Rem Koolhaas Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“Escape from the architecture ghetto is one of the major drivers and has been from the very beginning.”

“As an architect, I always have mixed feelings. On the one hand, your fingers are itching. As a human being, you are happy to participate in the indolence.”

“The luxury of our position now is that we can almost assemble any team to address any issue.”

“Miami Beach is a completely interesting hybrid because it is, on the one hand, a resort and, on the other hand, a real city. This condition of city and water on two sides I think is really amazing. And in the heart of that city, it has put an enormous convention center, an enormous physical presence.”

“We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living.”

“I'd say that my profession ends where architectural thinking ends - architectural thinking in terms of thinking about programs and organizational structure. These abstractions play a role in many other disciplines, and those disciplines are now defining their 'architectures' as well.”

“The thing is that I have a really intense, almost compulsive need to record. But it doesn't end there, because what I record is somehow transformed into a creative thing. There is a continuity. Recording is the beginning of a conceptual production. I am somehow collapsing the two - recording and producing - into a single event.”

“The work in S, M, L, XL was almost suicidal. It required so much effort that our office almost went bankrupt.”

“But now sustainability is such a political category that it's getting more and more difficult to think about it in a serious way. Sustainability has become an ornament.”

“Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of architecture.”