This is Kool house news

[vizwhiz]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/arts/design/03kool.html

 

This is fairly wild, & interesting

 

Rem Koolhaas does The Middle East

[Koper]

I thought the Death star was bigger than that.

 

it is pretty wild

[jophus14]

I thought the Death star was bigger than that.

 

it is pretty wild

 

HAHAHA................In Dubai anything goes.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Whatever the answers, Mr. Koolhaas’s design proves once again that he is one of the few architects willing to face the crisis of the contemporary city — from its growing superficiality to its deadening sterility — without flinching.

 

If he fails he at least will have raised questions that most architects would prefer to leave safely unexplored. If he succeeds he could bring us closer to a model of a city that is not only formally complex, but genuinely open to the impure.

 

 

I didn't spend a great deal of time digesting the article, but while I was reading it I couldn't help but think it sounded like a sterile developer city that brings all of the isolationism and bizarre building codes and laws that has made suburban neighborhood developments what they are today. He may be facing the questions of growing superficiality and sterility, but from what I read, he is contributing to them just as much as he is offering any solution for them.

 

The last line, "genuinely open to the impure," is one of the defining concept of what makes cities unique. I don't know how you can say that creating a large complex where the building lack individual identity, and in the authors own words, isolates itself, is open to the impure. It seems like it is not open to the impure.

 

I am sure this is better thought out than what I took from the story, or from what the author delivered in the story.

[AJLynn]

I think the point is that Rem understands this, and by calling the prototype "generic" city he puts it out in the open that these problems exist and presents the challenge to either accept them or work through them. Given a program like this (the architect doesn't decide the program) what more can he do? Architects have been trying to reinvent the city for hundreds of years and largely failing (I think Jane Jacobs was right on pretty much every count in "Death And Life") and Rem is just observing the trends and saying, "this is what you want - so I'll give it to you". A new, designed city is in many ways a blank slate - the architecture is one of many layers. As the writer observed, the rest of the layers aren't up to Rem, they're up to the owners and residents - which is what the "generic" aspect means.

 

I also think it's pretty cool that he's taking this as an invitation to insert pet projects - an update on the CCTV building, a scale translation of the Seattle project, a giant version of that Paris library in a sphere, etc.

[vizwhiz]

if This is a chance To 're-invent The wheel' Then i hope That They EXCLUDE all private vehicles and ONLY HAVE mass Transportation, light rail, bus, Taxi and/or continuous moving sub-Terranean walk-ways. kind of like flat escalators (keep out of The heat)

 

NO MORE CARS!!

 

(i hate driving i only drive To work because i wasnt successful at being work-at-home self-(un)employed)

 

car wars not car wash

 

(or maybe make bumper cars legal so car bashing is actually allowed)