Quote

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.

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
Business
Wide
Grid
Made
Sky
Grids
Men
West
Skyscraper
Offers
Frontier
Choice
Spaces
Open
Frontiers
Choices
Manhattan
Space
Wild
Skyward

More quotes by 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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Infrastructure is much more important than architecture.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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As more and more architecture is finally unmasked as the mere organization of flow - shopping centers, airports - it is evident that circulation is what makes or breaks public architecture.
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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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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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You need to look at inequality as a typical condition of modern society.
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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.
Rem Koolhaas
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But now sustainability is such a political category that it's getting more and more difficult to think about it in a serious way. Sustainability has become an ornament.
Rem Koolhaas
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There's something really interesting about current urbanism: the only model is the universal model, and there is increasingly incapacity to consider the virtues and the qualities that are there, and then to build on them. The only thing is complete transformation.
Rem Koolhaas
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We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living.
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
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Sustainability has become an ornament.
Rem Koolhaas
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Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things.
Rem Koolhaas
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In this branch of utopian real estate, architecture is no longer the art of designing buildings so much as the brutal skyward extrusion of whatever site the developer has managed to assemble.
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