Elements - Softcover

Koolhaas, Rem; Petermann, Stephan; Trüby, Stephan; Di Robilant, Manfredo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8831720198 ISBN 13: 9788831720199

Publisher: Marsilio, 2014

Synopsis

Architecture is a strange mixture of persistence and flux, an amalgamation of elements -- some that have been around for over 5,000 years and others that were (re)invented yesterday.  The fact that these elements change independently of each other, according to different cycles and economies, and for different reasons, turns each building into a complex collage of the archaic and the current, the site-specific and the standard, mechanical smoothness and the spontaneous.  Only by looking at the elements under a wide lens can we recognize the cultural preferences, forgotten symbolism, technological advances, mutations triggered by intensifying global exchange, climatic adaptions, political calculations, regulatory requirements, new digital regimes, and, somewhere in the mix -- the ideas of the architect that constitute the practice of architecture today.

A collection of these essential elements into 15 books in a package launched at the 2014 Venice Biennale that allows us to look through a microscope at the real fundamentals of our buildings and see again the essential design techniques used by any architect, anywhere, anytime.

About this title

About the Author:

Rem Koolhaas, winner of the Pritzker Prize in 2000, founded OMA (Office for Metropolitan Architecture) in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. Elements is made with Koolhaas’s research and editorial department AMO in collaboration with the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and includes contributions by Keller Easterling, Niklas Maak, Tom Avermaete, Sebastien Marot, Alejandro Zaera Polo, Jiren Feng, Fang Zhenning, Hans Werlemann, Kevin McLeod, C-LAB.

About this edition

• Publisher: Marsilio
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 8831720198
• ISBN 13: 9788831720199
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 2336
• Editor: Westcott James