Rem Koolhaas on What Ultimately Defines a Building's Design

Tony Fadell asked Koolhaas: How does contemporary architecture differ around the world and what causes these differences? Below Koolhaas give some interesting answers, watch the video or read the interview between Rem Koolhaas and Nest C.E.O Tony Fadell and Vanity Fair Contributing Editor and Moderator Paul Goldberger speak onstage during "Design in the Digital Age" at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on October 9, 2014 in San Francisco, California.

The panel discussed the role of technology in architecture and design, as well as differing attitudes toward architecture around the world. According to Koolhaas, in countries such as China, where the pace of development is very rapid, decision makers are younger and therefore more open to new and riskier designs.

“I’m critical of the relentless profit motive that seems to invade every one of these new inventions,” he said on stage at Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit with Nest C.E.O Tony Fadell. Koolhaas's views stood in contrast to Fadell’s company, which was bought by Google earlier this year for $3 billion.

Speaking at Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit, the architect Rem Koolhaas said my "final conclusion" surprised me, too: "the most important factor in building design is the age of the decision maker" and Koolhaas added, "all comes down to age."

“In China, the decision maker is 35, in Europe, the decision maker is 55. In America, the decision maker is a trustee, so they might be older.” “Age is correlated with an appetite for risk,” Koolhaas said.

On the 20th anniversary of the creation of its iconic New Establishment, Vanity Fair, in association with the Aspen Institute, presents its first conference—a unique opportunity to hear from the pioneers, influencers, and disrupters who have driven the age of innovation.

Starring.- Tony Fadell and Rem Koolhaas.

Watch Vanity Fair on The Scene: http://thescene.com

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Nest CEO and Founder Tony Fadell, OMA Founding Partner Rem Koolhaas and Vanity Fair Contributing Editor and Moderator Paul Goldberger speak onstage during "Design in the Digital Age" at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on October 9, 2014 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Vanity Fair).

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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.

Paul Goldberger

Paul Goldberger (New Jersey, US, 1950), has been described by The Huffington Post as ‘the leading figure in architecture criticism.’ He began his career in The New York Times, where he obtained the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism in 1984, the highest award in American journalism. From 1997 to 2011 he was the architecture critic of The New Yorker, where he wrote his well-known column ‘The Sky Line’. He is currently contributing editor of Vanity Fair. He is Joseph Urban Professor of Design and Architecture at The New School in New York and has also been the dean of Parsons The New School for Design.