Rem Koolhaas Lecture at USC

[Live blogged notes from a lecture by Rem Koolhaas at USC. Here is a description of the event. Photos taken by Julie while I was live blogging can be found at this flickr set.]

He was promised an intimate setting but now that this is gone (the auditorium is the biggest on campus).

The parthenon used to be architecture. We now live in a YES regime, Yen Euro and Dollar, where the logic of the market defines all values and decisions. Whether we want to or not we must follow and resist this regime.

The effect of the economy on art and architecture is that we went from this (parthenon) to this (disney concert hall).

Architecture is now a highly individualistic affair. The more we go in this direction the more we conform to the market economy

[puts up a fake skyline of all these super modern buildings from around the world]

We are at a unique moment but the questions remains if it is good or sustainable.

He has tried to work within the expectation of uniqueness and extravagance but directs his effort to making something work (see the Seattle Public Library) but in the end the power is in the deeply social nature of buildings. While the nature of the "shape" of the building sells it the use is what matters.

Starchitects still don't make as much as other celebrities. This puts them in the humiliating position of making the icons of the market economy without the benefits of the market economy.

The reward is that people are interested in what starchitects have to say. Don't earn money but have an audience. Hard to tell if we are intellectuals or merely salesman.

Was told to be optimistic by a colleague but at this point he thinks it is more educational and responsible to share dilemmas.

One of the unique things in the current moment is that architects can literally work anywhere. Look at the current portfolio and it resembles Marco Polo travels. They must be political, strategic, and cannot operate in a single moral environment.

One controversial project is the HQ for the central Chinese television. This competition was held in 2002 and it is to be one of the emblems of the new China. It is a very complex building with 3.5 million square feet. Television making happens there, broadcasting happens there, production happens there, administration happens there, tourism happens there enabling the Chinese for the first time to enter the production of their media in an intimate matter.

It is currently under construction and is incredibly intricate. The complexity exceeded all of the rules of Chinese building codes and a committee was formed that forced them to know the building better and better. They now have a profoundly intimate knowledge of how the building will work and how it will fail. There is physically only one day when the buildings can be coupled. It is in August and in the morning because in the afternoon it will be too hot.

Another building is the HQ for the Russian energy company Gasprom in St. Petersburg. Just outside the historical center they are constructing a building that will be 300 meters tall. In the last few years there is a new need for 300 meter tall 2 to 3 million square foot buildings.

This building tries to be sensitive to this need by being made up of a series of tall buildings that are compressed in a way that will not burden the ground or the skyline. They wanted a building that somehow floats or hovers, that is not too heavy against the beautiful city. Wanted to build it from ice that won't work so instead they are building it from glass blocs that are the color of ice.

[shows a mindblowing photo of the building]

Perhaps the most complex buildings in the world right now are done as competitions. In those competitions you have about 25 starchitects that do this. Although there is real sympathy in this group, there is a degree of viciousness that plays a role. One criticism is a company that extends like a spider-web over considerable parts of Europe and the Middle East and could strangle the companies it supplies. The architects are also being accused of killing the city. Architecture thus becomes a deeply competitive process embedded in politics.

The market narrows possibilities because on the one hand there are the crimes you commit on a city, the crime of working with an "evil" client, ad the competition between architects. This is stimulating but you really wonder if it would not be better to create solidarity and agree to stop doing competitions.

Another area is the Middle East. The deliberately engage this area to try to see ways to build a foundation in this tumultuous place. Look at Dubai. Not particularly nice development and purely market driven, almost a syndrome.

The culture is very interesting where you have a number of Emirates that emerged from a nomadic history very recently. The development emerged directly from the oil economy. Architecture is a surrender to western, mostly American, architects whose ambition doesn't seem to include inventing something unique for the Middle East. It is simply a sad second guessing of what westerners think Middle Easterners will want in architecture and it is not very sincere or ambitious, it is more like a service industry. What you get is a number of offices with huge staffs making extravagant shapes and it becomes difficult to make differentiation.

They did a study of the gulf and its architecture. They discovered that when the issue of developing the Middle East came about a number of great architects were assembled and they developed modern architecture for the region that genuinely emerged from the history of the region. Look at Dubai now. Look at the islands for sale, look at the enclaves that don't really make a city but that represent a series of resorts, completely separate from each-other.

They were confronted with a site in this place and had to decide how to work in that environment.

The solution was to go back to basics. They propose a completely inert slab in white concrete. Very tall and very narrow. This return to a zero point of articulation could be a significant gesture. It is 600 feet wide and 900 feet long. The hope is that in the skyline of exotic shapes could quiet the volume.

It is a very rational building. They worked with artists to create special zones within the building. They will make the building on a circle and it will rotate. It therefore acquires the potential to define the environment. It rotates to avoid the sunlight and therefore tries to introduce questions of sustainability.

Another project is a city planning project in the region. If you look at a typical project in the Middle East the majority of the land is unused lawn that uses 24 million years worth of rain for the site. Looked at how to take the elements of this development and figured out how to make it work in a density that isn't this disconnected and wasteful. Sustainability is now a driving force, thanks to Al Gore, in the Middle East as everywhere. By compressing development in the desert you can preserve the desert itself around your city.

If typically architecture develops from the straightforward to the complex they want to bend back to degree zero. They are thinking seriously about creating a new office called generics to achieve this goal, to investigate this repertoire.

Doing this for a project in Jersey City. The site is only five minutes from Manhattan. They looked carefully at the logic of developers, at the economic driving forces, what the depths are of current topologies. They translated this into a building. Took the ideal dimensions of each need, lofts apartments hotels etc, and designed a structure around these generics that could still survive in the contest. This straightforward and rational approach can generate a building that is both functional and a landmark.

Another example in Tokyo. Not artistic logic, but a rational manipulation of givens. They are projects defined by limitations. It is not a secret that life entirely defined by limitations had a demoralizing quality.

In the last 10 years they have tried to find room and space to define their own agenda. The most important device is this following: they started a think-tank AMO. It was triggered by the fact that architectural words are more and more applied on a metaphorical level. They felt that they could consult in this space as architects without building anything. If you look at the polarity between intervening and abstaining you see that architects are always on the side of intervening. The architect is always committed to change. If you look at observing vs executing or acting vs reflecting the same is true. If you are always on the side of change you cannot say that things should be left as they are, you cannot think when you cannot simply observe.

The important thing about AMO is that they can now do this.

To use this they looked at their clients and decided that instead of giving them OMA knowledge they tried to extract knowledge of politics, culture, anthropology to gain knowledge. Used this to maintain an overlay of the world to define the environment as it evolves. Can then give this knowledge back to clients.

The most challenging and interesting area is to look at World Heritage Sites and preservation. This is a domain to avoid change, to leave things as they are.

With Harvard he is concluding an effort to document mutations and evolutions of the city with an eye to preservation as a political subject.

If you look at World Heritage Sites you see a Eurocentric map. It is very top heavy. Because of this inequality UNESCO is working to recognize the heritage of other countries and territories. This make judgment a political process. This made them ask questions about the nature of preservation itself.

The first law was after the French Revolution. The second was in 1877 during the height of the Industrial Revolution in England. Then you look at the environment and see they these movements to preserve took place simultaneously with the invention of new elements of modernity. Then looked at what was being preserved when.

Started with monuments, then town centers, houses, bridges, and to now where we preserve nearly every topology. Vastly expanded the repertory of things that needed to be saved.

Looked at interval of past and present to see what was being preserved and how frequently. We are now almost at the point where when we build we must decide what to preserve simply because the wave of transformation is so intense, it makes preservation prospective and not merely retroactive.

Look at Dresden. Was completely destroyed in WW2 and in a laborious way was rebuilt by East Germany and was recently finished. It was restored from complete ruins. It is now an Historic Heritage Site. But it is the reconstruction that is now being preserved. It is responsible for so much tourism that its status as a world heritage site is threatened by a new bridge. A new bridge threatens a restored city in the name of history. New bridges used to make history not threaten them.

Trying to look at these dilemmas as a counterpart to their work in architecture.

Also working on preservation in St. Petersburg at the Hermitage. Ironic that they are also building a new paradigm in that city. They are the master planners for the process of expanding the complex and have committed to not changing the architecture.

The space is all wrong by modern standards but it offers amazing intimacy compared to a new structure like MOMA. How do you maintain authenticity in a space when you are reworking it?

Consulted with Gehry and others and their first concerns were that American art from the 20th century would be able to fit. Rem came in and explored whether the neglect of the Hermitage is an historical given parallel to the palatial history. How do you maintain neglect?

Working on displaying the most important artifacts in the most impoverished parts of the museum.

An architect should not remove imperfections in the name of modernity.

Wants to end with a discussion of the most political and unsuccessful for the European Union. Nobody knows the flag or Europe. It is based on the stars from, perhaps, other flags.

They have been asked to make the idea of the intention of Europe slightly more vivid.

Europe's history is a history of bloodshed. This disaster was reinvented in a new daring paradigm.

There is not a way to represent this success. they think of themselves as an area that is blue that expands and becomes homogenous. Instead focus on the diversity and the richness, the extreme differences possible in this territory.

An image of a ship propelled by the flags of European nations. An image of a European barcode of the colors in the nations flags. Used this on a moving exhibition on the history of Europe that combines the history of bloodiness with the history of the union.

The paradox is that European politicians are terrible at articulating their most amazing creation: the union.

They proposed an exhibition to Europe in the exact place where Hitler declared Anschluss. They built this exhibition and even George Bush spoke there.

So this is where he will end.

They run risks but do this deliberately. They believe that communication is the most important thing while developing a new part to the repertory.

Questions

Q: Will you come teach here?

A: No but there are several reasons. Teaching is very exhausting and it is hard to generate knowledge while teaching. Currently teaching at Harvard but only on the condition that he is involved only in pure research, not in design.

Q: Describe your relationship with LA. Why are you here and what is your agenda?

A: It is very important to insist that architects also have a normal life and don't always have an agenda. LA is an incredibly wonderful part of America. Lived here for six months and deeply enjoyed it. Has been involved in projects here but so far without success. Perhaps if they get a building here they will have an agenda.

Q: How does sustainability and site response fit into generic architecture?

A: You can really work on forms and materials and details in a generic context, you can refine knowledge. With context it is harder but two things have been going on in the last decades. The first is that context means mimicry. On the other hand is total ubiquity of extravagance. Neutrality can stabilize this and allow for finding your place again.

Q: How has experience in journalism and cinema influenced your design?

A: Hesitant but the buildings are about movement. Contrasting episodes like a montage. Visual language of filmmaking is important but it is a subconscious preoccupation. The great virtue of journalism is that it is a professional form of curiosity.