Rem Koolhaas
Koolhaas is the founding partner of OMA, and of its research-oriented counterpart AMO based in the Netherlands. Some call him a starchitect, others an ‘architects architect’, others still think Rem Koolhaas’ work is controversial. All agree that he is one of the most important architectural thinkers and urbanists of his generation. Here, we collate the very best of his buildings, works, projects, drawings, style, and philosophy, from his 2018 designs for Prada, to his early work at Volume Magazine. Discover all you need to know, learn from (and about) this Pritzker Architecture Prize winner, and the once-teacher of Zaha Hadid.
As part of the Wallpaper* Power 200, we plumped up 2015’s Power List to a meaty two-ton’s worth of carefully measured rankings, in an upscaled calibration of design achievement. Within our top 20 (design-minded) architects, Rem Koolhaas/OMA showed occasional but striking forays into product design, including his collection for Knoll. Pictured: the architect and his Knoll counter. Photography: A Osio. Courtesy of Knoll, Inc
Dutch architect Ellen van Loom, a partner at Rem Koolhaas’ OMA imagined an arrangement of stacked boxes on Copenhagen’s harbourfront. The Blox Building features 22 rental apartments at the top, the DAC in the centre and radiating out to the building’s edges, as well as an urban innovation hub, a ground-floor restaurant, underground parking, and outdoor public space. Photography: Alastair Philip Wiper
In March 2018, for it’s first building in the French capital, OMA opened Lafayette Anticipations, an art centre with an adaptable interior, giving spatial exibility a new meaning, fit to host three to four annual shows, plus performances and workshops.
Our selection of next-level architects took centre stage inside the Lafayette Anticipations for the Wallpaper* Architects’ Directory 2018
For one of OMA’s most striking works to-date, the new Quatar National Library provides a home for over a million books and thousands of readers. Accessed from a large, triangular open space at its heart, the library interior is defined by three large aisles that are flanked by shelving, and serve as socialising, resting and reading areas, offering views across the library and out towards the surrounding environment. Photography: Iwan Baan
When the Fondazione Prada opened its doors in Milan to critical acclaim in 2015, the fashion, art and architecture worlds found a natural home in the OMA-designed complex. The site, a former distillery dating from 1910, has been widely covered and lovingly visited since, but behind the scenes, further works have been quietly underway. In March 2018, the foundation and its architects announced the completion of the complex’s next phase – its imposing tower. Fittingly named ‘Torre’, this new element brings height to the campus, which is composed of seven structures in a calculated mix of looks and size. Photography: Bas Princen, courtesy Fondazione Prada
As well as collaborating with the Milanese house for over a decade on the set design of its seasonal catwalk shows through AMO, the research branch of OMA, Rem Koolhaas was invited by Prada to create an item in nylon fabric as part of its A/W 2018 menswear collection. Koolhaus introduced a backpack that is designed to be worn on the front of the body, which featured compartments designated for different devices, meaning users can easily organise their belongings. Image courtesy of Prada
Koolhaus/OMA redesigned the highly anticipated Fondaco Dei Tedeschi in Venice as a department store — a project comissioned by the Benetton family’s property group in 2009 — which came to the end of its six-year-long schedule in 2016. OMA created a new rooftop by the renovation of the existing 19th Century pavilion at the top and the addition of a large wooden terrace, offering spectacular views over the city. Photography: Delfino Sisto Legnani and Marco Cappelletti
After a long search for a candidate to provide Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Art Gallery with a new extension, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), with its New York office lead partner Shohei Shigematsu, was selected to expand and refurbish the site in 2016. The $80 million scheme – the largest ever initiated by a cultural organisation in western New York – was the international firm’s first art museum designed on US soil. Photography: Blake Dawson
OMA’s Rem Koolhaas reinvented Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in 2015, where he restored original features and wrapped the two-storey space in a gleaming polycarbonate façade, which detached itself from its factory-like predecessor Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage. Photography: David X Prutting/BFAnyc.com
2015 unveiled a cascading urban complex in Rotterdam and the brainchild of OMA. The Timmerhuis is an all-encompasing response to several starting points; it is an inner city, urban structure that unites office, public space and residential; it was conceived as a beacon of sustainability; and it is also a reflection on a city’s architectural identity. Photography: Ossip van Duivenbode
