Tuesday 13 May 2008

NOTEBOOK: REM KOOLHAAS




THE BROKEN SCREEN IS NOT FINISHED AND


THIS IS AN IMAGE OF ITS CONSTRUCTION




... the most exciting way of thinking today - the incredible surrender to frivolity and how it could also be compatiable with a seduction of focus and stillness...



NO ICONOGRAPHY FOR EUROPE

SO I USE CHINA!

(THIS IS ALSO AN IMAGE

OF THE BERLIN WALL



I consider film to be the essential mechanism of basically everything



AND IT IS THE IMAGE

OF AN ABSENCE)



For me, the Berlin Wall as architecture was the first spectacular revelation in architecture as to how absence can be stronger than presence. For me, it is not necessarily connected to loss in a metaphysical sense, but more connected to an issue of efficiency, where



I think that the great thing about Berlin is that for me, it showed (and this is my campaign against architecture) how entirely "missing" urban presences or entirely erased architectural entities nevertheless generate what could be called an urban condition. It's no coincidence, for example, that the center of Shenzen



is not a built substance but a conglomeration of golf courses and theme parks, i.e. basically unbuilt or empty conditions. And that was the beauty of Berlin even ten years ago, that it was the most contemporary and the most avant-garde European city



because it had these major vast areas of nothingness....




SOURCE: Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist: The Conversation Series 4, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig, Koln., 2006. ISBN 3-86560-077-8