Outreach Extensions: OMA/Rem Koolhaas Exhibitions as Self-Critical Environments

Abstract

Many times in the history of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Rem Koolhaas has self- or co-curated exhibitions of recent work—in 1978 at the Guggenheim in New York; between 1980 and 1990 in London, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Rotterdam, France, Paris, and Basel; in 1994 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York; and in 2003–04 in Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin and in OMA’s Kunsthal in Rotterdam. They are—typical for this medium—a forgotten part of OMA’s production. In this article, OMA’s exhibition policy is reconstructed by highlighting shows that reveal both the “medium-specificity” of an OMA exhibition as well as the obsessions in Koolhaas’s method. Instead of offering the experience of “real” architectonic spaces or environments, these expositions consciously reflect the cultural and historical conditions in which OMA projects were developed, also by challenging disciplinary or institutional limits, and by “reaching out” to the world outside. A typical OMA show is not a space that has to be enjoyed phenomenologically, but rather a meaningful discursive environment, aiming to materialize the “structures” defining late twentieth-century life and work. The exhibition architecture offers guidelines for interpretation of the projects on display, as well as critical observations on the boundaries of architecture.

Keywords:

• OMA/Rem Koolhaas
• criticism
• theory
• exhibitions
• media

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

Notes

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2 OMA: The Sparkling Metropolis, November 17–December 17, 1978, exhibition brochure, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Archives, A0003, Box 1258, Folder 9.

3 Neil Levine, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 299–364.

4 Roland Barthes, The Eiffel Tower, and Other Mythologies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 5.

5 Rem Koolhaas, “Projecten uit de jaren zeventig, 7 nov. 1980 t/m 4 jan, 1981 zaal 24–25,” in Stedelijk Museum, ed. Edy de Wilde (Amsterdam: Stedelijk Museum, 1980), 99–100.

6 Deyan Sudjic, “Enter the Prophets of New Sobriety,” Building Design, June 12, 1981, 2.

7 Paul Vermeulen, “Appareils instables pour la mégapole,” Septentrion 16, no. 3 (1987), 44.

8 Sudjic, “Enter the Prophets,” 2.

9 Bruno Vayssière, Patrice Noviant, and Jacques Lucan, “Amsterdam-Nord,” Architecture Mouvement Continuité 17, no. 6 (1984), 18–19.

10 For a reconstruction of this genesis, see Christophe Van Gerrewey, “Goodbye Paper!” AA Files 35, no. 74 (2017): 98–111.

11 Stanislaus von Moos, “Dutch Group Portrait,” A+U 17, no. 217 (1988), 88.

12 Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Case of Wagner,” in The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, ed. Oscar Levy (Edinburgh: T. N. Foulis, 1909), 30; quoted in Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “Beuys,” in Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 54.

13 Ole Bouman and Roemer van Toorn, “Le Style, c’est l’Homme,” in The Invisible in Architecture, eds. Ole Bouman and Roemer van Toorn (London: Academy Editions, 1994), 58.

14 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968), 241.

15 Léa-Catherine Szacka, Exhibiting the Postmodern: The 1980 Venice Architecture Biennale (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2016), 153.

16 Koos Bosma and Hans van Dijk, “Ik ben nu al zeker drie jaar bezig om dat stigma van het moderne van me af te schudden, juist omdat het in Nederland zo gemakzuchtig wordt beleden,” Archis 8, no. 3 (1989), 42.

17 Herman Selier, “Voor een beter Nederland,” NRC Handelsblad, March 3, 1989.

18 Toyo Ito, “Toyo Ito Reviews Rem Koolhaas Exhibition,” Telescope 3, no. 5 (1990), 86.

19 Ito, “Toyo Ito Reviews,” 79.

20 Jacques Lucan, Composition, Non-composition (Lausanne: PPUR Press, 2009), 550.

21 Jayne Merkel, “In the Galleries,” Oculus 15, no. 1 (1995), 11.

22 Terence Riley, ed., OMA at MoMA (New York: MoMA, 1994), n.p.

23 Grahame D. Shane, “Rem Koolhaas and the Postmodern City,” The Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design Newsletter, May 1995, 3.

24 Shane, “Rem Koolhaas,” 6.

25 Manfredo Tafuri, “The Ashes of Jefferson,” in The Sphere and the Labyrinth: Avant-Gardes and Architecture from Piranesi to the 1970s, trans. Pellegrino d’Acierno and Robert Connolly (Cambridge, UK: MIT Press, 1987), 292.

26 Tafuri, “The Ashes of Jefferson,” 293.

27 Tafuri, “The Ashes of Jefferson,” 293.

28 Hans van Dijk, “Rem Koolhaas Interview,” wonen-TA/BK 6, no. 11 (1978), 18.

29 Shane, “Rem Koolhaas,” 4.

30 Riley, OMA at MoMA, n.p.

31 Nikolaus Kuhnert, Philipp Oswalt, and Alejandro Zaera Polo, “Die Entfaltung der Architektur,” ARCH+ 25, no. 117 (1993), 22.

32 Sabine Fabo, “Documenta X,” Leonardo 30, no. 4 (1998), 330.

33 Masao Miyoshi, “Radical Art at Documenta X,” New Left Review 38, no. 228 (1998), 157. An earlier version of this article was published in ANY 5, no. 21 (1997): 6–9.

34 Geert Bekaert, “Dealing with Koolhaas,” in Rooted in the Real (Ghent: WZW Editions, 2011), 497.

35 Marco de Michelis, “Fundamentals,” Log 11, no. 32 (2014), 95.

36 Beatriz Colomina, “The Architecture of Publication,” El Croquis 24, nos. 134/135 (2012), 367.

37 Colomina, “The Architecture of Publication,” 367.

38 Valentina Ciuffi, “Rem Koolhaas Is Stating ‘the End’ of His Career, says Peter Eisenman,” Dezeen, https://www.dezeen.com/2014/06/09/rem-koolhaas-at-the-end-of-career-says-peter-eisenman.

 

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christophe Van Gerrewey

Christophe Van Gerrewey is assistant professor of architecture theory at EPFL Lausanne. He has published in journals such as Log, A + U, AA Files, OASE, Journal of Architecture, ARCH+, Architectural Review, and Journal of Landscape Architecture. He is the editor of OMA/Rem Koolhaas: A Critical Reader from Delirious New York to S,M,L,XL (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2019).