Revolutionizing Density

 “People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming.” – Rem Koolhaas

In today’s culture congestion, the density and infrastructures has an important role as Koolhaas suggested. He believed that architecture need not be limited to the building of built “solutions,” but rather could be defined as a mindset, a way of approaching the world, of designing for growth and decay. By stacking upwards such as high-rises that separates the different uses. Each plane of a skyscraper is considered as a virgin land, which the architects have no control over the specific programs. The skyscraper becomes the great metropolitan destabilizer that promises perpetual programmatic instability.

He states "Coney Island," as an example where modern culture discovered its desire "to live inside a fantasy" in a fabricated, fully urban environment that was the product of compression and density. It became a true example of capability of modern technology like lighting, elevator etc. to create a false reality. The unveiling of the "100-Story Building" was itself a revolution for the metropolis life. The concept of having a single building that would accommodate multiple niches was unheard of. The "100-Story Building" had an Interior Golf Course, swimming pool and much more within one entity. Despite the push for modern changes, there was still a need for nature integration.

This article I believe reinforces the fact that urban planning always comes full circle back to its basic need which is functionality. Rem Koolhaas very well explained this by giving example of Manhattan which cannot sustain the impact of explicitly illustrated ideology that is Modernism. However it successfully converts some of the modern principles to inspire earlier projects of Post Modernism.