Rem Koolhaas and Shohei Shigematsu, both partners at OMA, have been tapped to design the recently-announced expansion of the New Museum in New York. OMA will design a new building adjacent to SANAA's tiered-box museum. The project is expected to break ground in 2019 and will give the New Museum an additional 50,000 square feet (4,650 square meters) for "galleries, improved public circulation and flexible space for the institution’s continued exploration of new platforms and programs." This will be Koolhaas' first public building in New York. According to the New York Times, the New Museum—the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art—has already raised 50 percent of the cost.
https://www.archdaily.com/881400/oma-shohei-shigematsu-and-rem-koolhaas-selected-to-design-new-museum-expansion-in-new-yorkAD Editorial Team
Inspired by the design of ancient amphitheatres and embedded into a raised landscape of native plantings, the project represents OMA’s first-ever completed project in Australia. The 19x19-meter, aluminum-clad structure will feature a rotating grandstand to allow the space to be reconfigured for the variety of events planned for the summer MPavilion program, as well as a two-meter-deep floating roof structure to offer shade and provide support systems for the programming below.
Seniority is infamously important in the field of architecture. Despite occasionally being on the butt end of wage jokes, the field can actually pay relatively well—assuming that you’ve been working for a couple of decades. Even Bjarke Ingels, the tech-savvy, video-producing, Netflix-documentary-starring provocateur and founder of the ultra-contemporary BIG isn’t a millennial; at 42 the Dane is a full nine years older than Mark Zuckerberg.
As a result of this, it's common to lead a rich and complex life before finding architectural fame, and many of the world’s most successful architects started their careers off in an entirely different field. If you haven't landed your dream job yet, you may find the following list of famous architects' first gigs reassuring.
The Naomi Milhave Foundation have released OMA‘s first renders and drawings for their upcoming MPavilion which is set to take shape this fall in Melbourne, Austrailia. The counterpart to the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London, the MPavilion is now in its fourth year. Comprising static and dynamic elements, OMA’s proposal allows for multiple configurations that can generate unexpected programming, echoing the ideals of the typology of the amphitheater. Following the idea of the traditional amphitheater, OMA’s design will be “itself built to perform” as a space for public debate, design workshops, music and arts events.
A large-scale masterplan for Feyenoord (or Feijenoord), a suburb-city of the Dutch city of Rotterdam, has been approved by Rotterdam City Council. The successful concept design from OMA, led by Partner David Gianotten, incorporates a historically-important football stadium—for the nationally significant Feyenoord football club—which "no longer fulfills modern demands." Aligned with the football club's "expanding ambitions" both in the Dutch and European football leagues, this proposal is the latest in a string of plans to expand, but the only one to have been accepted.
View into the exhibition (1988). Photographer unknown. Image via MoMA
When Philip Johnson curated the Museum of Modern Arts’ (MoMA) 1932 “International Exhibition of Modern Architecture,” he did so with the explicit intention of defining the International Style. As a guest curator at the same institution in 1988 alongside Mark Wigley (now Dean Emeritus of the Columbia GSAPP), Johnson took the opposite approach: rather than present architecture derived from a rigidly uniform set of design principles, he gathered a collection of work by architects whose similar (but not identical) approaches had yielded similar results. The designers he selected—Peter Eisenman, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Daniel Libeskind, Bernard Tschumi, and the firm Coop Himmelblau (led by Wolf Prix)—would prove to be some of the most influential architects of the late 20th Century to the present day.[1,2]
The Naomi Milgrom Foundation has selected Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten of OMA for the design of Melbourne’s 2017 MPavilion. The announcement comes after this weekend’s closing of the 2016 MPavilion, designed by Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai, which welcomed more than 94,000 visitors to over 287 free events in its 139 day run. Now in its 4th year, the MPavilion program invites architects who have yet to completed a project in Australia to design and construct their first structure in the country.
Posted on the OMA website with the description, "Presentation on how S, M, L, XL intends to both undermine and simultaneously reinforce architecture," this lecture delivered by a then-51-year-old Rem Koolhaas delves into the "intentions" behind the 1400-page behemoth monograph. The Dutch architect laments that he must spoil the experience of the book's nuanced relationships and surprises, stating "I'm exposing connections now that I would have preferred to remain hidden for you to discover or ignore."
In this editorial from VOLUME's milestone 50th issue, Arjen Oosterman—the magazine's Editor-in-Chief—reflects on over ten years of cultural production and discourse and outlines what is to come. ArchDaily will be sharing a selection of the articles from this issue over the coming weeks.
Moving forward implies looking back. When we started this research engine called VOLUME in 2005, economic, political, and social conditions were very different to how they are today. The intention to rethink the agency of ‘beyond’ as driver for change inevitably means historicizing the trajectory of the VOLUME project so far. That said, we really didn’t want to turn VOLUME itself into the subject of reflection. So we’ll instead talk about the present and, in so doing, find history creeping its way in whether we like it or not.
As long as there have been buildings mankind has sought to construct its way to the heavens. From stone pyramids to steel skyscrapers, successive generations of designers have devised ever more innovative ways to push the vertical boundaries of architecture. Whether stone or steel, however, each attempt to reach unprecedented heights has represented a vast undertaking in terms of both materials and labor – and the more complex the project, the greater the chance for things to go awry.
The world of architecture can be a serious place. Though the rest of the world holds quite a few stereotypes about architects, unfortunately none of them include us having a sense of humor—and perhaps that seriousness explains why one of the most popular memes involving architects isn't exactly favorable to the profession. Here at ArchDaily we thought we'd do just a little to correct that with some memes riffing on some of the profession's most beloved names—as our gift to the entire architectural profession. Read on to see what we've come up with, and don't forget to get involved with your own architecture funnies.
https://www.archdaily.com/802255/a-selection-of-name-based-architecture-memesAD Editorial Team
Earlier this year, the Rem Koolhaas-led firm OMA launched a redesign of its website. If you haven't already popped over to see more than three decades worth of cutting-edge, provocative architecture projects, you'll have a good reason to now: downloadable excerpts from six of the office's highly acclaimed books and magazines.
https://www.archdaily.com/800142/17-excerpts-from-oma-publications-to-read-and-downloadAD Editorial Team
Having found success in their winning competition entry for PEX Toulouse (currently under construction), the partnership has rejoined forces to take on PEX Bordeux. The architects designed their proposed addition with the goal of embedding architectural fragments to capture the essence of the original building.
OMA has released new images of their design for Axel Springer’s business and digital division, in Berlin, Germany. One of the largest digital publishing houses in Europe, Axel Springer officially launched the project to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the company’s publishing building.
OMA’s proposal was selected in a 2014 international design competition, beating out finalist entries from BIG and Büro Ole Scheeren. The brief called for a new modern work environment to house Axel Springer’s growing business and digital divisions.
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.
The scaffolding obscuring the facade of OMA’sTaipei Performing Arts Center has begun to come down, exposing the aluminum exteriors of the spherical Proscenium Playhouse and the Multiform Theatre for the first time. Upon completion, the experimental building will feature a looped public pathway, flexible auditoriums and unique stage environments. Construction on the building is now moving full speed ahead, with an expected opening date in June 2017.
Continue on for more images of the in-progress building.
Next Month, architecture will be hitting the mainstream media, as Bjarke Ingels has been selected to grace the cover of the September 2016 edition of WIRED UK. Titled “THINK BIGGER,” the issue will also feature profiles and stories from architects and designers Tom Dixon, Neri Oxman, David Adjaye and Rem Koolhaas. A Condé Nast Publication, the magazine focuses on the effects of science and technology on topics including design, architecture, culture, the economy, politics and philosophy.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Rem Koolhaas (OMA) has spoken out against the campaign seeking to remove the United Kingdom from the European Union, upon which the British people will vote in a referendum next week. Reflecting on his time spent at London's Architectural Association (AA) in the 1960s and '70s, Koolhaas fears that advocates for withdrawal may be looking at the past through rose-colored glasses.
If you look at the arguments to leave you can see this is a movement of people who want to fundamentally change England back into the way it supposedly was before.
