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Product Description
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This extraordinary, massive, and mind-boggling 1,300-page book combines essays, manifestos, diaries, fairy tales, travelogues, a cycle of meditations on the contemporary city--and complex illustration--with work produced by Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture over the past twenty years. This almost overwhelming accumulation of words and images illuminates the condition of architecture today--its splendors and miseries--exploring and revealing the corrosive effects of politics, context, the economy, and globalization. In some ways, this is the "Medium is the Message" of 1990s architectural discourse: guaranteed to be hugely influential in the coming decades, but grossly misunderstood by those who have not read it. The core arguments it makes about metropolitan architecture--accepting complexity and lack of centralized control--are similar to those of Kevin Kelly's Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World. Very highly recommended.
Product Description
S,M,L,XL presents a selection of the remarkable visionary design work produced by the Dutch firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.) and its acclaimed founder, Rem Koolhaas, in its first twenty years, along with a variety of insightful, often poetic writings. The inventive collaboration between Koolhaas and designer Bruce Mau is a graphic overture that weaves together architectural projects, photos and sketches, diary excerpts, personal travelogues, fairy tales, and fables, as well as critical essays on contemporary architecture and society.
The book's title is also its framework: projects and essays are arranged according to scale. While Small and Medium address issues ranging from the domestic to the public, Large focuses on what Koolhaas calls "the architecture of Bigness." Extra-Large features projects at the urban scale, along with the important essay "What Ever Happened to Urbanism?" and other studies of the contemporary city. Running throughout the book is a "dictionary" of an adventurous new Koolhaasian language -- definitions, commentaries, and quotes from hundreds of literary, cultural, artistic, and architectural sources.
The book's title is also its framework: projects and essays are arranged according to scale. While Small and Medium address issues ranging from the domestic to the public, Large focuses on what Koolhaas calls "the architecture of Bigness." Extra-Large features projects at the urban scale, along with the important essay "What Ever Happened to Urbanism?" and other studies of the contemporary city. Running throughout the book is a "dictionary" of an adventurous new Koolhaasian language -- definitions, commentaries, and quotes from hundreds of literary, cultural, artistic, and architectural sources.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I write as someone who loves to have a vaguely speculative architecture book on the go. This book is an obvious addition to my reading but it does come with a hefty price tag. It is also the size of a medieval bible, or a couple of housebricks. This is a very big book.
People might well be wary as to whether this is something that they want to invest the time, money and shelf space for.
Well, I would describe it as a collage of sorts. It contains a variety of writings, plans, diagrams, and photos. Although it is ostensibly about architecture and urbanism, it does not really go into specifying toilets or building standards. This is about architects as heroic creators of imaginary worlds, that sometimes become real. It also includes a listing of quotes arranged in alphabetical order running as a sidebar across many of the pages. In the conclusion of the book these are attributed. They are a thought provoking selection coming form such sources as JG Ballard, Wim Wenders, Umberto Eco, Jorge Luis Borges etc.
It is not really a didactic book, it is not a manifesto, more it is the scrapings from notebooks and writing, and photos, etc etc. It is a late night whimsy made flesh.
If you are a fan of Koolhaas then the book needs no further recommendation, if you are not then you will probably find much to enjoy here. However, if you thought Bldgblog Book: Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, Landscape Futures was whimsical and pointless then you will really hate this with a vengeance.
Despite the length it is not a hard read. You can easily read a hundred pages in an hour or two as most of the pages are filled with images. Despite the subject it is not a promotion of Koolhaas and his buildings, he is quite self effacing in that sense.
Some of it is deliberately provocative, I don't think anyone could defend a photo of the aftermath of an IRA shooting sitting opposite the tale of an architectural commission that fell through, but for those open to this level of post-modern experimentalism this is well produced, solid and readable.
Finally, my copy arrived shrink wrapped and in perfect condition, the postman probably thought I had just bought a couple of house bricks from Amazon.
People might well be wary as to whether this is something that they want to invest the time, money and shelf space for.
Well, I would describe it as a collage of sorts. It contains a variety of writings, plans, diagrams, and photos. Although it is ostensibly about architecture and urbanism, it does not really go into specifying toilets or building standards. This is about architects as heroic creators of imaginary worlds, that sometimes become real. It also includes a listing of quotes arranged in alphabetical order running as a sidebar across many of the pages. In the conclusion of the book these are attributed. They are a thought provoking selection coming form such sources as JG Ballard, Wim Wenders, Umberto Eco, Jorge Luis Borges etc.
It is not really a didactic book, it is not a manifesto, more it is the scrapings from notebooks and writing, and photos, etc etc. It is a late night whimsy made flesh.
If you are a fan of Koolhaas then the book needs no further recommendation, if you are not then you will probably find much to enjoy here. However, if you thought Bldgblog Book: Architectural Conjecture, Urban Speculation, Landscape Futures was whimsical and pointless then you will really hate this with a vengeance.
Despite the length it is not a hard read. You can easily read a hundred pages in an hour or two as most of the pages are filled with images. Despite the subject it is not a promotion of Koolhaas and his buildings, he is quite self effacing in that sense.
Some of it is deliberately provocative, I don't think anyone could defend a photo of the aftermath of an IRA shooting sitting opposite the tale of an architectural commission that fell through, but for those open to this level of post-modern experimentalism this is well produced, solid and readable.
Finally, my copy arrived shrink wrapped and in perfect condition, the postman probably thought I had just bought a couple of house bricks from Amazon.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
26 reviews
13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
How to pack a city into a book - Lesson 1
14 Jun 1998
Format:Hardcover
This is a dense manifesto of ideas. It might be termed a printed hypertext, with a continuous glossary of terms being defined by Koolhaas this could serve as an alternative dictionary. The book is too broad for simply architecture, urban planning theory &c. which it professes to having as its infrastructure. It deals with all design issues, from the content of OMAs projects, to the beautifully printed and assembled object that is the book itself. Attempt to read as a linear narrative at your own risk.
99 of 131 people found the following review helpful
Extra Medium...
13 Nov 2004
Format:Hardcover
There's a terrific line in Breakfast at Tiffany's. George Peppard proudly hands neighbor Audrey Hepburn a copy of his just-published book. She has no idea what to do with it, so she puts it on a shelf next to a vase, backs away and says "Doesn't that look nice?"
This book is a lot like that. A self-conciously designed object for the homes of style consumers who already have the right clothes and the B&B Italia furniture. A prop for the still-life they want to inhabit. If they ever got around to "reading" it, they'd discover to their great relief... it's NOT a book to be read in any strict classical sense.
It also reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon where one associate asks another, "Read the first few pages of any good books lately?" The age of the short attention span is not going away any time soon. This hefty grey slab is easily recast as the shiny new headstone for verbalized intelligence.
As Kracauer holds it, there's nothing wrong with framing a culture via fragments, but I have plenty of qualms about advancing one's own ideas that way. And I'm suspect of ideas that trowel on style in the abundance seen here. If I could believe Bruce Mau's intentions were more than just trying to look new, (This 'look' now permeates architecture publications) I'd have more respect for this, but it was obviously calculated as a totem of style and style-suffusion.
For better or for worse, the book got noticed, the industry was distracted by the pretty surfaces and the ascent of Koolhaas is a done deal.
If you want to actually READ a book full of Koolhaas' thoughts, skip this and get a copy of Delirious New York.
This book is a lot like that. A self-conciously designed object for the homes of style consumers who already have the right clothes and the B&B Italia furniture. A prop for the still-life they want to inhabit. If they ever got around to "reading" it, they'd discover to their great relief... it's NOT a book to be read in any strict classical sense.
It also reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon where one associate asks another, "Read the first few pages of any good books lately?" The age of the short attention span is not going away any time soon. This hefty grey slab is easily recast as the shiny new headstone for verbalized intelligence.
As Kracauer holds it, there's nothing wrong with framing a culture via fragments, but I have plenty of qualms about advancing one's own ideas that way. And I'm suspect of ideas that trowel on style in the abundance seen here. If I could believe Bruce Mau's intentions were more than just trying to look new, (This 'look' now permeates architecture publications) I'd have more respect for this, but it was obviously calculated as a totem of style and style-suffusion.
For better or for worse, the book got noticed, the industry was distracted by the pretty surfaces and the ascent of Koolhaas is a done deal.
If you want to actually READ a book full of Koolhaas' thoughts, skip this and get a copy of Delirious New York.
24 of 30 people found the following review helpful
A MASTERPIECE
29 Mar 1999
Format:Hardcover
I'm about half way through it and already it has profoundly changed my view of the world around me. This book transcends architecture and touches on spirituality, politics, society and culture. A stirring manifesto for the convergence of several aspects of the global condition. Reading it has sparked a wave of creativity in my own line of work (financial analyst/software developer). Why is architecture important? Because it deals with the design of systems. Physical systems, biological, computer and natural systems. Architecture is life. I beleive Mr. Koolhaas understands this by evidence of his writings. Bravo!
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