The September issue of Smithsonian Magazine features an insightful profile of Rem Koolhaas written by former New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. As a companion to that article, I wrote a piece on Design Decoded, Smithsonian’s blog on design and everyday life, looking at some of the unbuilt high-rise towers designed by Koolhaas and OMA. […]
Tag: Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas and OMA are perhaps best known for the controversy and spectacle of the CCTV Building in Beijing, the Seattle Public Library, and the sci-fi designs in the Middle East, but I think some of their most successful buildings are the subtle subversions of the classic high rise. There’s a—I don’t quite want to […]
It would appear that the Star Wars Universe owes another debt to architecture. A reader sent in the above image with a note saying that the Hotel du Lac in Tunisia may have served as the inspiration for the Sandcrawlers used by the Jawas to travel across Tatooine. Another visit to Wookiepedia (an increasingly important […]
Categories
OMA Will Eat Itself
OMA’s Museum Plaza (pictured left), in Louisville Kentucky, will alter the Louisville skyline in dramatic fashion. It has been described as “hyper-rational” by the Koolhaas-groomed, Josh Prince-Ramus, and is essentially composed of four legs supporting an “island” hovering 22 stories above the ground, upon which sits an additional three towers – bringing the entire $305 […]