Artificial New York

Koolhaas talks about this idea of clashing people and program together and creating a “state of congestion” through architecture and relates the idea in other ways as well. In contrast to what Robert Venturi and Denise Scoot-Brown write in their manifesto regarding culture and reality, Koolhaas is fully interested in human activity and how architectural program affects it. He writes about the artificiality of Coney Island and how these themes would later appear in Manhattan itself,. The games and rides that were built on Coney Island were definitely a suspension of reality, but I think there seems to be something more naturally “congested” about Manhattan and how people interact with each other and how the city evolved in the post-modern era than the example with Coney Island.