Rem Koolhaas Quotes

Quotes about:

• A building has at least two lives - the one imagined by its maker and the life it lives afterward - and they are never the same.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Two, Building, Makers

  "The Invention and Reinvention of the City: An Interview with Rem Koolhaas". Interview with Paul Fraioli, jia.sipa.columbia.edu. April 19, 2012.

  100 Copy quote

• Find optimism in the inevitable.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Optimism, Inevitable

  "City on the Gulf: Koolhaas Lays Out a Grand Urban Experiment in Dubai". www.nytimes.com. March 03, 2008.

  67 Copy quote

• Talk about beauty and you get boring answers, but talk about ugliness and things get interesting.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Interesting, Answers, Boring

  "'Evil Can also Be Beautiful'". Interview with Matthias Matussek and Joachim Kronsbein, www.spiegel.de. March 27, 2006.

  92 Copy quote

• Architects work in two ways. One is to respond precisely to a client's needs or demands. Another is to look at what the client asks and reinterpret it.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Two, Way, Clients

  "The Invention and Reinvention of the City: An Interview with Rem Koolhaas". Interview with Paul Fraioli, jia.sipa.columbia.edu. April 19, 2012.

  76 Copy quote

• Architecture is a dangerous mix of power and importance.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Badass, Bad Ass, Architecture

  24 Copy quote

• Sustainability has become an ornament.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Ornaments, Sustainability

  9 Copy quote

• There are essentially two possibilities. One is to be, shall we say, an average architect and do the same thing everywhere. The other is to let yourself be inspired and even changed by the unique qualities of the place where you're building. We always try to take the second approach.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Unique, Average, Two

  "'Evil Can also Be Beautiful'". Interview with Matthias Matussek and Joachim Kronsbein, www.spiegel.de. March 27, 2006.

  79 Copy quote

• The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape

  Rem Koolhaas

  Cities, Machines

  23 Copy quote

• The stronger the identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Stronger, Identity, Expansion

  67 Copy quote

• All important architecture of the last century was strongly influenced by political systems. Look at the Soviet system, with its constructivism and Stalinism, Weimer with its Modern style, Mussolini and, of course, the Nazis and Albert Speer's colossal structures. Today's architecture is subservient to the market and its terms. The market has supplanted ideology. Architecture has turned into a spectacle. It has to package itself and no longer has significance as anything but a landmark.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Political, Style, Important

  ""Evil Can also Be Beautiful"". Interview with Matthias Matussek, Joachim Kronsbein, www.spiegel.de. March 27, 2006.

  73 Copy quote

• It is not possible to live in this age if you don't have a sense of many contradictory forces.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Age, Force, Contradictory

  76 Copy quote

• The acceptance of certain realities doesn't preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Acceptance, Reality, Certain

  13 Copy quote

• Beauty isn't what I'm primarily interested in [in architecture]. I think appropriateness is more important.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Thinking, Important, Architecture

  "'Evil Can also Be Beautiful'". Interview with Matthias Matussek and Joachim Kronsbein, www.spiegel.de. March 27, 2006.

  8 Copy quote

• Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. It is by definition a c h a o t i c a d v e n t u r e... In other words, the utopian enterprise.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Omnipotence, Mixtures, Definitions

  75 Copy quote

• Infrastructure is much more important than architecture.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Important, Architecture, Infrastructure

  "The NS Interview: Rem Koolhaas, architect". Interview with Samira Shackle, www.newstatesman.com. May 16, 2012.

  46 Copy quote

• The good is not a category that interests me.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Design, Categories, Interest

  "Exploring the Unmaterial World". Wired Interview, www.wired.com. June 1, 2000.

  72 Copy quote

• Criticism per se does not worry me. I've always solicited it as part of the design process.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Design Process, Worry, Criticism

  10 Copy quote

• What is now called "green architecture" is an opportunistic caricature of a much deeper consideration of the issues related to sustainability that architecture has been engaged with for many years. It was one of the first professions that was deeply concerned with these issues and that had an intellectual response to them.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Years, Issues, Intellectual

  "Reinventing the city: An interview with architect Rem Koolhaas". Interview with Paul Fraioli, www.csmonitor.com. July 20, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• In a script, you have to link various episodes together, you have to generate suspense and you have to assemble things - through editing, for example. It's exactly the same in architecture. Architects also put together spatial episodes to make sequences.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Editing, Together, Scripts

  43 Copy quote

• Not many architects have the luxury to reject significant things.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Significant Things, Luxury, Architecture

  63 Copy quote

• Our society can no longer tolerate ugliness. You see that in cars, sofas and women. [But] ugliness also has a right to exist.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Car, Our Society, Sofas

  "'Evil Can also Be Beautiful'". Interview with Matthias Matussek and Joachim Kronsbein, www.spiegel.de. March 27, 2006.

  52 Copy quote

• People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Thinking, People, Architecture

  "From Bauhaus to Koolhaas". Interview with Katrina Heron, www.wired.com. July 1, 1996.

  16 Copy quote

• We live in an almost perfect stillness and work with incredible urgency.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Almost Perfect, Incredibles, Stillness

  11 Copy quote

• The Grid makes the history of architecture and all previous lessons of urbanism irrelevant. It forces Manhattan's builders to develop a new system of formal values, to invent strategies for the distinction of one block from another. The Grid's two-dimensional discipline also creates undreamt-of freedom for three-dimensional anarchy. The Grid defines a new balance between control and de-control in which the city can be at the same time ordered and fluid, a metropolis of rigid chaos.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Block, Cities, Two

  17 Copy quote

• That has been my entire life story. Running against the current and running with the current. Sometimes running with the current is underestimated. The acceptance of certain realities doesn’t preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Running, Acceptance, Reality

  19 Copy quote

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