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Architecture is a dangerous mix of power and importance.

Rem Koolhaas

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Rem Koolhaas
Age: 81
Born: 1944
Born: January 1
Architect
Urban Planner
Writer
R'dam
Remment Lucas Koolhaas
Remment Koolhaas
Importance
Dangerous
Power
Badass
Ass
Architecture

More quotes by Rem Koolhaas

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The people from the suburbs are bringing along their suburban values: cleanliness, orderliness, safety - dullness, in other words. As a result, urban areas are being hollowed out. Just look at Times Square in New York. No more sex shops, no drugs, no homeless people. The area is clinically clean and incredibly dull.
Rem Koolhaas
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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
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Sustainability has become an ornament.
Rem Koolhaas
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Journalists seem mostly interested in what brand of shoes I wear.
Rem Koolhaas
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Architecture is a rare collective profession: it's always exercised by groups. There is an essential modesty, which is a complete contradiction to the notion of a star.
Rem Koolhaas
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Our society can no longer tolerate ugliness. You see that in cars, sofas and women. [But] ugliness also has a right to exist.
Rem Koolhaas
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Let's put it this way: One can be happy or unhappy in a building. But some buildings make us more depressed than others.
Rem Koolhaas
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The 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
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Miami Beach is a completely interesting hybrid because it is, on the one hand, a resort and, on the other hand, a real city. This condition of city and water on two sides I think is really amazing. And in the heart of that city, it has put an enormous convention center, an enormous physical presence.
Rem Koolhaas
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One cannot completely avoid this landmark character with large buildings such as these. But the city itself is also gigantic.
Rem Koolhaas
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The stronger the identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction.
Rem Koolhaas
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The luxury of our position now is that we can almost assemble any team to address any issue.
Rem Koolhaas
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Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things.
Rem Koolhaas
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We discovered a person in Lagos who had a fish stall, and within a single square metre she carried two children all the way to Harvard. She supported an unbelievable escape of her children into education. In that sense it was a city completed pixillated, and every pixel contained amazing stories.
Rem Koolhaas
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That has been another interesting discovery: that basically a city [Lagos] could recover from a really deep, deep, deep pit.
Rem Koolhaas
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I like fashion, whether or not it's overpriced, because it creates a sense of the sublime with relatively few means.
Rem Koolhaas
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Beauty isn't what I'm primarily interested in [in architecture]. I think appropriateness is more important.
Rem Koolhaas
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Our office acts like a kind of educational establishment and we are very careful who we educate.
Rem Koolhaas
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Architects work in two ways. One is to respond precisely to a client's needs or demands. Another is to look at what the client asks and reinterpret it.
Rem Koolhaas
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Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. It is by definition a c h a o t i c a d v e n t u r e... In other words, the utopian enterprise.
Rem Koolhaas