Dutch artist Madelon Vriesendorp has been named the recipient of the 2025 Soane Medal, becoming the first UK-based female artist to receive the award since its launch in 2017. A co-founder of Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Vriesendorp is widely recognized for her surrealist and humorous visual language that has shaped how modern and postmodernarchitecture is represented and understood. Her work, which blends playfulness with critical thought, has provided architecture with vivid, memorable imagery that continues to influence generations of architects.
Cities evolve over countless years, each moment of change building up to larger societal and architectural shifts. Metropolises across the world are constantly subject to social, political, economic, or environmental forces that alter their fundamental identity - a character that is meant to be dynamic. As cities develop in size and impact, advancements in the understanding of cities and urbanism grow more complex.
Cities are formed from a sequence of narratives, characteristics, relations, and socio-spatial values that reflect the identity of the place. The livelihood of the city also depends on its people and a mutual relationship with them. Along with their communities and their circumstances, cities morph to reflect their residents' needs and values.
Rem Koolhaas, co-founder of Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), receiver of the Pritzker Prize Award in 2000, and leading urban theorist, was one of the first to question the high-rise phenomenon and its influence on city transformation. Particularly intrigued by the Gulf region and the urban ambitions of this area, in 2009, during the 9th edition of the Sharjah Biennial, he delivered a lecture on the potential of re-inventing urbanization in the Emirates.
On the occasion of the golden jubilee of UAE, marking 50 years since the Emirates were founded in 1971, 50U, published by Archis explores the different developments in the Gulf, this region that “witnessed the transformation of a partly nomadic, partly town-based community into a globally active metropolitan society”. After Al Manakh, in 2007, followed in 2010 by Al Manakh Cont’d, 50U tells the story of the UAE through 50 portraits of people, plants, and places. The book also shares an excerpt of Koolhaas’ 2009 talk that reflects on contemporary conditions, focusing specifically on his reading of Dubai, his architectural involvement as well as his future urban predictions.
In their newly released architectural film, photographer Laurian Ghinitoiu and filmmaker Arata Mori take viewers on a visually compelling tour of OMA’s MEETT Exhibition and Convention Centre, Toulouse’s new mega-scale parc des expositions. Exploring the design’s multiple facets, from the monumental to the mundane, the film constructs a detailed vision of the project sitting at the intersection of architecture, infrastructure, masterplan and public space.
OMA's new MEETT Exhibition and Convention Centre in Toulouse has officially opened. OMA Partner Chris van Duijn led the development, the third largest parc des expositions in France outside of Paris. The masterplan of MEETT was conceived as an active strip - ‘une bande active’ - forming a physical border between urban development and countryside. The project was made to help organize an integrated development approach for the city.
OMA / Jason Long’s 11th Street BridgePark was granted approval by the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) at the beginning of April. Designed by OMA, with landscape architects OLIN, and structural engineers WRA, the project is the winning entry of the design competition held back in 2014.
AMO, the think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), co-founded by Rem Koolhaas and led by Samir Bantal, has announced a recent research collaboration with Volkswagen. Focused on rural areas and the countryside, the partnership will look into the future of rural mobility, through a first conceptual study on electric tractors.
Videos
AMO’s selection of unique and highly specific conditions distributed over the globe serves as a framework for their research and represents where the world is headed.. Image Courtesy of OMA
Opening in February 2020, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is showcasing an exhibition by Rem Koolhaas and AMO, the think tank of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Entitled Countryside, The Future the exhibition seeks to investigate urgent environmental, political, and socioeconomic transformations in the nonurban areas.
As 2019 winds down, we're taking a look ahead to the projects we're most looking forward to in 2020. With a mix of cultural and commercial programs, the designs are located across five continents, with many under construction for multiple years. Designed across a wide range of scales, they represent a mix of interconnected landscapes, museums, and the world's newest skyscrapers.
Qatar has been radically reshaped by growth and development. The sovereign state transformed since the second half of the twentieth century after the discovery of the Dukhan oil field in 1940. Capitalizing on over 70 years of economic development, Qatar now has the highest per capita income in the world. Reflecting the country’s wealth, its modern architectural projects are being built at a monumental scale.
OMA has been announced as one of four firms to win an international competition for the design of Unicorn Island in Chengdu, an “innovative masterplan specifically designed for New Economy companies.”
As Chinamoves from a production-orientated economy to a knowledge and service-based economy, the masterplan seeks to provide a variety of working and living conditions for both start-up firms and “Unicorn” companies, those with a value of over one billion US dollars. Along with OMA, the four winners also included Morphosis, who were recognized for their walkable scheme integrating business, green infrastructure, and lifestyle.
Louisiana Channel has released a new video interview with Ellen van Loon, the Dutch “design duchess” of OMA. In the interview, available to watch below, van Loon discusses the concept of “architectural contamination” behind OMA's new mixed-use "BLOX" scheme, home of the Danish Architecture Center in Copenhagen.
Van Loon discusses the process of “re-invention” needed for the scheme’s realization, in terms of both function and location. Situated on an old brewery site, the scheme seeks to embed architects and visitors in their own field of study, “placing them in the center of the building, which meant they would contaminate all other functions.”
https://www.archdaily.com/893754/omas-ellen-van-loon-discusses-the-firms-new-danish-architecture-centerNiall Patrick Walsh
In this episode of GSAPP Conversations, Tomas Koolhaas—the director of the much anticipated documentary-biopic REM, a film about the eponymous founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Rem Koolhaas—discusses the movie at length. Among other topics, the conversation touches upon Koolhaas's specific tools and methods for filming architectural space, and the challenges of producing a film founded on a personal relationship.
https://www.archdaily.com/880918/tomas-koolhaas-discusses-the-reasoning-devices-and-reception-of-rem-gsapp-conversationsAD Editorial Team
In the canon of great Dutch architects sit a number of renowned practitioners, from Berlage to Van Berkel. Based on influence alone, Rem Koolhaas—the grandson of architect Dirk Roosenburg and son of author and thinker Anton Koolhaas—stands above all others and has, over the course of a career spanning four decades, sought to redefine the role of the architect from a regional autarch to a globally-active shaper of worlds – be they real or imagined. A new film conceived and produced by Tomas Koolhaas, the LA-based son of its eponymous protagonist, attempts to biographically represent the work of OMA by “expos[ing] the human experience of [its] architecture through dynamic film.” No tall order.
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