Thursday, July 19, 2007

Rem Koolhaas in Amman...

Yesterday I went to meet one of the living godfathers of the 20th century architecture… I went to a discussion session by [Rem Koolhaas]…
It was so exciting for me to meet him… I love his work… his ideas and his books
Though I got disappointed from the lack of proper preparation by the organizers… I ended up in a room where I had to listen to his lecture on a projection screen… showing his presentation and his voice only… and the whole event was poorly advertised...
Anyways it was a good lecture… later on the discussion session started and I was able to see him…
I should say that the lecture was too quite for my taste and unlike him; he wasn’t neither pleasantly aggressive nor very critic… =)

My notes from the lecture…

System of Overdose
Party at the staircase
City of excess
Rotating a building
Creating icons
Power / regime / image of the city
Genuineness of materials
A plane with holes
Flexible model
Surprise / eternal buildings
Over dose of theatrical buildings
Women potentially talented as men
Ghastly features of practicing architecture
Superficiality
Dubai: theater for self hatred
Use it and then ridicule it
Study the program
Creativity



OMA: Office of Metropolitan Architecture

Rem Koolhaas

YES: a new map of the world

AMO's proposed flag to the European Union

project in Dubai : rotating building

CCTV Building in China: under construction

Rem Koolhaas as he left the lecture hall

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

One more note 2 add Russy 2 ur list: … the “ & SOMETIMES MORE THAN ONE ! “ ... I know it wasn’t the most architectural expression but wasn’t that more like the Rem smart way of speech we expected ?! ..

Definitely he z a genuine thinker , & an unprecedented Architectural Godfather ,, I enjoyed the lecture though I really thought it would much reach far beyond introducing the OMA office work , I wasn’t fully satisfied until he started 2 present samples of the office approaches in the Middle East, & specifically Dubai , where his statements did sound critically “in the right place & time" regarding Amman construction boom ...
The screen semi-live attendance was the most “over-dosed surprise :)” ..& the “ party @ the staircase” z my favorite ...

Sawsee said...

Thanks for letting me know about Rem Koolhaas.