Rem Koolhaas

* 1944 in Rotterdam / Nederland
lives and works in London / United Kingdom, Rotterdam / Nederland

Rem Koolhaas was working intially as a journalist and screen writer, Koolhaas studied architecture at the Architectural Association School, London, and the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, New York. Since 1975, when he created the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), he has been working as an architect. Realised projects include the Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague, Nexus Housing in Fukuoka, Japan, the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the master plan for Euralille and the Lille Grand Palais in Lille, France, and the Guggenheim Museum in Las Vegas.... Several residential projects include the Dutch House in the Netherlands and the Villa dall’Ava in Paris. More recently, OMA finished the Educatorium, a lecture hall for the University of Utrecht and the Maison à Bordeaux. Current projects include a commission for a master plan and two buildings for the Samsung Corporation Centre for Social Studies, the Museum of Korean Art and the Seoul National University Museum in Korea, a master plan for Universal Studios in Los Angeles, a master plan for the City Center in Almere, Netherlands, the master plan for the Hanoi New Town in Vietnam, the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin, a master plan for the Song Do New Town for Inchon, Korea, and the new McCormick Tribune Campus Centre for the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture have been the subject of numerous publications, monographs, and several documentary films. The work of the office has been exhibited internationally, including retrospectives such as the first decade in the museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam in 1989 and Rem Koolhaas and the Place of Public Architecture in the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1995. Koolhaas has published Delirious New York (1978), S, M, L, XL (1995), and since 1995, he has been professor at Harvard University, where he is leading a series of research projects for the ”Harvard Project in the City”, a student-based research group studying different issues affecting the urban condition. Recent projects include the following studies: Five cities in the Pearl River Delta in China, ”The Roman System”, focusing on the ancient Roman city, ”Shopping”, an analysis of the role of retail consumption in the contemporary city, and ”Lagos”, a study of the African city, focusing specifically on Lagos, Nigeria.