Rem Koolhaas

Architect

1944-11-17

Quotes by Rem Koolhaas

• It is not possible to live in this age if you don't have a sense of many contradictory forces.

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• Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of architecture.

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• The work in S, M, L, XL was almost suicidal. It required so much effort that our office almost went bankrupt.

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• 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.

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• But 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.

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• 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.

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• One of our theories is that one can offset this excessive compulsion toward the spectacular with a return to simplicity.

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• It's a weird city because the uglier the weather, the more beautiful the city. And the uglier the buildings, the more coherent the city.

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• That has been my entire life story, running against the current and running with the current. Sometimes running with the current is underestimated.

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• Designs are increasingly winning competitions because they are literally green, and because somewhere they feature a small windmill.

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