Architects Of The 21st Century

Latest | 27th February 2018

Architect and theorist Rem Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam, kingdom of the netherlands, in 1944. Described by legendary architect Frank Gehry as "the most comprehensive thinker in the profession today", Koolhaas is renowned as an innovate and cerebral architect, and is the first entry into our series profiling the most influential architects of the 21st century.

Literary Ancestry

The son of novelist Anton Koolhaas, Rem began his professional life as a writer, working as a journalist for the Haagse Postal service. After speaking to a group of architecture students at the Academy of Delft Koolhaas, he discovered his passion for architecture, and packed his numberless to study Compages Association Schoolhouse in London, graduating in 1972.

However, it would be equally a author that Koolhaas would first come to the compages customs, gaining widespread recognition as an eminent urban theorist with the publication of his 1978 work, Febrile New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. Febrile New York looked at the architectural development of Manhattan as an "organic procedure created through a variety of cultural forces".

Delirious New York was heralded as classic architectural text and provided the platform and the publicity for Koolhaas to forge his career every bit an internationally renowned builder.

The Office for Metropolitan Architecture

In 1975, Koolhaas founded the Part for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) alongside Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorm. The firm has proved to be a breeding ground for some of the almost influential architects of the 21st century, including Winy Maas of the Dutch business firm MVRDV, Bjarke Ingels of the Copenhagen-based BIG and the belatedly Zaha Hadid who worked for Koolhaas equally an intern.

OMA's earliest work included the 1987 Netherlands Trip the light fantastic Theater, the 1991 Nexus Housing in Fukuoka, Nippon and the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam the following year. Withal, Koolhaas and OMA really came to the forefront at the turn of the century, creating a number of brilliant and daring contemporary buildings, including a string of stores for the manner designer Prada, the Netherlands embassy in 2003, the spectacular Seattle Public Library in 2004, and, maybe his nigh famous design, the trousers-shaped China Central Television set building in 2008 (Below).

"A Theorist and Prophet"

Unlike well-nigh architects, Koolhaas is not by and large associated with a specific school or architectural motion. While he has been chosen everything from a Structuralist to Deconstructivist, Koolhaas does not strive for a definitive aesthetic style, but rather an compages that explores the boundaries between humanity and applied science, with each design adapted to the needs of the client and the local surround.

In the twelvemonth 2000, Koolhaas was awarded the Pritzker Prize, considered the most prestigious award in the field of architecture. The Pritzker jury praised Koolhaas equally a rare combination of "visionary and implementer — philosopher and pragmatist—theorist and prophet."

Equally is ofttimes the instance with many revolutionary thinkers and artists, some of Koolhaas's work has proved divisive, with buildings such as the Seattle Public Library and the Red china Fundamental Television building (below) praised and derided in well-nigh equal measure. Where some see innovation, and a mastery of structure and form, others see novelty for novelty'south sake or fifty-fifty ugliness.

Designs that make a big impression

Whatever the consensus on the value of Rem Koolhaas' designs, there is no doubting his continuing influence on the earth of architecture, as a theorist, a mentor and as an architect of genius and we are certainly fans here at Selo.

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