magazine
NUMBER 2 2016
SPECIAL ISSUE “DOCTORAL THESIS” ACADEMIC RESEARCH
graphic CV
Belén Butragueño Díaz-Guerra
trienial review of academic texts and professional projects
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GRAPHIC CV SPECIAL ISSUE 2016
Belén Butragueño Díaz-Guerra NIF: 07251149P C/ Poeta Esteban Villegas 10 Madrid 28014 tel: 913242248 email: info@b2bconcept.es
web: www.b2bconcept.es
All the graphic content was developed by the author of the magazine that subscribes the veracity of all the data exposed. © of images Belén Butragueño © of texts Belén Butragueño Editions b2bconcept 2016
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ntent NÚMBER 2, 2016
GENERAL CONTEXT
REM, DELIRIOUS NY, SMLXL
CONTENT
GO COUNTRYSIDE
CONCLUSIONS
DECALOGUE
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RELATIONAL - CHRONOLOGICAL DIAGRAM
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OF MOVEMENTS, PERSONALITIES AND STRATEGIES OF 20TH CENTURY (© Belén Butragueño)
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GENERAL CONTEXT
This booklet is based on my doctoral research on architectural media, focusing on Rem Koolhaas as one of the most relevant examples of its development.
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Rem Koolhaas’ portrait. El Croquis nº 79 (© El Croquis)
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General context What I attempt, in short, is to immerse myself in the “Content” Universe (which is one of Rem Koolhaas’s most relevant publications regarding its intellectual position, and also one of the less explored) and investigate thoroughly the COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES that are promoted, in order to extract CONCLUSIONS and see if they could be EXTRAPOLATED to the world of ARCHITECTURAL MEDIA.
One of the architects who has developed this aspect more clearly along his career is, undoubtedly, REM KOOLHAAS, and that’s the reason why this research is centered around his figure; not so much his architectural production or his theoretical construct (which have been analyzed in depth before) but the COMMUNICATIVE aspect of his practice.
GENERAL CONTEXT
As I say, my investigation was developed around COMMUNICATION IN ARCHITECTURE, understood not only as the ULTIMATE EXPRESSION of architecture itself, but as an AGENT that is integrated into ALL THE PHASES of the creative process, from the very beginning.
This is the specific aspect I’m interested in, because I try to demonstrate that, it is in this particular field, where his influence has been undeniable, where we can find his most DISTINCT and ORIGINAL contribution to the architectural world. All research starts from a few HYPOTHESIS, which arise from a previous knowledge and lead to a few considerations that should be compared and verified. In this case, and in a very summarized manner, they are as follows: 1. In “Content” there is a CONVERGENCE between the VISUAL language and the PROJECT. 2. The language is based on communicative congestion which is an application of Koolhaas’ self-termed “ culture of the congestion “ in the book “Delirious NY”. 2016
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Diagram of the hypothesis stated in the research (© Belén Butragueño)
GENERAL CONTEXT
Congestive communication is based on three fundamental parameters: the use of the technological progress of his time, unplanned development of the process and a revealing graphic hyper density. 3. This discovery generates a TRANSFORMATION OF THE COMMUNICATION CODES in architecture, which already began in “SMLXL”.
Before entering the “Content” Universe, it is necessary to CONTEXTUALIZE both his FIGURE, and his CAREER, but focusing on COMMUNICATIVE aspects, comparing his conceptual evolution with the consecutive transformations taking place in that field. First we will analyze briefly his career, focusing on the aspects that led him to be on of the most important COMMUNICATORS alive. Later we will carry out a GRAPHIC ANALYSIS of his more relevant PUBLICATIONS, travelling from EAST to WEST, up to the “Content” Book, where we will stop, because it is in this publication, where OMA’s most distinct communication strategies appear. Finally, we will study his LATEST PROPOSALS in this field and see if we can draw some conclusions.
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Rem
Rem Koolhaas was born in 1944, in a Rotterdam devastated by the Second World War. He spent most of his childhood outside The Netherlands, in Indonesia, where he got in touch with the Asian culture; which will be essential afterwards. He spent his childhood traveling due to the profession of his father, who is journalist and writer. Later he returned to a Rotterdam that has been rapidly rebuilt in an artificial way. In 1963 he entered the liberal newspaper “DER HAAGSE POST”, positioned clearly in favor of capitalism and the global market. Rem Koolhaas didn’t hold an academic degree in journalism but, as he had declared “in the 60 it was relatively easy to change of profession”. REM, DELIRIOUS NY, SMLXL
At that time, the newspaper was forming a team of young intellectuals of the European avant-garde, to give it a new perspective. They advocated an aseptic journalism, free from prejudice, simply based on data without categorizing them, which was a reference later in OMA.
Rem Koolhaas interviews John Lindsay, 1964
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REM, DELIRIOUS NY, SMLXL
During those years he got in touch with Le Corbusier and Constant, which at that time was a conceptual and spiritual reference in the Netherlands for some ideological tendencies against whom Rem Koolhaas is openly opposed. Therefore it was not the contact with these two personalities what attracted him to the architectural world. His interest raised after a seminar on “Architecture and Cinema” held in 1966 where he met Gerry Ourthuys that was working with Rietveld. Together they carried out a study on LEONIDOV. He became fascinated by his figure and his architecture. He even travelled three times to Russia to meet the family and investigate his Iván Leonidov, “ Lenin Institute”, 1927 work. In 1968 he enrolled in the Architectural Association in London, where actually he didn’t have a high profile. However, two very important things happened: he got in touch with the avant-garde post modern and pop art and he met Elia Zenghelis, who became his mentor and with whom he subsequently founded OMA. OMA presents its formation in a self published pamphlet, 1978
In 1972 he traveled to the United States with his wife , Madelon Vriesendorp, to attend an Ungers’ Workshop at Cornell University. But as soon as he could he went to Manhattan, city that has always fascinated. He worked as visiting professor at the IAUS in New York, directed by Peter Eisenman, who was a vital influence later on. In 1975 he founded OMA, along with his wife and the marriage Zenghelis, as a kind of urban observatory. The early years are marked by a very important theoretical activity, and domestic works. Those first projects clearly shows the application of the paranoid-critical Method, as in the competition of the Parc de la Villette, which established him as theoretical, despite not winning the competition.
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In the early nineties he started to manifest his obsession with BIGNESS, and performed very conceptual competitions, that failed to materialize, as the TGB or Zeebrugge, until it arrives Congrexpo in Lille, that emerged as a great “exquisite corpse”. In 1994 arrives the greatest publishing success in the history of the architectural communication: “SMLXL”. A year later Rem Koolhaas joins Harvard, as Postgraduates’s Professor. With his students, he starts to develop a series of studies that also derived in very important publications relating to Lagos, the phenomenon of shopping or, more recently, the fundamental elements of the architecture. 1997 marks the beginning of his more iconic period, influenced by the “Guggenheim Effect”, as the rest of the architectural scene, In the year 2000 he won the PRIZTZKER’S prize, which consolidates definitively his career in the American market. He started to build some of his large-scale works, such as the iconic Seattle Library, the “Casa da Musica” in Porto or the “CCTV” in China. This last project marks his conceptual step toward the east.
In recent times, he seems to turn his gaze to very different fields, although the generating principles are the same. Now he is working on concepts such as PRESERVATION, GENERIC versus iconic, COUNTRYSIDE versus city, or the foundations of architecture as an archaic discipline (which is the leitmotiv of the Venice Biennial he directed in 2014). His entire career is surrounded by a series of publications that register his theoretical construct and enhance a exponential evolution of his thought.
“Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. It is by definition a chaotic adventure. In other words, the utopian enterprise.”
Priztzker Prize, 2000 (© The Hyatt Foundation)
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All these transitions occurred approximately in the year 2003 and “CONTENT” is a result of all these movements. If the obsession of the 90 was BIGNESS, in “Content” is the JUNKSPACE and the theme “GO EAST”.
Rem Koolhaas 2016
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Rem Kollhaas’ Timeline Diagram (© Belén Butragueño)
“Our old ideas about space have exploded. In their place comes a surprising range of domains that will define our future.” Rem Koolhaas 10 cv b2bconcept
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Delirious NY “Delirious New York”. The Monacelli Press, 1978 (© OMA)
It is a retroactive manifest, which means the imposition of a theoretical or philosophical construct to an urbanism that emerged spontaneously, apparently without a philosophical support. That organism called “Manhattan” arises from the combination of globalization with the culture of the masses, giving rise to what Rem Koolhaas called a culture of congestion.
REM, DELIRIOUS NY, SMLXL
From this point the research starts its own drift to the EAST: starting in USA with “Delirious NY”, manifesto that meant his recognition as a theoretician in architecture. This book represents for Rem Koolhaas what “Vers une architecture” meant for Le Corbusier.
The book contains a not always veiled critic to the modern movement, especially to rationalist projects such as “Ville Radieuse” from Le Corbusier, that pretended to erase the existing city to raise a new city of uniformed skyscrapers. In Rem Koolhaas’ opinion, the existing remains are always the best possible starting scenario. Three of the obsessions of Rem Koolhaas have a special role in the book: skyscrapers (that represent the culture of congestion in height); the elevator, (which meant a revolutionary technical advance for architecture and urbanism); and the globe (obsession that arises from his admiration for Wallace Harrison). It’s important to remark also the “postmortem” chapter, which is mainly dedicated to Le Corbusier and Dali as the Europeans that shared that fascination for Manhattan and somehow pretended to save it from itself, each from very different perspectives: from the “lecorbuserian” rationalism to the “dalinean” surrealism. 2016
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Structure The book is organized in four separated blocks: Coney Island, the Skyscrapers, Rockefeller Center and the Europeans. The four of them describe the permutations of Manhattan since its foundation. The fifth block, the appendix, is a sequence of architectural projects that symbolize the conscious implementation of the culture of the congestion. They include projects such as “Éxodus” and “The City of the captive globe”, from Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis, in collaboration with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis.
REM, DELIRIOUS NY, SMLXL
Obviously, its “manifesto” configuration forces it to have a very conventional graphic structure, regarding typography, page formats, texts and margins location... However, there is a very important innovation: a NON-LINEAR READING system, since the information is inserted into conceptual packages tagged with a very simple concept, which allows the reader to group those packages by thematic and make a discontinuous reading. Rem Koolhaas pays special attention to the graphic documentation that brings: on one hand we can find unpublished photographs, which are the result of a rigorous research in all kinds of entities and libraries in NY, and on the other, we find postcards, whose collection became an obsession for Rem Koolhaas. During his stay in Manhattan he got to accumulate up to 10,000 postcards and he even participated in collectors’ conventions to exchange them.
“The city of light”, Consolidated Edison’s Pavillion, New York,1939
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The rest of the artwork, is covered with the work of Madelon Vriesendorp and belong to a series called “THE SECRET LIFE OF BUILDINGS”, which the cover is highlighted under the title of “Flagrant Delit” and represents the romance between Madam Chrysler Building and Lord Empire State that are cached up in flagrante by Rockefeller Center. In short, the overall structure of the book can be compared with the reticule of Manhattan: extremely homogenous at a geometric level, but hiding enormous singularities in each block.
References GRAPHIC REFERENCES
REM, DELIRIOUS NY, SMLXL
If we focus on the drawings of Madelon Vriesendorp, we can find several very clear references: such as the surrealism of Dali in the work “Angelus of Millet”. The human figure sculpture-converted that appears in the “Imaginary Portrait of Marquis of Sade” from Man Ray or the uniformed characters of Magritte, that observe by the window as the humanized buildings do in the scene of “Flagrant Delit”.
Madelon Vriesendorp, “Dream of Liberty”, 1974
CONCEPTUAL REFERENCES
Sketch of Dalí’s PCM
Some of them have already been mentioned, such as Leonidov, Ungers with “Archipelago City“, Robert Venturi with “Learning from Las Vegas” or Hugh Ferrys with his book on the imaginary urbanism from “The Metropolis of tomorrow”. We also need to mention Dalí, and the application of the paranoid-critical method to architecture. This method can be summarized in a sentence: “the subconscious supported by the crutches of reality”. 2016
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REM, DELIRIOUS NY, SMLXL
S.M.L.XL.
1994 is the year of the publication of “SMLXL”,that becomes the largest publishing success in regard to architectural publications, up to date.
This book is an extremely cared object in which the graphic designer (Bruce Mau) becomes co-author, because he has a fundamental importance in the process. It is the result of more than three years of process and borns with a double purpose: to equate the importance of built and unbuilt projects and to place each project within the globalization process in which it is involved. The main structure couldn’t be more clear: it is organized by SIZES: from the domestic scale to the urban scale. The media supports the message and brings a new perspective on the narrative of an architectural object to actually reach the reader. Bruce Mau points that the book does not want to narrate “the architectural culture” but wants to become architectural culture, that is to say, to advocate the coincidence between the media and the message. Also, it is not a question of telling the reality of urbanism but of having the EXPERIENCIE of that reality.
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“SMLXL”.1995. The Monacelli Press, (© OMA)
Structure GRAPHIC STRUCTURE One of its main features is that each project receives an exclusive and UNIQUE APPROACH, seeking the most appropriate way to tell the essence of the project: from a graphic novel, a personal dairy, a graphic novel, a sensory exploration or a “manifesto”. Despite being a book with so many different approaches, there are a number of elements that give continuity such as the use of an only font with certain variations, the existence of a size’s MACRO STRUCTURE, the images’ treatment or the existence of that dictionary of the concerns and obsessions of Koolhaas, which goes through the book from A to Z.
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Different approximations to the project, SMLXL, 1995 (© OMA)
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CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE If we go deeper into the conceptual structure, we find that the book is divided in sizes, from S to XL. Most of the built works appear in the first two levels, while the “L size” represents the great interest of Rem Koolhaas this moment: “Bigness”. This term refers to projects whose dimension and scale allows them to be considered “city” themselves, as they continue its same dynamic and principles. Finally, the “XL size” encompasses the urban projects as “Euralille” master plan where we can find “Congrexpo”, his first materialization of “Bigness”.
REM, DELIRIOUS NY, SMLXL
“Bigness”, SMLXL, 1995 (© OMA)
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We must also highlight the manifests, from “Typical Plan” (to some extent a continuation of “Delirious New York” as a study of the typical American plan confronted to the European), “Globalization”, “Bigness” and “What happened to Urbanism” that leads us to conclude with the “Generic City”. This last one memorandum is an introduction to “JunkSpace”, the great manifesto of “Content”, his next important publication.
“Content” arises in 2004, in a transitional time at internal and external levels.
Content
“We look at the current moment and see where and in what way we could make a certain breakthrough”
Both Rem Koolhaas as the publisher manifest in the editorial notes that the book appears as a reaction to the attacks of September 11th, the phenomenon of globalization and the global market which generated altogether, a new world order with the corresponding instability, specially remarkable in the “Content”, 2004 (© OMA) architectural context.
Rem Koolhaas
CONTENT
At the domestic level Rem Koolhaas is in a moment of maximum media ego: he was recently awarded with the Priztzker prize, he has already built Chicago, Seattle and “Casa da Musica”, the works of the CCTV are in process and also has a fluent relationship with Prada, which dynamizes the entire production of AMO (OMA’s nemesis). CCTV’s project represents a clear choice between east and west, since he had the opportunity to participate in the World trade Center Competition but he chose to turn to China. On the other hand, he gets politically involves in the UE with a project on the identity of Europe that he carries far beyond the official order and he increases exponentially the activity of the Office in Asia. 2016
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“Content” has a deliberately ambiguous format. With a structure and a configuration of a magazine but with the thickness of a book. Its intention is to remain ephemeral, an element of immediate consumption, which arises from the extrapolation of the 80’s and 90’s publishers’ phenomena with the male consumer magazines. Magazines such as Playboy in USA or FHM in London experienced a boom in record sales. This success was due to the combination of explicit sexual content with very rigorous research articles and had a surprisingly enormous welcome among the general public. Rem Koolhaas wants to extrapolate this phenomenon to the world of architectural publications, to make them accessible for the great mass. With such intention he contracts a young and inexperienced editor (Brendan McGetrick) and counts on two of the artistic directors of one of these magazines (Simon Brown and Jon Link from “Jack Magazine”) for the book. They extrapolate the pop visual language of the magazine: attractive, direct, explicit...
CONTENT
They try to exercise a critical external pressure over the office, forcing a process of reflection and also introducing a synthesis criteria opposite to the strategy followed in “SMLXL”. Compared to “SMLXL”, whose content is internal, in “Content” they incorporate external voices, which introduce parallel or tangent visions to OMA-AMO, so that the book combines both projects of the study, external inputs and less-related articles.
“Jack” Magazine, edited from 2002 to 2004 in UK
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CCTV Headquarters, Beijing, 2008
CONTENT
Koolhaas himself defines the book as a “vehicle for the promotion of the CCTV building” and a manifest of his emphasis on China, his abandonment of the West and his progressive turn to the east, which is explicitly shown from the same cover. The book incorporates satire, irony, humor and sarcasm, which was not always welcome in China. For example, in the last pages of the book appear a few alternative covers with explicit sexual and he was forced to rectify with a explicit note in the web page. The cover is the work of an artist named Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, which uses the pop aesthetics to deal with controversial thematic, related with the mass’ culture, comic and pop art, condition that shares with Rem himself. With the CCTV building at the bottom, we can find a series of sensationalist messages such as “perverted architecture” or “homicidal engineering”. In the foreground, we can find controversial personalities ridiculed in some way. This magazine was the most important publication for the Office since “SMLXL” (at least it is considered so internally) but was also the catalog of the exhibition developed at the end of 2003 at the Neue Gallerie of Berlin, building work of Mies van der Rohe. 2016
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CONTENT
Composition
Different pages’ format, “Content”, 2004 (© OMA)
“Content” has a much more heterogeneous than “SMLXL”, presenting multiple structures, fonts, page settings, graphic formats and contents from many and very diverse sources. In addition, it has a much more journalistic style. Both publication have something in common: a general macro-structure with multiple micro- substructures. At a graphical level, we can observe a progressive “asiatization” of language: the more toward the east, projects present a much more condensed graphic and visual language, influenced by the Asian fonts. One of the most important issues is that, as it happened in “SMLXL”, the approximations to the project narrative are not conventional but alternatives to the known scenario. However, while in “SMLXL” there was a unique perspective for each project, in “Content” they are narrated through several micro stories that conform the general picture.
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References We can find two different kind of references: those that are implicit and those that are explicitly referred by the editor of the publication, Brendan McGetrick. The implicit references we have found are Chris Ware (his graphical experimentation, the use of innovative formats and the urban visions), Oliverio Toscani (his controversial thematics for Bennetton’s campaing) or Richard Hamilton (with the use of collage as a manifestation of the post modernism and the culture of masses).
Implicit References “Content”, 2004 (© OMA)
CONTENT
Regarding the explicit references, the most relevant is the sensationalist magazine called “Jack”, the Dutch magazines “Kutt” and “Butt” with homosexual content, “Wired” (magazine that was object of study by AMO), “Volume” magazine where he also acts as editor and contributes regularly, several erotic graphic model with male homosexual content and Manga graphic novels with a congestive and explicitly “kitsch” style.
Explicit References “Content”, 2004 (© OMA)
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CONTENT
Publication’s Comparative
Comparative Diagram of the Characteristics of OMA’s publications (© Belén Butragueño)
At this point we are searching for the internal dynamics existing in the apparent chaos that represents this publication. We know that there is a geographical MACRO-STRUCTURE associated with a progressive conceptual and graphical asiatization but there is also a microstructure in blocks of blurred boundaries. Generally within each block, there is a main theme (a project or a manifest), which is configured as the nucleus. Usually there are also opinion articles relating to that project and some emblematic image or reportage related of an external author. Finally, there are a series of tangential thematic that can be related to several projects. All of them together conform the map of the “CONTENT” galaxy.
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CONTENT
“The more architecture mutates, the more it confronts its immutable core. Yet “S,M,L,XL” is a search for another architecture, knowing that architecture is like a lead ball chained to a prisoner’s leg: to escape he has to get rid of its weight but all he can do is scrape slivers off with a teaspoon.” Rem Koolhaas 2016
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“It is significant in terms of acknowledging the ways in which architecture (and architects themselves) have been subsumed by mass consumer culture. By adopting the look and tone of a commercial magazine and applying its devices to OMA’s practice, we were trying to simultaneously satirize pop media and take advantage of the their greater clarity and excitement.” Brendan McGetrick 24 cv b2bconcept
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CONCEPTUAL DIAGRAM OF THE “CONTENT” UNIVERSE (© Belén Butragueño)
“Content” Universe 2016
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Cases of Study
CONTENT
The core of the research is formed by seven cases of study based on seven communicative strategies that I established. Each case turns around a project, but consists of much more than its mere description.
POLYFORM COMMUNICATION
ICONIC COMMUNICATION
CONGESTIVE COMMUNICATION
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HYPER - COM
“When there is nothing, everything is possible. When there is architecture, nothing (else) is possible” Rem Koolhaas
CONTENT
IMPOSING COMMUNICATION
MMUNICATION
STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION
ADVERTISING COMMUNICATION
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Seattle Library Concept Book of Competition
CONTENT
LMN’s website
Diagram appeared in Seattle Press
OMA’s website, Instagrammers collaborations
“Content” Book
We’ve considered the strategy followed in the description of the Seattle Library in different media as a Polyform Communication. The adaptation of the graphic language to very diverse circumstances generates a distortion on the message so that the original project is hardly recognizable. In this case we look at five different descriptions of the project, finding absolutely antagonistic narrations the Concept Book of the competition, the website of LMN (American partners of Rem Koolhaas), the web of OMA, Seattle Press and “Content”.
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€conography / An Authopsy “€conography” and “An autopsy” represent the application of a maximum graphic congestion. “An autopsy” narrates the history of the world from 1989 to 2003, through a series of collages, providing the same level of importance to economic acts, as the political or cultural ones, critical to understand the current world’s situation. In “€conography”, AMO is conducting a study on the image of Europe through a commission of the European Union that Rem Koolhaas carries much farther as anyone expected, even proposing an alternative flag of the European Union. World Time line in “An Autopsy”, Content, 2004
CONTENT
“€conography”, Content, 2004
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Go Countryside Finally, the research concludes with an analysis of the current situation in OMA, or what happened after “Content”. In that moment, the world is immersed in a huge economic crisis that has had a special impact in the profession. Among other circumstances it has generated a rethinking of the urban planning and the situation of the cities, abandoning the idea of “regenerate cities by force of icons”.
GO COUNTRYSIDE
Inside OMA there have been quite radical changes: there is an apparent return to the principles of the archaic discipline of architecture, a deep revision of the graphic strategies in search of new experimental ways after the “maximum graphic congestion” (somehow “Content” generates a burnt land scenary) and a huge professional and emotional exhaustion in relation with the CCTV’s project. Somehow the new philosophy is summarized in a “BACK TO BASICS”, considering the fundamental as the most radical act.
Strategies
Venice Biennial, “Fundamentals” ,2010
OMA’s latest proposals follow one of these two strategies:
1.
The use of EXTERNAL AGENTS either in the message (as in “Project Japan”, book based on a practical-theoretical study on metabolism, or “Venice’s Biennial”) or in the means (as in “Progress”, exhibition on OMA-AMO’s work curated by a young group of architects named Rotor)
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Progress Exhibition, 2010
Project Japan, 2010
“If the culture of the 20th century is the culture of congestion, what will the culture of the 21th be? The culture of dissemination, dispersal.” 2. Generating a TOTAL CHANGE OF SCENARIO : in recent articles Rem Koolhaas is talking about an abandonment of the urban scenario, that he considers to be ended; being the COUNTRYSIDE where he seems to find the opportunity’s spaces nowadays, the place where friction and change are happening, and those are the fundamental ingredients needed in any creative process or experimentation.
GO COUNTRYSIDE
Rem Koolhaas
“R.K. in the Countryside”, Icon Magazine, 2014
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Conclusions
To summarize it is important to extract some conclusions on communication architecture and the importance of Rem Koolhaas’ contributions in this field.
in
The iconic dimension of Architecture In “Learning from Las Vegas” Venturi reflects on the
“iconic and communicative dimension of architecture” as an intrinsic
CONCLUSIONS
component thereof. He argues that modern movement has stripped the architecture off its communicative essential character, which, on the other hand, is present in all periods of history (from the Egyptians to the Paleochristian basilicas or the Mayan temples). Moreover, he concludes that the architecture mechanisms of representation have not been explicitly analyzed after rationalism. During the 70’s groups such as Archigram or Superstudio start to develop a reinterpretation of the established conventions. Later on, architects as Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi, Zaha Hadid and Rem himself, start to prove that it is possible to go much further, understanding that the strategy followed to give visibility to the content, results in the very essence of the architectural object, in its character and understanding. “OMA Book Machine”, 2010. Beatriz Colomina (© El Croquis)
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Architecture and representation as a communicative whole Our perception of reality is based on the prior knowledge of the codes that enable the message’s communication. Koolhaas talks about “design of information” to express that both message and media are fundamental and they are interdependent. This fact implies that the communicative strategy must be present from the very beginning of the process in the architectural creation. In OMA’s particular history, the total convergence between container and content actually happens in “Content”. Even though “SMLXL” works with the concept of “being architecture’s culture” or “generating a reality’s experience” and not just a manifestation of it.
Concept materialization
In the last years Koolhaas has included the “registration” of every little document developed in the offices as part of the creative process. His continuous production of internal publications has exponentially increased since “Content” and they are a reference for actual and further projects.
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CONCLUSIONS
Koolhaas and Mies, differ in many aspects. However, they converge in an important reasoning: “the architect must find a way to suggest a consistent architecture with the time in which it lives”. Likewise, this axiom applies to communication and that fact implies a necessary revision of means and strategies traditionally followed.
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Is “Content” the highlight of the communicative experience? If we define that “highlight” as the convergence between the communicative strategy and the concept, the research followed leads to consider that it actually is. However it could not take the place that “SMLXL” has in the collective imaginary and some critics consider “Content” as a mere pamphlet, something rare. Even Koolhaas has defined it as “ugly” or “bad”.
CONCLUSIONS
But actually “Content” tries to experiment on a phenomenon that comes from sensationalist magazines and extrapolate it to architecture, to generate a product directed to the general public. That is the “strategy” and the “graphic tool” is pop art and post-modernity, with no doubt.
Alternative Covers for “Content”, 2004 (© OMA)
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Future prospective The transgression of the genre has been so dramatic that it seems unlikely to figure out any possible prospective. “Content” leaves behind a burnt land scenery that is difficult to overcome. However, even the external manifestations are quite different there are some conceptual continuities: The understanding of architecture as a consumption object for the general public. ·The need of visibility, of understanding. This can be done either through the use of multiple approximations (as in “Content”) or through the decomposition of architecture to its basic units (as in “Fundamentals”) The constant extrapolation of cultural phenomena to architecture. The dependency on external facts that affect the creative process. CONCLUSIONS
Rem Koolhaas is able to anticipate the circumstances around being able to re-interpretate himself over and over again.
Toulousse’s Convention Centre 2014 (© OMA)
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Verification of the initial hypothesis The first hypothesis is based on the convergence of project and visual language in Rem Koolhaas / OMA-AMO’s publications. This results in a Bijective Exchange: communicate-project. The second hypothesis suggests that is in “Content” where we can find the so called “congestive communication”, a direct application of the culture of congestion, generating a maximal visual hyper density and an “apparent” chaos.
CONCLUSIONS
It is a planned and voluntary strategy that leads to a progressive fragmentation of the narration to generate multiple interpretations in the receptor. The result is what we called “Trijective Exchange”: designcommunicate-record, in which “registration” offers an extra dimension to the pair “design-communicate”. A three-way permutation that enriches the message and leads to a high degree of responsibility of the receptor thereof. There is a code breakout and therefore, a transformation, appearing the concept of “design of information” and “information registration”. In Bruce Mau’s words: “communication informs and transforms the architectural practice”.
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2016
Decalogue
OF THE GOOD COMMUNICATOR IN ARCHITECTURE 1. Become a theoretical- practical. Koolhaas bets for a pragmatic conceptualization, the construction of knowledge and its constant application directly or indirectly. 2. Assume the chaos and its dynamics. Is always positive to get immerse in the unknown and embrace the uncertainty. But follow its rules systematically. Not all is allowed. 3. Controvert yourself. It is necessary to rethink everything, even what we consider valid and verified, to find new parameters, from controversy not from contradiction.
5. Always question the best approximation that empowers the message, reinforces it and even transforms it. Do not stay in what you already know.
DECALOGUE
4. Work the analogy. Investigate outside your specific field of knowledge and extrapolate the results through analogy, contraposition, mimesis...
6. Create your own alter ego, that enables not to be always scrupulously consistent. The costume must fit you but limit your growth. 7. Copy, but do it well. The history of knowledge starts always from a previous experience, it is impossible to be always a “inventor”, it is much more interesting to be a “re-contextualizer”, even from yourself. Embrace the hazardous or accidental component... Include the game, humor, irony...CREATIVITY IS AND MUST BE FUN. 8. Collaborate with the best experts in each matter. Use the advise from those who control a specific matter. Provoque the exchange and mutual learning. 9. Surround yourself with a team that fosters the project, look for a team that helps you achieve the goals you want to reach: experience?, freshness?, alternative visions? 10. Get out of the comfort zone, that vital space in which we feel comfortable because everything is known and safe, but where creativity is lethargic. Provoque the change, take on the unknown, although panic, because there is where learning and innovation happens. 2016
b2bconcept cv
37
b2bconcept editions 2016
magazine
NUMBER 2 2016
SPECIAL ISSUE “DOCTORAL THESIS” ACADEMIC RESEARCH
graphic CV
Belén Butragueño Díaz-Guerra
trienial review of academic texts and professional projects
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