© Flickr User: harry_nl

Completed in 1997, the Educatorium in Utrecht, Netherlands was OMAs and Rem Koolhaas’ first university project.  Part of a larger masterplan for the campus of De Uithof for Utrecht University to create a more westernized version of a college campus, the Educatorium was designed to be the new center of campus, not only geographically but socially as well.

Understood to be the encapsulation of the entire university experience in one building, Koolhaas and his team at OMA conceptualized the Educatorium as a factory for learning in both the traditional formalistic approach as well as the informal student to student exchange.  The Educatorium was designed specifically so that the processes of socialization, learning, and examination would be entangled within one another blurring the boundaries between lounges, classrooms, and corridors such that there is a constant redefinition of what it means to learn in a social environment.

More on the Educatorium after the break. read more »

Chef Fre Peneau’s new restaurant, Le Dauphin is an 80 sqm ‘obsession in white’. OMA‘s Rem Koolhaas and associate Clement Blanchet received the Fooding 2010 award for their interior design of the restaurant that opened December 2010. Predominant materials of marble, mirrors and wood enlarge the space through reflection, and blur the boundary between interior and exterior.

© Hans Werlemann, courtesy OMA

With the ability to make even the simplest and straightforward programs spatially dynamic and in a constant state of redefinition, Rem Koolhaas and his firm OMA have redefined the term that “a house is a machine for living” in their design of Maison Bordeaux.  Completed in 1998, Maison Bordeaux sits on a small cape-like hill overlooking the city of Bordeaux.

The house was designed for a couple and their family, but before Koolhaas and OMA were commissioned for the project in 1994 the husband of the family was in a life threatening car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down.  Two years after his accident, the couple approached Koolhaas to design them a new home outside of Bordeaux.  Despite having been paralyzed, the man did not want t straightforward house rather he wanted a complex design, stating: “Contrary to what you would expect. I want a complex house because the house will define my world.”

More on the Bordeaux House after the break. read more »

© OMA

Continuing our coverage of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SSE), OMA recently shared the latest photographs of the building while under construction. The building, located in the downtown area of Shenzhen, China, is expected to reach completion in April 2011.  The SSE, a new headquarters for China’s equivalent of the NASDAQ, is 132,000 sqm of offices, registration and clearing house, accessory area, securities information company, SSE office area, trading floor and technical operations.  The floating podium design, which is suspended 36 meters over a public plaza, projects 54 meters from the base of the tower.  The building broke ground in November of 2007, Rem Koolhaas along with local government and the officials from the SSE were in attendance.  Check out our previous coverage here.

Follow the break for the latest photographs of SSE.

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© Flickr User: Kleiobird

Arguably one of the most spatially innovative architects in the world, Rem Koolhaas, and his firm OMA, designed a cultural staple in the city of Rotterdam.  Completed in 1992, the Kunsthal, in the Museumpark neighborhood of Rotterdam, is more of a cultural center that it is a museum.  Dubbed as a collection-less museum, the Kunsthal is a compilation of several galleries and halls that allow for maximum flexibility and accommodate a multitude of exhibitions and activities that can coexist singularly or collectively.

More on the Kunsthal after the break. read more »

Courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro

If you are a regular ArchDaily reader you know that we have been providing ongoing coverage of Eli Broad’s Broad Museum in Los Angeles. Nearly 120,000 sqf and $130 million dollars, invitations were given to six top architects to submit designs for the new museum. Rem Koolhaas, Herzog and de Meuron, Christian de Portzamparc, Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Foreign Office Architects competed and in August we informed you that Diller Scofidio + Renfro garnered the commission.

Today, the design for the Broad Museum has been released. Situated adjacent to Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Arata Isozaki’s Museum of Contemporary Art, the museum has become a key part of the Grand Avenue redevelopment project that has been losing steam.

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Courtesy of OMA

Construction official begins today for OMA’s latest project, Maggie’s Centre Gartnavel. This facility is part of a pioneering project using thoughtful architecture and innovative spaces as tools for solace and healing. OMA’s design approach carefully composed a ring of interlocking spaces that provide moments of comfort and relief. With a flat roof and floor levels that respond to the natural topography, the rooms vary in height, with the more intimate areas programmed for personal uses such as counseling, and open spacious zones as gathering places creating a sense of community.

Located in a natural setting, like a pavilion in the woods, the building is both introverted and extroverted: each space has a relationship either to the internal, landscaped courtyard or to the surrounding woodland and greenery, while certain moments provide views of Glasgow beyond.

Architects: OMA
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Client: Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres foundation
Project Area: 534 sqm
Photographs: Courtesy of OMA

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Rem Koolhaas CNN interview mentioned by Karen on her previous article “Is China Architect’s New Dubai?”.

We found this amazing video by Dutch Profiles on Rem Koolhaas, principal of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), and recent winner of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. Enjoy it!

This past week, the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority of Hong Kong unveiled OMA’s conceptual master plan for a new arts district (Koolhaas’ plan is one of three competing proposals). Divided into three villages, the 40 hectacre waterfront site places strong emphasis on the quality of the street life and the “cultural production where all aspects of the creative process are nurtured and made visible.”  The master plan has been years in the making, as Koolhaas established an office in Hong Kong to better understand the culture and context, as well as collaborate with financial and culture experts to design a feasible plan to positively affect the communities involved. Rem Koolhaas commented, “Using the village – a typology every citizen of Hong Kong is familiar with – as the model for our plan allows us to absorb the massive scale of WKCD’s ambition into manageable portions and forge deep connections with Kowloon, whose vital urban energy will be the lifeblood of WKCD.”

Images and more information about the master plan after the break. read more »

Prada Transformer © Iwan Baan

Chaired by Paolo Baratta, the Board of the Biennale di Venezia has awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Rem Koolhaas.   The much deserving architect has produced dozens of thought-provoking and inspirational works that constantly push the limits of the current state of architecture.   His strength lies in his buildings’ strong conceptual nature that is carried through to ideas about circulation, structure and programmatic organization.  ”Rem Koolhaas has expanded the possibilities of architecture. He has focused on the exchanges between people in space. He creates buildings that bring people together and in this way forms ambitious goals for architecture. His influence on the world has come well beyond architecture. People from very diverse fields feel a great freedom from his work,” explained the board. 

More about the award after the break. read more »

When you’re interested in the field of architecture, it basically consumes your entire life from how you look at things, to what you read to even what you watch.  Over the years, different films have portrayed some of the inner reflections of architects – there’s a piece on Khan entitled My Architect, there’s Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, and even Sketches of Frank Gehry, just to name a few.  Now, as Architectural Record reported, there’s a new film to add to your collection.  Filmed by Markus Heidingsfelder and Min Tesch, and produced by Arthouse Films, Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect offers a “thought-provoking portrait of the architect.”

More about the video after the break. read more »

Proposed Site for Broad's Museum. Photo credit: Bryan Chan

Eli Broad, an American philanthropist, is getting ready to design the newest home for his extensive art collection.  For his latest museum project, on the corner of Grand Avenue and 2nd Street in Los Angeles, Broad invited six of the professions’ leading minds to compete.  Resting across the street from Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Arata Isozaki’s 1986 Museum of Contemporary Art, Broad’s museum with include approximately 40,000 square feet of top-floor exhibition space, along with offices for the Broad Art Foundation.

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AA Exhibit Photograph: Architectural Association

Master mind, Rem Koolhaas, is obsessed with research.  At his exhibit currently showing at the Architectural Assocation School of Architecture in London, hundreds of pages of paper filed with research, theories and sketches rest on a plinth in the middle of the room.  Those pages compile an astonishing 400 volumes bound in black folders and contain the story of each one of OMA’s complete works from the past 40 years. So, Koolhaas, prolific writer or awesome architect?  We’re going to go with a little bit of both… read more »

© OMA

The City of Rotterdam held a competition for a mixed-use extension for the City Hall, accommodating public and administrative facilities and a residential program. The competition requests that the mixed-use building becomes “the most sustainable in the Netherlands”.

Five designs were presented by the City, and they will be on public display at the NAI until Sept 13th to receive public feedback, which can also be made through the website. The teams will present to the jury on Septh 23th, and the winner will be announced sometime in October.

The 5 finalists are: Claus en Kaan Architecten, Mecanoo Architecten, Meyer en van Schooten Architecten, OMA and SeARCH.

OMA shared with us their finalist entry, in collaboration with  ABT and Werner Sobek Green Technolgies. The project adheres to the highest energy efficiency requirements, and it also considers a sustainable approach in terms of speed of construction and future flexibility of the building through a repeated and flexible structural system.

Images from the other proposals will be featured on another article. Rem Koolhaas’ statement and more images after the break.

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© Iwan Baan

Rem Koolhaas’ latest project -The Prada Transformer- is not just a building, but also a statement on today´s state of architecture. Dubbed the anti-blob, this “object” rejects all common blobby shapes we have seen lately. Simple geometrical shapes (a circle, a cross, a rectangle and an hexagon) enclose a space that depending on its rotation results on different spaces suitable for fashion exhibitions, cinema, art exhibitions and other special events. Each face is the platform on which these activities take place, while also being served by the other faces enclosing the space.

A few weeks ago, we presented the Transformer at Position 1 (Fashion Exhibition) with photos by Iwan Baan . Now, he sent us his photo set for the Transformer at Position 2: Cinema.

From June 26th to July 5th, the Transformer used a center piece on one of the faces to project “Flesh, Mind and Soul”, a film festival co-curated by Alejandro González Iñárritu (director Babel, 21 Grams). Please note that the interiors are now almost all black.

As of now, the Transformer is going through some changes to debut on its new position on Jul 30th to host “Beyond Control”, an exhibition by the Prada Foundation.

More photos by Iwan Baan after the break and the complete photo set on Iwan’s website:

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We just received this from OMA: After almost 12 years in the boards, OMA announced that the De Rotterdam complex will enter construction during December 2009, expecting completion in 2013.

Tree stacked towers with a total height of 150m, will result on a gross floor area of approximately 160,000m2, making De Rotterdam the largest building in the Netherland, with a total cost of €340m.

The mixed-use program (offices, apartments, a hotel, conference facilities, gym, shops, restaurants, and cafes) and the resulting density make this project a vertical city, located in the old harbour district of Wilhelminapier, next to the iconic Erasmus bridge.
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CNN’s Talk Asia just featured an interesting interview with Rem Koolhaas. At the beginning of the video we see the Prada Transformer in action.

Highlights of this interview are Dubai, which lead to Koolhaas talking about the public sector and the stimulus, and his views on the Generic City.

When talking about influence (Rem was on the 100 most influential people list by Time magazine in 2008) and “star architects”, Koolhaas sentences the term to death:

“I think it’s a name that is actually degrading to the vast majority of people it is applied to. And it really is a kind of political term that for certain clients is important because they use star architects. My hope is that through the current complexity that title will exit discretely and disappear”.

© Iwan Baan

Rem Koolhaas’ latest project -The Prada Transformer- is not just a building, but also a statement on today´s state of architecture. Dubbed the anti-blob, this “object” rejects all common blobby shapes we have seen lately. Simple geometrical shapes (a circle, a cross, a rectangle and an hexagon) enclose a space that depending on its rotation results on different spaces suitable for fashion exhibitions, cinema, art exhibitions and other special events. Each face is the platform on which these activities take place, while also being served by the other faces enclosing the space.

© Iwan Baan

A few weeks ago we showed you part of the construction progress, which is already finished and opened in April 15th with a fashion exhibition (Waist Down – Skirts by Miuccia Prada, see video of animated skirts at the exhibition), that will be opened until May 31 when the Transformer will rotate into Cinema mode.

Architecture photographer Iwan Baan recently visited the Prada Transformer and shared with us this impressive photo set of the Transformer on Exhibition mode (see more after the break).

For me, search for the ultimate flexible space and the use of regular shapes puts several things in question. Transformable architecture is nothing new, but in times on which “mixed use” seems to be the 2nd typical characteristic of a building after “green”, this project makes a stand. No fancy shapes, no wind diagrams, no fancy structure, no shiny surfaces, no eye candy renderings. No blob. Just, a simple building.

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I just saw the video for the new OMA project for PRADA, the Transformer. This pavilion currently being assembled in Seoul, Korea allows different configuration for different uses (cinema, exhibition, art , fashion show)  - related to a new mix of disciplines, between art, fashion and architecture.

Then, the question on how to mix these different uses under one pavilion become the architectural trigger for this new “object” (I rather use that word, as i think “building” is obsolet for it).

These different configurations result by rotating this object -the transformer- with a crane, and each face of this object is a plane with a given shape, specific for each use but also being used as a helper for other uses (ie: the cinema projector).

If you take a look at each of these shapes, they are all common to us: a circle, a cross, a rectangle and an hexagon… which results on a very recognizable object that Koolhaas calls the anti-blob, and I think that´s where Rem scores another one.

Anyway, i highly recommend you to watch the videos at the Prada Transformer website: Koolhaas explaining the transformer, time lapse of the construction and the transformer being rotated with cranes.

Channel pavilion (blob, by Zaha) versus Prada pavilion (anti-blob, by OMA)?

Renderings and diagrams after the break. read more »