Program diagram architecture oma how to#

Program diagram architecture oma how to#

Many people know OMA's design for the Très Grande Bibliothèque from S,M,L,XL (more on that later), but how did Koolhaas and his compatriots at OMA end up with a design so iconic? The resulting 'voids' cut into floors of 'solid' stacks evolved through sketches and drawings, not surprisingly, but the cubic form of the library - really five libraries in one, per the program - was there early on, the result of the architects addressing functional considerations but also how to accommodate so many square meters on a single site.

Although it spells out the trio of competition entries being worked on that year, the focus is clearly on TGB, and as such the case study of its design process in this chapter is fascinating.

The second chapter, 'The Laboratory of 1989: The Simultaneous Work on the Projects Zeebrugge, ZKM, and TGB,' is - for good reason - the longest of the book's four chapters. Even though Koolhaas's name is often used as a stand-in for OMA in the broader media, as if he controls every aspect of every project stamped with those three letters, it is apparent early in Schurk's book that the contributions of others in the office and their interactions with Koolhaas are integral to how OMA projects take shape. Here readers learn about the influence of Russian Constructivists on Koolhaas, the theories in his 1978 book Delirious New York, and some familiar projects from his early years, but they also gain an understanding of some practical aspects of OMA, such as how Koolhaas and the other founding members (Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesendorp, and Zoe Zenghelis) worked in London and Rotterdam (and eventually how they split up), Koolhaas's involvement with the Utopia group in Rotterdam, and the make-up of the studio leading up to the Laboratory of 1989. The first of the four chapters in Project Without Form is a prologue to the Laboratory of 1989, as Schurk calls it. Schurk's book examines the designs of the three projects, focusing primarily on TGB at its deepest, the book is a portrait of a practice grappling with process and representation. This is especially true of the TGB project, which OMA did not win but influenced many architects and architecture students - and pushed many of them to actually pursue jobs at OMA. Still, their current work can be seen to fit within an approach dictated decades ago by Koolhaas an approach that was arguably worked out most fruitfully in 1989. It arrives at a time when Rem Koolhaas's involvement in projects at OMA is minimal, with the other partners - Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, David Gianotten, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long - directing the projects and being credited appropriately in press releases and on the firm's website. One year later, in the 'Laboratory of 1989' in OMA's Rotterdam studio, things would explode, with the office working simultaneously on three competitions - Très Grande Bibliothèque (TGB) in Paris, Zeebrugge Sea Terminal in Belgium, and Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany - whose designs Holger Schurk collectively describes as 'Project Without Form' in his new book of the same name.īased on his dissertation at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna that was undertaken between 20, Project Without Form was published in German, as Projekt ohne Form, in 2020 and then released two years later in English. The fragmented nature of the high-rise and the Constructivist design of the companion bridge no doubt made Koolhaas and OMA a fitting addition to the exhibition in the eyes of the curators, who linked the philosophy of Deconstruction with Russian Constructivism. The single project by Koolhaas and OMA - Office for Metropolitan Architecture included in the exhibition and catalog was Boompjes, a slab-like high-rise for Rotterdam that was commissioned in 1980 but remained unbuilt (the later De Rotterdam, built in 2013, can be seen as a 21st-century version of that earlier project). Rem Koolhaas was one of seven architects gathered by Philip Johnson and Mark Wigley for the influential and somewhat infamous Deconstructivist Architecture exhibition on view at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in the summer of 1988.