Creator of buildings that stand out as surrealistic merveilles along the skylines of America, Europe and Asia ; author of Delirious NewYork, the book that has revolutionized the reading of the contemporary metropolis ; leader of the current generation of architects, Rem Koolhaas with his Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is justly considered as the most important protaganist of contemporary architecture. This first critical monograph of the work of Rem Koolhaas and OMA does more than just describe projects and buildings, it places his career in a cultural context that allows the reader to better understand the creative process of modern architecture. The works are presented in chronological and thematic order, thus retracing the career of Koolhaas from his student days to his neo-avantgarde experimentation at the end of the 1970s, finishing with his most recent works in Porto, Seoul, and Beijing. The individual projects are analysed from conception to constuction, with particular attention to the conceptual and technical reasons for the choice of materials and configuration. Ample space is dedicated to the theoretical formulations of Koolhaas, providing a reflection of the fundamental principles of the contemporary architectural project.

Experiences with the Paranoid-Critical Method - New Sobriety vs. Post-Modern and Contextualism - The epoch of the merveilles - S, M, L, XL, 1995: principles for a theory of architecture - Generic volume, informal polyhedral solids and functional diagrams

The Human brain is only 100,000 years old. Yet, this newly evolved organ endows us with unique creative capabilities beyond all other living creatures, including the gift to understand itself. As our very survival and success in life depends on utilizing our brain’s power, intense efforts have begun worldwide to understand the brain, reverse-engineer it and even augment its capacity.

Although solar thermal systems are technologically mature and cost effective, they have not yet been sufficiently used in building design, where they should be playing a greater role in the reduction of fossil-fuel consumption. One main hindrance to adoption is the generally low architectural design quality of the building integration of these thermal systems.

This groundbreaking essay on Le Corbusier provides a new perspective that is based on exhaustive archival research and the study of neglected or completely unknown documents stored at the Fondation Le Corbusier...

Conditions for travel have changed and are still changing the world — a world experiencing what John Urry, among others, calls the ‘mobility turn’. Since World War II we have been moving faster and going further — a fact that has profoundly changed our way of experiencing both the world and ourselves.