Rem Koolhaas, “Current Preoccupations”
NOTE: This event is open to the general public. Priority will be given to the GSD community, but 40 seats in Piper will be reserved for members of the general public and an additional number of seats will be available in rooms adjacent to Piper for viewing via live feed. (All first come, first served.)
Rem Koolhaas worked as a script writer and journalist before becoming an architect, studying at the Architectural Association in London. He founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in 1975, together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp; he leads the firm today, along with eight partners, including its conceptual branch, AMO, a think tank focused on social, economic, and technological issues. The service building for CCTV in Beijing and the 11th Street Bridge project in Washington, D.C. are among OMA’s many notable ongoing projects; those that opened in the last year include the Pierre Lassonde Pavilion at the Musée Nationale des Beaux Arts in Québec; the Repossi boutique on Place Vendôme in Paris; the Fondazione Prada in Milan; Holland Green, a mixed-use development in London; and Manus x Machina, an exhibition on fashion and technology at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Other recent works of note include the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003), the McCormick Tribune Campus Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago (2003), the Seattle Central Library (2004), and the Casa da Musica in Porto, Portugal (2005).
Koolhaas’s numerous books include S,M,L,XL (1995) which summarized the work of OMA and offered a definitive overview of relationships between contemporary society and architecture generally. Koolhaas is professor in practice of architecture and urban design at Harvard GSD, where he led the Project on the City, a research program investigating changing urban conditions around the world, whose publications include Great Leap Forward (2002), a study on China’s Pearl River Delta; The Harvard Guide to Shopping (2002), an analysis of the role of retail and consumption in the contemporary society; and further studies on Rome, Lagos, Moscow, and Beijing. The work of Koolhaas and OMA has been recognized by numerous international awards, including the RIBA Gold Medal (2004) and the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2000).
Read the Harvard Gazette‘s review of Koolhaas’s lecture.
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