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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

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Rem Koolhaas
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: January 1
Architect
Urban Planner
Writer
R'dam
Remment Lucas Koolhaas
Remment Koolhaas
Definitions
Hazardous
Architecture
Omnipotence
Words
Impotence
Utopian
Mixture
Mixtures
Definition
Enterprise

More quotes by Rem Koolhaas

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In Lagos there's a really strong case to resurrect strong parts. Embedded in all of it are some amazing pieces of planning, amazing pieces of engineering and interaction. For instance, the campus of Lagos University is stunningly beautiful, efficient and generous, and that needs to be recognised and preserved.
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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If you have this reputation you can sit back and endure it, or you can try to do things with it.
Rem Koolhaas
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Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things.
Rem Koolhaas
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The thing is that I have a really intense, almost compulsive need to record. But it doesn't end there, because what I record is somehow transformed into a creative thing. There is a continuity. Recording is the beginning of a conceptual production. I am somehow collapsing the two - recording and producing - into a single event.
Rem Koolhaas
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Infrastructure is much more important than architecture.
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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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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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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Designs are increasingly winning competitions because they are literally green, and because somewhere they feature a small windmill.
Rem Koolhaas
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When 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, surveyed.
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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We live in an almost perfect stillness and work with incredible urgency.
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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You need to look at inequality as a typical condition of modern society.
Rem Koolhaas
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I am incredibly bad at predicting the future I am only smart enough to observe the present and listen to my intuition about tendencies.
Rem Koolhaas
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Evil can also be beautiful. The Coliseum in Rome, for example, a wonderful structure with an awful past. Just think about the bloody gladiator fights there.
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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The luxury of our position now is that we can almost assemble any team to address any issue.
Rem Koolhaas
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Lagos has also had a particular effect on my career. I was there early, and although it was a courageous step to go there and invest on this scale - I went there maybe 20 times - it's also been also super-controversial. There's an old school of thought that somebody like me has no place to go there.Because of colonialism and so on.
Rem Koolhaas