“Asia is still dominated by skyscrapers. I hope that, in European cities, it will become a declining trend. They were almost never necessary.” StillsCitiesTrendsAsiaSkyscraper Author:Rem Koolhaas
“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.” ThinkingHeartTwoRealHandsSidesWaterInterestingCitiesConditionsEnormousBeachConventionsResortsTwo SidesMiamiHybridReally AmazingMiami Beach Author:Rem Koolhaas
“The Grid makes the history of architecture and all previous lessons of urbanism irrelevant. It forces Manhattan's builders to develop a new system of formal values, to invent strategies for the distinction of one block from another. The Grid's two-dimensional discipline also creates undreamt-of freedom for three-dimensional anarchy. The Grid defines a new balance between control and de-control in which the city can be at the same time ordered and fluid, a metropolis of rigid chaos.” TwoValuesThreeForceCitiesBalanceDisciplineLessonsStrategyChaosArchitectureBlockDistinctionAnarchyFormalIrrelevantFluidManhattanBuilderGridsMetropolis Author:Rem Koolhaas
“One cannot completely avoid this landmark character with large buildings such as these. But the city itself is also gigantic.” CharacterCitiesBuildingLandmarks Author:Rem Koolhaas
“Most old cities are now sclerotic machines that dispense known qualities in ever-greater quantities, instead of laboratories of the uncertain. Only the skyscraper offers business the wide-open spaces of a man-made Wild West, a frontier in the sky.” MenMadeSpaceCitiesQualityKnownGreaterSkyOffersMachinesWestWideQuantityUncertainFrontiersLaboratorySkyscraperOpen SpacesWild WestWide Open Spaces Author:Rem Koolhaas
“Nigeria was a blank on the map - there weren't even any maps. The US State Department, everyone said don't go there. It was courageous of Harvard University: the notion was that we would match Harvard students with Nigerian students, so that every student would have a guide, creating a guarantee of intimacy with the city.” SaidStatesCitiesStudentsCreatingNotionUniversityGuidesIntimacyGuaranteesDepartmentMapsCourageousBlankHarvardNigeriaHarvard University Author:Rem Koolhaas
“Lagos was a city that had been turned against itself. There was a bridge that became the perfect trap for crimes, which began with nails being scattered to cause flat tyres. If the driver stopped, the car would be dismantled in 20 minutes and the parts thrown overboard [to people waiting below]. The system had turned into a kind of destructive device that could be used against people. That was the narrative.” PeopleIfsKindWould BeUsedCausesWaitingPerfectCitiesMinutesCarCrimeNarrativeBridgesDestructiveThrownFlatsDevicesDriversNailsTrapsOverboardTyres Author:Rem Koolhaas
“The real thing we tried to look at is what happens to a society when the state is absent. At that point, the state had really withdrawn from Lagos; the city was left to its own devices, both in terms of money and services. That, by definition, created an unbelievable proliferation of independent agency: each citizen needed to take, in any day, maybe 400 or 500 independent decisions on how to survive that extremely complex system.” LooksRealStatesHappensLeftTermDecisionCitiesNeededCitizensIndependentComplexesDefinitionsAgencyDevicesUnbelievableAbsentReal ThingsProliferationComplex Systems Author:Rem Koolhaas
“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.” BeautifulTermCitiesUltimateIndependenceLandscapeAgencyInitiativeIngenuityUtopian Author:Rem Koolhaas
“We discovered a person in Lagos who had a fish stall, and within a single square metre she carried two children all the way to Harvard. She supported an unbelievable escape of her children into education. In that sense it was a city completed pixillated, and every pixel contained amazing stories.” WayChildrenPersonsTwoStoriesCitiesFishesSquaresUnbelievableHarvardPixels Author:Rem Koolhaas
“That has been another interesting discovery: that basically a city [Lagos] could recover from a really deep, deep, deep pit.” Has BeensInterestingCitiesDiscoveryPitsReally Deep Author:Rem Koolhaas
“At that time [90th in Lagos], if you drove through the city, you drove through a foreground that always seemed to be incredibly dramatic and incredibly agonised - smoking, burning, incredible compression. In the first year we stayed on the ground and went everywhere. But then in order to discover whether this was the whole story, we rented a helicopter. And we began to understand that this is not chaos but a highly modern system that had been abandoned, then at some point went into reversal, then slowly came out of it.” IfsYearsFirstsWholeStoriesOrderCitiesModernChaosIncrediblesBurningDramaticSmokingAbandonedHelicoptersReversalForegroundCompression Author:Rem Koolhaas
“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.” WantCitiesQualityIdentitySingularity Author:Rem Koolhaas
