Oswald Mathias Ungers And Rem Koolhaas

Lara Schrijver examines the work of Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas as intellectual legacy of the 1970s for architecture today. Particularly in the United States, this period focused on the autonomy of architecture as a correction to the social orientation of the 1960s. Yet, these two architects pioneered a more situated autonomy, initiating an intellectual discourse on architecture that was inherently design-based. Their work provides room for interpreting social conditions and disciplinary formal developments, thus constructing a `plausible' relationship between the two that allows the life within to flourish and adapt. In doing so, they provide a foundation for recalibrating architecture today.

Lara Schrijver examines the work of Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rem Koolhaas as intellectual legacy of the 1970s for architecture today. Particularly in the United States, this period focused on the autonomy of architecture as a correction to the social orientation of the 1960s. Yet, these two architects pioneered a more situated autonomy, initiating an intellectual discourse on architecture that was inherently design-based. Their work provides room for interpreting social conditions and disciplinary formal developments, thus constructing a `plausible' relationship between the two that allows the life within to flourish and adapt. In doing so, they provide a foundation for recalibrating architecture today.

In the manifesto The City in the City - Berlin: A Green Archipelago, Oswald Mathias Ungers and a number of his colleagues from Cornell University presented the first concepts and intellectual models for the shrinking city. In contrast to the reconstruction of the European city that was popular at the time, they developed the figure of a polycentric urban landscape. However, the manifesto really began to exert an effect beginning in the 1990s onwards, when the focus of the urban planning discourse turned to the examination of crises, recessions, and the phenomenon of demographic shrinking. This critical edition contains a previously unpublished version of the manifesto by Rem Koolhaas, as well as interviews with co-authors Rem Koolhaas, Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff, and Arthur Ovaska. Introductory texts explain the development of the manifesto between Cornell and Berlin, position the work in the planning history of Berlin, and reveal its influence on current approaches. FLORIAN HERTWECK, born in Bonn in 1975, is associate professor for architectural design, architectural theory, and urban planning in Versailles, and an associate in the planning office Hertweck Devernois. SEBASTIEN MAROT, born in Paris, France, in 1961, is founding member of the "Ecole d'architecture de la ville et des territoires Marne-la-Vallée" and visiting professor at numerous universities including the ETH Zürich and Harvard.

Architectural form reconsidered in light of a unitary conception of architecture and the city. In The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, Pier Vittorio Aureli proposes that a sharpened formal consciousness in architecture is a precondition for political, cultural, and social engagement with the city. Aureli uses the term absolute not in the conventional sense of “pure,” but to denote something that is resolutely itself after being separated from its other. In the pursuit of the possibility of an absolute architecture, the other is the space of the city, its extensive organization, and its government. Politics is agonism through separation and confrontation; the very condition of architectural form is to separate and be separated. Through its act of separation and being separated, architecture reveals at once the essence of the city and the essence of itself as political form: the city as the composition of (separate) parts. Aureli revisits the work of four architects whose projects were advanced through the making of architectural form but whose concern was the city at large: Andrea Palladio, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Étienne Louis-Boullée, and Oswald Mathias Ungers. The work of these architects, Aureli argues, addressed the transformations of the modern city and its urban implications through the elaboration of specific and strategic architectural forms. Their projects for the city do not take the form of an overall plan but are expressed as an “archipelago” of site-specific interventions.

This book is the first survey of a new field in architecture theory: script writing. Rem Koolhaas as Scriptwriter explores the intersection of architecture, film, and text using the example of the working method of scriptwriter, Rem Koolhaas, and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). This book argues that Koolhaas formulates his approach to architecture on the basis of the “written sketch” or script, and questions its transformations into built environment in the oeuvre of OMA. Divided into two parts, the first part is a theoretical outline that explores the notion of scriptwriting in film. It provides in-depth insights into the definition and historical evolution of the script—as a blueprint, Hollywood script, avant-garde script, storyboard, the relation to auteur theory, and the difference between the script and scenario. It surveys the first original script for the Exodus, of the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture. The second part offers a unique perspective on the urban development of West Berlin, in which Koolhaas created a metropolitan script, or blueprint, that spans the period 1971–1989, from his first visit to Berlin to the fall of the Berlin Wall. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of architectural theory, urban history, and film studies.

''In this revealing autobiographical account, Jean Nouvel, one of today's most interesting international architects, looks at his work from his debut at the end of the 1970s up to his most recent projects, giving a detailed description of his planning philosophy and, in certain passages, proposing his own ideas regarding the future of architecture.The book is handsomely illustrated by photographs from the architect's personal archive and focuses in particular on Nouvel's principal works, including the Institute du Monde Arabe and Fondation Cartier in Paris, the restructuring of the Lyons Opera House and the recently completed Lafayette Department Store in BerlinIn this revealing autobiographical account, Jean Nouvel, one of today's most interesting international architects, looks at his work from his debut at the end of the 1970s up to his most recent projects, giving a detailed description of his planning philosophy and, in certain passages, proposing his own ideas regarding the future of architecture.The book is handsomely illustrated by photographs from the architect's personal archive and focuses in particular on Nouvel's principal works, including the Institute du Monde Arabe and Fondation Cartier in Paris, the restructuring of the Lyons Opera House and the recently completed Lafayette Department Store in Berlin''--

Building Books gives insight into the process of creating a book. In seven thematic fields the author lays out the premises of his activity as a designer and publisher: vision, context, process, protest, object, duration, effect. The reference to the process of building and the parallels to architecture is in keeping with Lars Müller’s conviction that a book design emerges from an understanding of its content. The author describes the principles of his activity, settles accounts, takes stock after twenty-five years of Lars Müller Publishers, looks into the future, and speculates about the book’s chances in competition with rapid digital media.

Projekter og bygninger af den hollandske arkitekt Rem Koolhaas og de øvrige medlemmer af OMA gennemgåes i kronologisk orden