To: artforum/talkback
To: archinect
Subject: Rem Koolhaas and OMA-AMO
Date: 2003.12.30 16:08
At the IN YOUR FACE symposium at NYU 29 September 2001, featuring Robert
Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Rem Koolhaas and others, I questioned Venturi
about his uncertainty regarding 'content' when it came to building facades
that were also screens that present electronic imagery--Venturi pioneered
this idea back in the 1960s with an unexecuted design for the Football Hall
of Fame. My point was that if architects design buildings where (some of)
the facades are screens, that it might also be the 'job' of the architect to
provide the content to be 'screened', or at least provide some sort of
direction to how the screen facades might be fully utilized. After a full
exchange with both Venturi and Scott Brown, the moderator of the symposium
asked Koolhaas if he had any additional thoughts on this topic, to which
Koolhaas replied, "I am not interested in discussing 'content'." Koolhaas
has since then obviously changed his mind because the whole theme of the
Koolhass/OMA/AMO exhibit presently at Berlin, and the title of Koolhaas'
forthcoming book, is indeed CONTENT.
It was soon after late September 2001 that http://www.quondam.com/ , a
virtual museum of architecture, began defining itself as "architecture as
the delivery of content." I wonder what the current Koolhaas/OMA/AMO exhibit
whould have been themed/named if I hadn't attended IN YOUR FACE.
To: archinect
Subject: Rem Koolhaas and OMA-AMO
Date: 2003.12.30 16:08
At the IN YOUR FACE symposium at NYU 29 September 2001, featuring Robert
Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Rem Koolhaas and others, I questioned Venturi
about his uncertainty regarding 'content' when it came to building facades
that were also screens that present electronic imagery--Venturi pioneered
this idea back in the 1960s with an unexecuted design for the Football Hall
of Fame. My point was that if architects design buildings where (some of)
the facades are screens, that it might also be the 'job' of the architect to
provide the content to be 'screened', or at least provide some sort of
direction to how the screen facades might be fully utilized. After a full
exchange with both Venturi and Scott Brown, the moderator of the symposium
asked Koolhaas if he had any additional thoughts on this topic, to which
Koolhaas replied, "I am not interested in discussing 'content'." Koolhaas
has since then obviously changed his mind because the whole theme of the
Koolhass/OMA/AMO exhibit presently at Berlin, and the title of Koolhaas'
forthcoming book, is indeed CONTENT.
It was soon after late September 2001 that http://www.quondam.com/ , a
virtual museum of architecture, began defining itself as "architecture as
the delivery of content." I wonder what the current Koolhaas/OMA/AMO exhibit
whould have been themed/named if I hadn't attended IN YOUR FACE.