Rem Koolhas: Architecture has a serious problem today

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Photo: courtesy AIA. App Photo: Wikimedia (CCTV Headquarters)

 

One of the most dynamic and admired architects of today, not only by us at Archiopteryx, but universally is Rem Koolhaas, the Pritzker Prize-winning Dutch architect, theorist, and provocateur.
He recently spoke with Mohsen Mostafavi, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, in the closing keynote for the 2016 AIA convention. Koolhaas, who founded the acclaimed architecture firm OMA, candidly spoke about the profession’s shortcomings, how it could adapt to the changing social and technical climates of today, and how its rare ability to do “ballet-like stretches” holds the key to the future. Here are the key highlights:

Communication needs an overhaul.
“Architecture has a serious problem today in that people who are not alike don’t communicate. I’m actually more interested in communicating with people I disagree with than people I agree with.

“To have a certain virtuosity of interpretation of every phenomenon is crucial. We’re working in a world where so many different cultures are operating at the same time, each with their own value system. If you want to be relevant, you need to be open to an enormous multiplicity of values, interpretations, and readings. The old-fashioned Western ‘this is’ ‘that is’ is no longer tenable. We need to be intellectual and rigorous, but at the same time relativist.”

The profession needs to compensate for its slow pace.
“Architecture is a profession that takes an enormous amount of time. The least architectural effort takes at least four or five or six years, and that speed is really too slow for the revolutions that are taking place.”

Read the full article HERE.