Personal agenda

Koolhaas did a terrific job with this piece of literature but even though he keeps the audience, guessing whether he stands against or forward modernism, he clearly has an architecture stands when it comes to materials, program distribution and construction that is evident within his works. His writing is very provocative in a sense that he makes sure to support every single of his ideas and assumptions of the future of architecture with examples of advancements in technology that we now take for granted. Therefore enforcing this idea of modernism upon the audience with his constant subliminal message of the “Culture of Congestion”. Yes overpopulation is a problem, and yes we are going to run out of space and the only place we will have available is in the skies. However, is it really worth it? To keep producing project after project, exhausting all your resources, building after building to prove that your obsessive theories about the offspring of modernism like the Downtown Athletic Club are correct and to have products/ornaments that are just the result of wealthy clients with deep pockets. Even though architecture is a service profession and you have responsibility towards your client, you should always consider the public at large and the environment and not just worry about your agenda. One because when it comes to building up we already know who is going to be affected the most in a polluted and forgotten world and two because architecture should be more humane.

“2-fold polemic: against those who believe that they can undo the damage of the Modern Age—

i.e., the Metropolis itself—through the artificial respiration and resuscitation of “traditional”

architecture of streets, plazas, boulevards, etc.; empty spaces for dignified

and decent forms of social intercourse, to be enforced in the name of a stoic good

taste . . . and against that Modern architecture which—with its implacable aversion

to metaphor—has tried to exorcise its fear of chaos through a fetish for the objective

and to regain control over the volatility of the Metropolis by dispersing its bulk,

isolating its components, and quantifying its functions, and render it predictable

once more. . . . Both squander the potential of the Culture of Congestion.” Koolhaas