REM KOOLHAAS/OMA: The Construction of Merveilles

Creator of buildings that stand out as surrealistic merveilles along the skylines of America, Europe and Asia ; author of Delirious NewYork, the book that has revolutionized the reading of the contemporary metropolis ; leader of the current generation of architects, Rem Koolhaas with his Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is justly considered as the most important protaganist of contemporary architecture. This first critical monograph of the work of Rem Koolhaas and OMA does more than just describe projects and buildings, it places his career in a cultural context that allows the reader to better understand the creative process of modern architecture. The works are presented in chronological and thematic order, thus retracing the career of Koolhaas from his student days to his neo-avantgarde experimentation at the end of the 1970s, finishing with his most recent works in Porto, Seoul, and Beijing. The individual projects are analysed from conception to constuction, with particular attention to the conceptual and technical reasons for the choice of materials and configuration. Ample space is dedicated to the theoretical formulations of Koolhaas, providing a reflection of the fundamental principles of the contemporary architectural project.