Beauty isn't what I'm primarily interested in [in architecture]. I think appropriateness is more important. Rem Koolhaas More Quotes by Rem Koolhaas More Quotes From Rem Koolhaas A building has at least two lives - the one imagined by its maker and the life it lives afterward - and they are never the same. Rem Koolhaas buildingmakerstwo Talk about beauty and you get boring answers, but talk about ugliness and things get interesting. Rem Koolhaas boringanswersinteresting Architects work in two ways. One is to respond precisely to a client's needs or demands. Another is to look at what the client asks and reinterpret it. Rem Koolhaas clientstwoway It is not possible to live in this age if you don't have a sense of many contradictory forces. Rem Koolhaas contradictoryforceage Architecture is a dangerous mix of power and importance. Rem Koolhaas bad-assbadassarchitecture The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape Rem Koolhaas machinescities There are essentially two possibilities. One is to be, shall we say, an average architect and do the same thing everywhere. The other is to let yourself be inspired and even changed by the unique qualities of the place where you're building. We always try to take the second approach. Rem Koolhaas uniqueaveragetwo Find optimism in the inevitable. Rem Koolhaas inevitableoptimism The great problem of the concert hall is that the shoebox is the ideal shape for acoustics but that no architect worth their names wants to build a shoebox. Rem Koolhaas shapesnameswant Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. It is by definition a c h a o t i c a d v e n t u r e... In other words, the utopian enterprise. Rem Koolhaas omnipotencemixturesdefinitions All important architecture of the last century was strongly influenced by political systems. Look at the Soviet system, with its constructivism and Stalinism, Weimer with its Modern style, Mussolini and, of course, the Nazis and Albert Speer's colossal structures. Today's architecture is subservient to the market and its terms. The market has supplanted ideology. Architecture has turned into a spectacle. It has to package itself and no longer has significance as anything but a landmark. Rem Koolhaas stylepoliticalimportant The good is not a category that interests me. Rem Koolhaas categoriesdesigninterest Criticism per se does not worry me. I've always solicited it as part of the design process. Rem Koolhaas design-processcriticismworry Manhattan is an accumulation of possible disasters that never happen. Rem Koolhaas manhattanaccumulationdisaster The stronger the identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction. Rem Koolhaas expansionstrongeridentity There's something really interesting about current urbanism: the only model is the universal model, and there is increasingly incapacity to consider the virtues and the qualities that are there, and then to build on them. The only thing is complete transformation. Rem Koolhaas transformationqualityinteresting Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things. Rem Koolhaas significant-thingsluxuryarchitecture People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming. Rem Koolhaas architecturepeoplethinking Our society can no longer tolerate ugliness. You see that in cars, sofas and women. [But] ugliness also has a right to exist. Rem Koolhaas sofasour-societycar Infrastructure is much more important than architecture. Rem Koolhaas infrastructurearchitectureimportant
