Just A Minute With: Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas

By Reed Stevenson

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters Life!) - Rem Koolhaas is known just as much for his musings on buildings, cities and society as he is for his striking steel, concrete and glass designs.

A "thinker's architect", Koolhaas teaches at Harvard University, runs a think-tank and won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2000.

Some of the recent buildings to come out of Koolhaas's Office for Metropolitan Architecture, or OMA, include Casa de Musica (Porto, Portugal), the Seattle Central Library (Seattle, U.S.A.) and soon-to-be completed CCTV Headquarters (Beijing, China). OMA is also redesigning the art displays at St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum.

Koolhaas, 63, sat down for an hour-long conversation with a group of reporters at OMA's headquarters in Rotterdam.

Q: So many of OMA's current projects are in new places (China, the Middle East). What do your architects do and look for when you go to cities where you will have new projects?

A: Like any human being, I'm looking for signs of intelligence, signs of early intelligence. I'm looking for signs or patterns, trying to find where there are initiatives, ambitions that I want to support. I'm looking at the same time for efforts that are going on in the hope that you can contribute something to them.

Q: Architecturally as well as socially?

A: Yes. For example the Hermitage. Nobody came to us to ask us to do the Hermitage. We became fascinated by how the Hermitage works and what its issues are and how you could possibly imagine its future. And we started to speculate how an ancient museum, and not just a museum but a palace, can play a role in the 21st century.

Q: You've said before that architects are not compensated well enough compared with celebrities and athletes. Can you explain?

A: Architects are still paid according to medieval rules, as a percentage of what a building costs. If you work very hard, it's very stupid because you spend what you earn. There's an internal contradiction to architectural efforts.

Q: What has made OMA successful?

A: We're not only design beasts. We like thinking about complicated issues. We have a social and political consciousness. One very important thing about the firm is it is not dominated by me. Anyone who walks in on the first day can make a contribution, its not hierarchical.

Q: You've added to the conversation, with publications such as Content, S, M, L, XL. Where is your role?

A: We've ourselves have discussed about retreating from constant exposure and constant explanation. There are many moments when I am very tired of my own voice always explaining, and explaining.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)