Rem KoolhaasI wanted to disconnect from contemporary architecture352Reflection
Rem KoolhaasWhen air conditioning, escalators, and advertising appeared, shopping expanded its scale, but also limited its spontaneity. And it became much more predictable, almost scientific.… ▶343Reflection
Rem KoolhaasJapan 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… ▶345Reading
Rem KoolhaasIn the end, there will be little else for us to do but shop.378Time
Rem KoolhaasEach building has to be beautiful, but cheap and fast, but it lasts forever. That is already an incredible battery of seemingly contradictory demands. So yes, I'm definitely perha… ▶312ReadingTime
Rem KoolhaasNot many architects have the luxury to reject significant things.324Death
Rem KoolhaasArchitecture is a dangerous mix of power and importance.302Politics
Rem KoolhaasAs more and more architecture is finally unmasked as the mere organization of flow - shopping centers, airports - it is evident that circulation is what makes or breaks public arc… ▶314Reading
Rem KoolhaasPeople 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 b… ▶3710HumanityThought
Rem KoolhaasManhattanism 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 … ▶337Hope
Rem KoolhaasThe 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.283Thought
Rem KoolhaasThe Metropolis strives to reach a mythical point where the world is completely fabricated by man, so that it absolutely coincides with his desires. ✨ Rem Koolhaas (2014). De… ▶262Humanity
Rem KoolhaasDesigns are increasingly winning competitions because they are literally green, and because somewhere they feature a small windmill.307Death
Rem KoolhaasThe City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape242Love
Rem KoolhaasWe live in an almost perfect stillness and work with incredible urgency.275Death
Rem KoolhaasManhattan is an accumulation of possible disasters that never happen.244Truth
Rem KoolhaasBut now sustainability is such a political category that it's getting more and more difficult to think about it in a serious way. Sustainability has become an ornament.299PoliticsThought
Rem KoolhaasWe say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the bes… ▶223LifeTruth
Rem KoolhaasInfluence 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 i… ▶267Thought
Rem KoolhaasThe good is not a category that interests me. ✨ Exploring the Unmaterial World. Wired Interview, www.wired.com. June 1, 2000.256Hope
Rem KoolhaasThe luxury of our position now is that we can almost assemble any team to address any issue.267Politics
Rem KoolhaasWhen shopping was still connected to the street it was also an intensification and articulation of the street. Now it has become utterly independent - contained, controlled, surve… ▶257Politics
Rem KoolhaasThe work in S, M, L, XL was almost suicidal. It required so much effort that our office almost went bankrupt.181Life
Rem KoolhaasThat has been my entire life story. Running against the current and running with the current. Sometimes running with the current is underestimated. The acceptance of certain reali… ▶182LifeThoughtTime
Rem KoolhaasThe acceptance of certain realities doesn't preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.238Thought
Rem KoolhaasOur office acts like a kind of educational establishment and we are very careful who we educate.185Thought
Rem KoolhaasIt is not possible to live in this age if you don't have a sense of many contradictory forces.174Reflection
Rem KoolhaasIn this branch of utopian real estate, architecture is no longer the art of designing buildings so much as the brutal skyward extrusion of whatever site the developer has managed … ▶2210Politics
Rem KoolhaasIf you have this reputation you can sit back and endure it, or you can try to do things with it.197Philosophy
Rem KoolhaasFind optimism in the inevitable. ✨ City on the Gulf: Koolhaas Lays Out a Grand Urban Experiment in Dubai. www.nytimes.com. March 03, 2008.175HopeTime
