Bigness As it Applies to Present Day Big Development

When describing the 5 theorems on “bigness,” Koolhaas states, “Fueled initially by the thoughtless energy of the purely quantitative, BIGNESS has been, for nearly a century, a condition almost without thinkers, a revolution without program.”  This statement and these theories led my mind to think more about the nature of big-scale development and what “bigness” may mean for today’s architecture. 

While I agree with some aspects of his theory such as the inability to see what happens inside a building, I also question this because I think a building can be “big” but also be tall with shallow floor plates versus the deep floor plate, big box buildings that do support this theory of lack of sight.  I also question a big building’s inability to respond to its context because if its context is big buildings, does a big building not fit? 

Maybe in order to better respond to “bigness” it needs to be thought about more in program where Koolhaas discusses this idea of “culture of congestion” and the ability, through big scale buildings, to pack as many different programs into a building as possible.  As he states, “only BIGNESS can sustain a promiscuous proliferation of events in a single container.”  I see this applying to modern-day development in that a developer’s aim is to maximize profit by cramming multiple programs into one building to keep cash flow in one place.  How can we, as architects, respond to the demands of today’s economy of “bigger is better” while still serving a client’s programmatic desires?  When is “bigness” appropriate and why?

 big vs big