Metropolis: Rotterdam & CCTV by Rem Koolhaas

Trailer of the interview for the channel "arte", the architect Rem Koolhaas at De Rotterdam building (released last May 2013) and the next interview trailer showing the CCTV building in Beijing that will be issued next September.

The second largest city of the Netherlands not only home to the largest port in Europe, it also hosts more than 150 nationalities meet and mingle. What could possibly explain that Rotterdam is so young. Indeed, the city of South Holland is the only place in the Netherlands where the average age of the population has declined in recent years. Metropolis discovers the gateway to Europe , which has much more to offer than containers and cranes transfer . Destroyed by the Germans during World War II the center of Rotterdam today impresses with its skyline.

Rem Koolhaas has his studio in Rotterdam, and a think tank dedicated to urban development. Metropolis visit his project, De Rotterdam, which is to become the tallest building in the Netherlands.

Below, the trailer "Metropolis: Der China Centra TV Tower von Rem Koolhaas", so far only in Germán. The largest television studio in the world, the China Central Television Tower (CCTV) by Rem Koolhaas.

First broadcast schedule: Tue, 9 September 2014, 16:50

The China Central TV Tower in Beijing, shortly CCTV, home to the largest television studio in the world. The 45 channels that are produced here, feed a billion people with moving images. The spectacular building is already considered the new landmark of China and is according to the New York Times that so far most important building of the 21st Century. 2013 was officially the best skyscraper in the world. But not only the architecture but also the genesis of the CCTV is adventurous. From the groundbreaking ceremony nine years ago today , it was a long way.

Critics thought the building utopian, questioned the statics. And the Chinese builders also had something to say: "The whole approval process was exciting, because the draft was against every convention," says Rem Koolhaas.

Even before the Chinese television resumed full operation here, Metropolis -author Michael Schindhelm by Rem Koolhaas was invited to an exclusive tour of the building.

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REM KOOLHAAS

Rem Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam in 1944. He began his career as a journalist, working for the Haagse Post, and as a set-designer in the Netherlands and Hollywood. He beganHe frequented the Architectural Association School in London and studied with Oswald Mathias Ungers at Cornell University. In 1978, he wrote Delirious New York: a retroactive manifesto for Manhattan, which has become a classic of contemporary architectural theory. In 1975 – together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp – he founded OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture).

The most important works by Koolhaas and OMA, from its foundation until the mid-1990s, include the Netherlands Dance Theatre at The Hague, the Nexus Housing at Fukuoka in Japan, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Grand Palais of Euralille and Lille, the Villa dall’Ava, the Très Grande Bibliothèque, the Jussieu library in Paris, the ZKM in Karlsruhe and the Seattle Public Library.

Together with Koolhaas’s reflections on contemporary society, these buildings appear in his second book, S,M,L,XL (1995), a volume of 1376 pages written as though it were a “novel about architecture”. Published in collaboration with the Canadian graphic designer, Bruce Mau, the book contains essays, manifestos, cartoons and travel diaries.

In 2005, with Mark Wigley and Ole Bouman, he was the founder to the prestigious Volume magazine, the result of a collaboration with Archis (Amsterdam), AMO and C-lab (Columbia University NY).

His built work includes the Qatar National Library and the Qatar Foundation Headquarters (2018), Fondation Galeries Lafayette in Paris (2018), Fondazione Prada in Milan (2015/2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), the headquarters for China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing (2012), Casa da Musica in Porto (2005), Seattle Central Library (2004), and the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003). Current projects include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre, a new building for Axel Springer in Berlin, and the Factory in Manchester.

Koolhaas directed the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and is a professor at Harvard University, where he directs The Project on the City, a research programme on changes in urban conditions around the world. This programme has conducted research on the delta of the Pearl River in China (entitled Great Leap Forward) and on consumer society (The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping). Taschen Verlag has published the results. Now is preparing a major exhibition for the Guggenheim museum to open in 2019 entitled Countryside: Future of the World.

Among the awards he has won in recent years, we mention here the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize (2000), the Praemium Imperiale (2003), the Royal Gold Medal (2004) and the Mies Van Der Rohe prize (2005). In 2008, Time mentioned him among the 100 most influential people of the planet.