This seminar assesses the work of Rem Koolhaas as a discourse on the notion of modern architecture. It examines writings, competitions and selected projects for strategies for theoretical and critical production and their application. We will identify the elements making up the work, examine the deployment of those elements and assess their points of impact in light of the frameworks they originally targeted.
Koolhaas instrumentalises ways of operating associated with French thinking to introduce to architecture the larger discourses of art, philosophy and psychoanalysis. The multiplication of points of view was part of the expansion of the field of architecture as a cultural production of meaning, an effort made by architect-theoreticians to recuperate the authority of a profession radically shaken in the sixties by the failure of modern architecture. We will situate Koolhaas in the context from which he emerged as well as examine the work of offices that extend OMA practices.