“The people from the suburbs are bringing along their suburban values: cleanliness, orderliness, safety - dullness, in other words. As a result, urban areas are being hollowed out. Just look at Times Square in New York. No more sex shops, no drugs, no homeless people. The area is clinically clean and incredibly dull.” PeopleLooksValuesSexResultsNew YorkDrugAreasSafetyCleanDullShopsSquaresUrbanHomelessSuburbsCleanlinessDullnessHomeless PeopleTimes SquareOrderlinessUrban Areas 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
“It was a book [George Packer written on our presence in Nigeria] that was killed by the response of other people. Which sounds quite cowardly, perhaps, but it was the first manifestation of what is currently a really big issue: how political correctness defines the limits of what you can do. In that sense, it was super-exciting and maybe the most magical project we did, but at the same time fraught with mixed feelings.” PeopleFirstsBookFeelingsBigsPoliticalSoundCan DoIssuesWrittenLimitsProjectsExcitingResponseManifestationPolitical CorrectnessCowardlyNigeriaCorrectnessPackersMixed Feelings Author:Rem Koolhaas
“The institutions are working better now, the banks are much more functional. At this time, 1997, there were no mobile phones! It's a whole different thing now with mobile phones: technology has created a form of regulation, because people can actually talk to each other a lot more.” PeopleDifferentWholeFormTechnologyInstitutionsPhonesDifferent ThingsRegulationMobileMobile PhonesBetter Now Author:Rem Koolhaas
“People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming.” PeopleThinkingCoursesArchitectureMiserableLiberatingEcstatic Author:Rem Koolhaas
