Bazzani on Dunham Jones on Koolhaas on Capitalism

 

Ellen Dunham Jones' essay on Rem Koolhaas' career development and international reach provides an overview of the steps Koolhaas took to become a household name of his era, and influence contemporary architecture. The article describes Koolhaas' formal education, partly under Tschumi, where Jones documents the political climate of their time: 

"Bernard Tschumi — another 24-year-old fresh from Paris where he too had observed the ’68 riots — joined the faculty and began to teach a course, “Politics of Space,” introducing students to the French Situationist and post-structuralist critiques of the discipline’s complicity with corrupt capitalist society." 

As most of us will be practicing as designers, we'll also need to make a choice of how much we want to be complicit with this same corrupt capitalist society. The graphic above from OMA speaks to some of the pros n cons of capitalism, all in the forefront of one of the firm's most recognizable works in Beijing's CCTV Headquarters. 

The quotes pulled from Dunham Jones below aptly describe Koolhaas' critical analysis of the litany of problems he worked through, and where he took opportunities provided by the system. His contemporary international practice tried to toe the line of being critical of corrupt systems, while leveraging market opportunities to arrive at global commissions for heavily lauded projects.

"[Koolhaas's] great success in navigating the intersection of the pragmatic corporate sector, on the one hand, and the “delirious” and volatile realm of desire and possibility, on the other."

"In effect Koolhaas has encouraged his followers to shed the crippling shackles of critical theory and pick up a surfboard upon which to ride the shock waves of the new economy."