Biography
Before realizing a single building, Dutch architect and theorist Rem Koolhaas won notoriety for his book, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (1978), which plumbed the city’s history to find patterns and intention in its seemingly frenetic and haphazard development. Koolhaas’s approach to understanding Manhattan is emblematic of his approach to architecture in general. Dismissive of prescriptive notions of architectural permanence, Koolhaas is more interested in creating structures that are open to manipulation and organic growth. Koolhaas founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in 1975 and has built projects worldwide, including the Villa dall’Ava in Paris (1991) and the Central China Television Headquarters in Beijing (2012). In 2000, he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize, one of the highest accomplishments in the field.
