LIVING – READING

Opening: Tuesday, September 22, 1998, 7 p.m.

The book S, M, L, XL, the publicistic monument of the architecture debate in the 90`s, is the leitmotiv for the exhibition Living – Reading. The innovative Dimension S by Rem Koolhaas (OMA) is accompanied by the theme Living: 4 + 24, four spectacular villas in Europe and 24 apartments in Japan.

S, M, L, XL constitutes the link to Bruce Mau, the graphics designer who developed this encyclopaedia of images, quotations, and texts in cooperation with Rem Koolhaas. Reading thus shows Bruce Mau’s new image / text language for conveying architecture.

The exhibition Living – Reading was designed in cooperation with arc-en-rêve centre d’architecture Bordeaux and the Netherlands Institute of Architecture (NAI) and is supported by a generous grant from the european union`s programme “Kaleidoscope”.
This exhibition is the architecture-graphics exhibition per se on the decade’s central issues: the work, the detail, the process, the conveyance.

Opening:
Dietmar Steiner
Director, Architekturzentrum Wien

Francine Fort
Director, arc en rêve, Bordeaux

Michel Jacques
Art director, arc en rêve, Bordeaux

Peter Marboe
City councillor, City of Vienna

Radio Special on Ö 1:
DIAGONAL
Rem Koolhaas
“The city without qualities”
(in german)

Saturday, September 19,1998
5:05 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Arcticles on OMA

The pleasures of dissymmetry
Exerpts from a text by Jacques Lucan

from

OMA Rem Koolhaas
Living – Vivre – Leben

published by Birkhäuser publishers

The gay disenchantment
Exerpts from a text by François Chaslin

from

OMA Rem Koolhaas
Living – Vivre – Leben

published by Birkhäuser publishers

OMA at work
by Philipp Oswalt and Matthias Hollwich

from

ARCHIS 7 / 1998

published in ARCHIS

Biographies

Rem Koolhaas was born in 1944 in Rotterdam. After having lived in Indonesia between 1952 and 1956, he settled in Amsterdam as a journalist for the Haagse Post and as a film screenplay writer, before leaving for London to study architecture at the Architectural Association School. A scholarship obtained in 1972 allowed him to stay in the United States.

In London in 1975, he created, together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), whose objectives were the definition of new types of relations – theoretical as well as practical – between architecture and the contemporary cultural situation. Since 1978, several orders in Holland led him to open an agency in Rotterdam which was to henceforth centralize oma’s activities.
 
Bruce Mau is an internationally recognized designer who established his reputation with the design of Zone 1/2 in 1986. Since then he has collaborated with a range of cultural organizations and contemporary artists and architects, including the Getty Research Institute, the Andy Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), the Netherlands Architecture Institute, Frank O. Gehry (Los Angeles), Claes Oldenburg (New York), Michael Snow (Toronto), Meg Stewart of Damaged Goods (Brussels)., and Tony Scherman (Toronto), among others. In 1996, he co-authored the critically acclaimed S,M,L,XL with architect Rem Koolhaas (Monacelli Press). Bruce Mau is a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Wexner Center and the board of the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto.

“We have developed our practice on one basic assumption that there is intelligence and imagination on the receiving end. This is perhaps the most fundamental difference between our studio and many of its more commercial cousins. Our approach is simply to respect the reader and assume their ability to understand even the most demanding configurations.

If we design a work that addresses the reader1s intellect, we contribute a small moment of dignity in a culture that too often panders to the lowest common denominator and in so doing insults the intelligence of its citizens.”

Bruce Mau
 

Links

Critical Landscape
Publication by 010 Publishers with an extensive interview with Rem Koolhaas

Delirious New York
Publication by 010 Publishers

S,M,L,XL
Reprint by AMAZON.com. Order online

S,M,L,XL – A review
Review of S,M,L,XL on the homepage of LAVA

S,M,L,XL – A review
Review of S,M,L,XL on the homepage of HOT WIRED

Whatever happened to Urbanism
Article by Rem Koolhaas

Koolhaas defines your world, so get used to it …..
Article on Rem Koolhaas

Rem Koolhaas at the Documenta X
Lecture at the Documenta X in Real Audio

Competition for the expansion of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1997
All projects. Among others, Rem Koolhaas – OMA`s too

OMA Rem Koolhaas. Living – Vivre – Leben
The catalogue, that comes with the exhibition. By Birkhäuser publishers. Order online. (German / French / English)

OMA Rem Koolhaas. 9 Built Projects 1987-97
A series of postcards from Birkhäuser publishers. Order online. (German / French / English)