“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
“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
“If you have this reputation you can sit back and endure it, or you can try to do things with it.” IfsTryingEndureReputation Author:Rem Koolhaas
“Influence is a very unpleasant subject and I deal with it in a maybe irresponsible way, which is to really ignore it. It would be a nightmare if we started to really think about it; it would tie our hands, it would tie everyone elses hands.” IfsThinkingWayHandsWould BeDealsInfluenceSubjectsTiesNightmareIrresponsible Author:Rem Koolhaas
“It is not possible to live in this age if you don't have a sense of many contradictory forces.” IfsAgeForceContradictory Author:Rem Koolhaas
