2 5 . I n 2 0 0 1 he s c athingly des c ribed s imilar lands c apes as junks pac e. Rem Koolhaas ,
J unks pac e, in Harvard Des ign School Guide to Shopping, editors . C huihua J udy C hang, J effrey I naba, Rem
Koolhaas , Sze T s ung L eung (Kolh: T as c hen, 2 0 0 1 ), 4 0 8 4 2 1 .
3 4 . Koolhaas , What E ver H appened to U rbanis m, in S,M,L,XL, 9 7 1 .
3 5 . I bid., 9 6 9 .
3 6 . C huihua J udy C hang, J effrey I naba, Rem Koolhaas , Sze T s ung L eung, eds ., The Great Leap Forward
(Koln: T as c hen, 2 0 0 1 ), 2 7 2 8 .
3 7 . Rem Koolhaas , lec ture, C olumbia U nivers ity G raduate Sc hool of A rc hitec ture, P lanning and
P res ervation, N ew Y ork, N Y , M arc h 2 6 , 1 9 9 6 .
3 8 . D aniel H erman, H igh A rc hitec ture, in Harvard Des ign School Guide to Shopping, 3 9 1 .
3 9 . For further dis c us s ion of the inter- relations between s prawl, Free T rade Zones , and G lobal C ities , s ee
E llen D unham- J ones , E c onomic Sus tainability in the P os t- I ndus trial L ands c ape, in The Green Braid,
Towards an Architecture of Ecology, Economy, and Equity, editors Kim T anzer and Rafael L ongoria
(A bingdon: Routledge, 2 0 0 7 ), 4 4 5 9 .
4 0 . T heo D eutinger, M aja Borc hers , M atthew M urphy, N anne de Ru, M ax Sc hwitalla, and Sebas tian
T homas , $ Regime: 1 9 8 9 2 0 0 3 , in Content, editor Rem Koolhaas (Koln: T as c hen, 2 0 0 4 ), 2 4 0 2 5 1 .
4 1 . I n fac t, I have argued and would c ontinue to argue that A ndres D uany and the new urbanis ts have
als o foc us ed c ons iderably on the role of c apital in s haping the built environment. H owever, until rec ently,
mos t of their foc us has been limited to development patterns in the U .S. See, E llen D unham- J ones , Real
Radic alis m: D uany and Koolhaas , Harvard Des ign Magazine N o.1 (Winter/Spring 1 9 9 7 ), 5 1 .
4 2 . Koolhaas , U topia Station, in Content, 3 9 3 .
4 3 . C ited in H al Fos ter, Bignes s , London Review of Books 2 3 2 3 (N ovember 2 9 , 2 0 0 1 ), 1 6 .
4 4 . T homas Frank, One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalis m, Market Populis m, and the End of Economic
Democracy (N ew Y ork; A nc hor Books , 2 0 0 0 ), xii.
4 5 . T s c humi c onc luded a public lec ture on his work at C olumbia U nivers itys Sc hool of A rc hitec ture,
P lanning and P res ervation in A pril 1 9 9 4 by c hallenging s tudents to ac c elerate c apitalis m. H e
expanded on this in U rban P leas ures and the M oral G ood, As s emblage 2 5 (C ambridge: M I T P res s ,
D ec ember 1 9 9 4 ), 6 1 3 .
4 6 . See R.E . Somol and Sarah Whiting, N otes A round T he D oppler E ffec t and other M oods of
M odernis m, in Pers pecta 3 3 , editors M ic hael O s man et al. (C ambridge: M I T P res s , 2 0 0 2 ), 7 2 7 7 .
4 7 . M ic hael Speaks , I ntelligenc e A fter T heory, in Pers pecta 3 8 , editors M arc us C arter et al.
(C ambridge: M I T P res s , 2 0 0 6 ): 1 0 3 1 0 6 .
4 8 . M anfredo T afuri and Benjamin Buc hloh are two of the better- known c ritic s of the c o- optation of art
and arc hitec ture by c ommerc e.
4 9 . D es pite a lac k of apparent follow- through, on A ugus t 5 , 2 0 0 3 , at T s inghua U nivers ity in Beijing,
Koolhaas pres ented C C T V as embedded in a projec t for pros pec tive pres ervation and a c ompetition for
a low- ris e C BD , revealing an interloc king hypothes is for Beijings future land us e ... the beginnings of a
Beijing M anifes to. See Content, 4 8 7 .
5 0 . T he exterior of the c ity is no longer a c ollec tive theater where it happens ; theres no c ollec tive it
left. T he s treet has bec ome res idue, organizational devic e, mere s egment of the c ontinuous metropolitan
plane where the remnants of the pas t fac e the equipments of the new in an uneas y s tandoff. Koolhaas ,
Bignes s , in S,M,L,XL, 5 1 4 .
5 1 . Spiegel O nline, D ec ember 1 6 , 2 0 1 1 , ac c es s ed A ugus t 2 8 , 2 0 1 2 ,
5 2 . Koolhaas has been as s oc iated with this des c ription of the A rts D is tric t in D allas . See Blair Kamin, A
Work Still in P rogres s , C hic ago T ribune, M M arc h 1 8 , 2 0 1 1 .

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The Irrational Exuberance of Rem Koolhaas: Places: Design Observer

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the Art Schools? On the High Line

COMMENTS (13)

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The commentary says a lot about the origins of a prominent and

prolific vandal.

R. John A nderson
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'Irrational Exuberance' and ironic dabbling in philistinism and

capitalism recalls the comedian C arrot Top and of course Andy
Warhol. Maybe Koolhaas is the C arrot Top of architecture?
A counter to the type of cynical spectacle making in C hina would be
the architecture of Steven Holl, who has avoided icon and image
making, at least as much as a 'starchitect' can. Ironically he and his
firm is using the Manhattanism in C hina that OMA has avoided.
I got some new things out of this essay--maybe I'm just not an OMA
fangirl.
OMA has certainly learned from Warhol, Venturi, and Banham in that
hipster-y ironic dabbling in low culture and consumerism. Though,
you don't ever see OMA designing McDonalds, only Prada. At heart,
they are all still 'artistes.' We should never confuse the intellectual
with the philistine. Which is why i can somewhat forgive the b.s. selfmarketing aspects of OMA and appreciate their artistry and criticism
(even if they say it doesn't matter).
In the C C TV and Shenzen Stock exchange, spectacle and image
making seems to overwhelm Koolhaas' previous thoughts on
capitalism and congestion. Why revert back to the worst ideas of
C orbusier?

Danny B.

An attempt to break the myth of Rem Koolhaas' work. Undoubtedly,

Koolhaas understands the functioning of this material world than any
of his contemporary. The background of journalism also backs him
to crack the complex situations of executing a project. He actually
defines what a rock star in architecture can be like! Not necessarily
musically correct or classical, he knows to create signatures and
starry forms for an immediate comprehension. Like through C C TV,
as writer suggest here as "simultaneously rational and irrational,
exuberant and withdrawn, monumental and unstable".

Saurabh Tewari

OMA buildings are made for magazines and blogs. I feel sorry for
the poor saps who have to use them.

R. Mackintosh

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"And much like the Wall Street campaign for banking deregulation,
Koolhaas bathes Lite Urbanism in liberatory and progressive
rhetoric, while ignoring the risks of abuse inherent in restless mobile
capital and short-term interests."
Probably the truest thing I've read about Koolhaas.
It's easy to 'ride the wave' of capitalism, or uncritically accept
consumerism and modernization as inevitable. But like everything
the party will come to an end when we run out of energy, raw
materials, debt, and culture. Then we will just be left with these
dumb looking buildings.

Brian J. McKnight

Nice essay. Gives a better understanding of the progression of

Koolhaas from young to old.
The interesting thing about architecture vs. art or monographs is
that you have to put your cards on the table--art can be ironic (i.e.
Warhol) but you can see, especially recently, how the physical work
of OMA has changed from exuberance to isolation.

Mike Lowe

Also interesting is how the concept of "selling out" has changed over
the years from punk rock to today. Led by figures like Koolhaas and
countless other design firms, we have changed to believe that the
design is somehow separated from the content. But young koolhaas
would never have bought the "f--k content/context' premise, or
would he?

Brian J. McKnight

http://places.designobserver.com/feature/rem-koolhaas-irrational-exuberance/37767/

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The Irrational Exuberance of Rem Koolhaas: Places: Design Observer

Many cities hope that the employment of a global "starchitect" will

confer the financial benefits of the so-called "Bilboa Effect" which
occurred after the completion of Frank Gehry's iconic museum in
that town. Oddball forms, lacking any respect for context or culture
became the new norm.

WideBoy
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What most cities end up getting has been called the "Libeskind
Effect", a condition where a vastly over-budget piece of ugliness and
uselessness fails to attract visitors and diminishes the place's
reputation. 'Libeskindian' disasters occurred in Denver, Toronto and
more recently in Dresden. And while Libeskind's name is now
synonymous with bad design, Koolhaas has somehow escaped that
labeling even though a lot of his work is almost as bad as
Libeskind's. If municipalities talked to each other a bit more they
would not make the mistake of hiring a Koolhaas or a Libesknd for
any major civic projects.

OMA's early work was a timely attempt to absorb all of the issues of
modernity and led to interesting results--the Maison a Bordeaux,
Prada, IIT, and Seattle Library are intellectually rigorous, fun,
inviting and fun. They incorporated imagery and graphic design, but
it seems like the big shift (as noted in the essay) is that at some
point the buildings became graphics themselves as they got bigger
(though the Seattle Library avoided this trap).
The publishing content has done a good job of buffering against any
alternate opinions of OMA's work. Bjarke Ingels has learned the
lesson well.

Ed Nai

This is an outstanding assessment of a real roller-coaster ride of

ideas, buildings, strategies, and now... history. The description of
the 1960s architectural roots at the AA as "a rich anti-establishment
mix, ranging from Archigram techno-pop to Superstudio parodies to
affordable housing for the tropics," does kind of roll back our
romanticism of the era to a more reasonable spot. It doesn't
rationalize all that followed, but makes it clear that there have been
very few eras in which effective and engaged architectural
strategies were completely in tune with the age.

George Thrush

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The piece does really make clear why Koolhaas has resonated so
intensely with people of seemingly opposing points of view. Prada
AND social engagement no need to choose!

In short - this all comes down to architecture by MR. BIG for MR.
BIG. You can translate 'f##k context' as 'f##k' democracy.

Mark Simon
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SMLXL was a masterpiece. C ontent much less so. Though it saved

many trees, the $100 magazine was a dud. It looked much less like
the work of Rem and Bruce than work farmed out to college
students with naive political viewpoints. If Rem thinks all
governments are the same, he should leave his European digs and
try living in a North Korean concentration camp. That is if he doesn't
think of a new design for one.

Frank de Souza

Excellent essay.

john massengale

D es ign O bs erver 2 0 0 3 - 2 0 1 4 O bs erver O mnimedia L L C

Koolhaas's work seems less contradictory if you see it all as what he

recently called "Neitzschean frivolity." Nihilism and chameleon
behavior easily go hand in had.

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