Content

Koolhaas, Rem

ISBN 10: 3822830704 / ISBN 13: 9783822830703

Published by TASCHEN, 2004

About this Item

Köln: Taschen, 2004. First edition, first printing. Softcover. Perfect-bound trade paperback with matte printed wraps. Fine, very slight spine slant, light shelfwear, otherwise clean and unmarked. A tight copy with no interior faults. Octavo, 544 pages. Heavily illustrated in color throughout. Edited by Rem Koolhaas; designed by AMO. Text in English. "Content" is a non-linear, image-saturated follow-up to S,M,L,XL, documenting seven years of work by OMA/AMO across architecture, politics, media, and design. Structured like a boogazine, it includes essays, manifestos, interviews, ads, and conceptual spreads, arranged thematically rather than chronologically. Featured projects include the Seattle Public Library, Prada SoHo, CCTV Headquarters, and the Whitney Museum addition, among others. The book accompanied an exhibition of the same name and reflects Koolhaas s interest in destabilizing traditional formats for architectural publishing.

Seller Inventory # F800-Koolhaas

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Content
• Publisher: TASCHEN
• Publication Date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3822830704
• ISBN 13: 9783822830703
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Art

About this title

Synopsis

<div>This book takes place at the cusp of the 20th and 21st centuries, in the pre and post-September 11th world. It is a singular product of its time, packed full of words and images portraying the architectural projects and metaphysical mechanics that have defined Rem Koolhas's OMA-AMO firm over the past seven years. In the format of a small, thick magazine, this ""book"" is more of an anti-book, an informal tribute the ephemeral world we inhabit. Focusing on the theme ""Go East,"" this visual journey follows OMA-AMO from San Francisco to Tokyo, traversing our massive and turbulent planet in search of ""an opportunity to realize the visions that make remaining at home torturous.""</div>

Review

It's shaped like a trade paperback book, but its hellzapoppin pages look like a glossy, madcap magazine. Really, Content is more like an explosion in an idea factory, or a wild party thrown by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Rem Koolhaas in a mood considerably more delirious than his classic 1978 manifesto Delirious New York. It has 70 or 80 sections that look like magazine articles, and they're loosely organized in geographical order, from west to east. Pieces on Koolhaas's projects for Prada and MCA/Universal in LA and the acclaimed Seattle Public Library lead to syncopated meditations on Guggenheim Las Vegas, Chicago's van der Rohe "Miestakes," a modest plan to save Cambridge from Harvard by rechanneling the Charles River, Lagos' future as Earth's third-biggest town, the Hermitage's strange Russian past, Shanghai's Expo 2010, and Asia's skyscrapers, which now outnumber those of the West. When Koolhaas interviews Martha Stewart and gets a Las Vegas update from Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, it's straightforward, but many pages are as mystifying as hallucinations--apropos of nothing, a woman is depicted leaving her infrared heat signature on a tombstone, and Vermeer paintings are paired with scenes from TV's Big Brother. You don't read Content in linear fashion, you page through it amazed, gradually acquiring Koolhaas' ultracultivated taste for the bizarre. --Tim Appelo