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The great problem of the concert hall is that the shoebox is the ideal shape for acoustics but that no architect worth their names wants to build a shoebox.

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
Great
Shape
Shoebox
Ideals
Acoustics
Shapes
Concert
Build
Hall
Worth
Concerts
Wants
Halls
Names
Architect
Problem
Ideal

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The acceptance of certain realities doesn't preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.
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Architecture is a dangerous mix of power and importance.
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The stronger the identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction.
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Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things.
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Manhattan has no choice but the skyward extrusion of the Grid itself only the Skyscraper offers business the wide-open spaces of a man-made Wild West, a frontier in the sky.
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Our office acts like a kind of educational establishment and we are very careful who we educate.
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Lagos was the ultimate dysfunctional city - but actually, in terms of all the initiatives and ingenuity, it mobilised an incredibly beautiful, almost utopian landscape of independence and agency.
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There's nothing Dutch about my architecture.
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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. The acceptance of certain realities doesn’t preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.
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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.
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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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I like fashion, whether or not it's overpriced, because it creates a sense of the sublime with relatively few means.
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You need to look at inequality as a typical condition of modern society.
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The word 'celebrity' and the word 'architect' are basically incompatible.
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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.
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Nigeria [in 1990] was all rumour, an unbelievable amount of rumour - largely about crime and almost mythical manifestations of evil.
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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.
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Journalists seem mostly interested in what brand of shoes I wear.
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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.
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Asia is still dominated by skyscrapers. I hope that, in European cities, it will become a declining trend. They were almost never necessary.
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