The good is not a category that interests me. Rem Koolhaas More Quotes by Rem Koolhaas More Quotes From Rem Koolhaas There's nothing Dutch about my architecture. Rem Koolhaas dutch architecture What is now called "green architecture" is an opportunistic caricature of a much deeper consideration of the issues related to sustainability that architecture has been engaged with for many years. It was one of the first professions that was deeply concerned with these issues and that had an intellectual response to them. Rem Koolhaas issues intellectual years The beauty of my profession [architecture] lies in its randomness and surprise. And don't think I can choose my projects. I have to build what's offered to me. Rem Koolhaas architecture lying thinking The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding. Rem Koolhaas exploding consensus certainty The luxury of our position now is that we can almost assemble any team to address any issue. Rem Koolhaas luxury issues team Without a tighter union, Europe will disintegrate Rem Koolhaas unions europe Japan lives with drastic segregation between the sublime, the ugly, and the utterly without qualities. Dominance of the last 2 categories makes mere presence of the first stunning: when beauty 'happens', it is absolutely surprising. Rem Koolhaas japan sublime quality Designs are increasingly winning competitions because they are literally green, and because somewhere they feature a small windmill. Rem Koolhaas umpires design winning In the end, there will be little else for us to do but shop. Rem Koolhaas shops ends littles You need to look at inequality as a typical condition of modern society. Rem Koolhaas typical looks needs Beauty isn't what I'm primarily interested in [in architecture]. I think appropriateness is more important. Rem Koolhaas architecture important thinking It was a book [George Packer written on our presence in Nigeria] that was killed by the response of other people. Which sounds quite cowardly, perhaps, but it was the first manifestation of what is currently a really big issue: how political correctness defines the limits of what you can do. In that sense, it was super-exciting and maybe the most magical project we did, but at the same time fraught with mixed feelings. Rem Koolhaas issues book people Nigeria was a blank on the map - there weren't even any maps. The US State Department, everyone said don't go there. It was courageous of Harvard University: the notion was that we would match Harvard students with Nigerian students, so that every student would have a guide, creating a guarantee of intimacy with the city. Rem Koolhaas creating cities guarantees We know that Las Vegas is junk, but at the same time I think that exactly the same process and ultimately also, perhaps the same logic, attaches itself to or underlies our masterpieces. We live in an amazing era when in spite of an absence of masters there is an explosion of masterpieces. Rem Koolhaas vegas junk thinking When air conditioning, escalators, and advertising appeared, shopping expanded its scale, but also limited its spontaneity. And it became much more predictable, almost scientific. What had once been the most surprising became the most manipulated. Rem Koolhaas advertising shopping air Influence is a very unpleasant subject and I deal with it in a maybe irresponsible way, which is to really ignore it. It would be a nightmare if we started to really think about it; it would tie our hands, it would tie everyone elses hands. Rem Koolhaas ties hands thinking The institutions are working better now, the banks are much more functional. At this time, 1997, there were no mobile phones! It's a whole different thing now with mobile phones: technology has created a form of regulation, because people can actually talk to each other a lot more. Rem Koolhaas phones technology people In Lagos there's a really strong case to resurrect strong parts. Embedded in all of it are some amazing pieces of planning, amazing pieces of engineering and interaction. For instance, the campus of Lagos University is stunningly beautiful, efficient and generous, and that needs to be recognised and preserved. Rem Koolhaas engineering strong beautiful At that time [90th in Lagos], if you drove through the city, you drove through a foreground that always seemed to be incredibly dramatic and incredibly agonised - smoking, burning, incredible compression. In the first year we stayed on the ground and went everywhere. But then in order to discover whether this was the whole story, we rented a helicopter. And we began to understand that this is not chaos but a highly modern system that had been abandoned, then at some point went into reversal, then slowly came out of it. Rem Koolhaas cities order years Manhattanism is the one urbanistic ideology that has fed, from its conception, on the splendors and miseries of the metropolitan condition—hyper-density—without once losing faith in it as the basis for a desirable modern culture. Manhattan's architecture is a paradigm for the exploitation of congestion. Rem Koolhaas density manhattan culture
