Rem Koolhaas: Living

Rem Koolhaas is Dutch architect (b.1944). Explore interesting quotes on living.

Rem Koolhaas: 22 quotes 0 likes

“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. But the generic city, the general urban condition, is happening everywhere, and just the fact that it occurs in such enormous quantities must mean that it's habitable. Architecture can't do anything that the culture doesn't. We all complain that we are confronted by urban environments that are completely similar. We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living.”

Rem Koolhaas

From Bauhaus to Koolhaas Interview in Wired magazine http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.07/koolhaas.html (4 July 1996)

People , Truth , Beauty , Thinking

“Japan lives with drastic segregation between the sublime, the ugly, and the utterly without qualities. Dominance of the last 2 categories makes mere presence of the first stunning: when beauty 'happens', it is absolutely surprising.”

Rem Koolhaas

From "Learning Japanese", published in S,M,L,XL, New York: The Monacelli Press, 1995

Beauty

“I live in a Victorian apartment building in London.”

Rem Koolhaas

SPIEGEL interview https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview-with-dutch-architect-rem-koolhaas-evil-can-also-be-beautiful-a-408748.html, 2006