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

More quotes by Rem Koolhaas

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Designs are increasingly winning competitions because they are literally green, and because somewhere they feature a small windmill.
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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.
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We live in an almost perfect stillness and work with incredible urgency.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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Prada is extremely directed in terms of communicating what they like and what they don't like. That is actually extremely pleasant because it clarifies very easily what you can do and what you need to do.
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Journalists seem mostly interested in what brand of shoes I wear.
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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.
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The acceptance of certain realities doesn't preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.
Rem Koolhaas
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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.
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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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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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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There's nothing Dutch about my architecture.
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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Asia is still dominated by skyscrapers. I hope that, in European cities, it will become a declining trend. They were almost never necessary.
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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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