Rem Koolhaas

Rem Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam and spent four years in Indonesia in the early fifties. He started off working as a journalist for the Haagse Post newspaper and as a scriptwriter. It was only later on that he studied architecture at the AA in London. He also studied at Cornell University and after this became a visiting fellow at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in New York. His stay in New York inspired him to write the now legendary book, Delirious New York: A Retroactive manifesto for Manhattan (1978). In 1975 he joined forces with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp, with whom he founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in London. A series of commissions resulted in the office moving to Rotterdam in 1978. In 1995 Koolhaas published the voluminous book S,M,L,XL about modern society, architecture, urban planning and the image culture, in collaboration with the graphic designer Bruce Mau. Since 1995 Koolhaas has been a professor at Harvard University. He has also won several prizes, including the Rotterdam Maaskant Prize (1986), the Équere d'argent for Maison à Bordeaux (1999), the Antonio Gaudí Prize for Euralille (1992), the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2000) and the Architektur Preis Berlin (2003). He was awarded the Royal Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) for his whole oeuvre. His internationally renowned work includes Het Nederlands Danstheater building in The Hague (1987), the Très Grande Bibliothèque in Paris, the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie in Karlsruhe (1989), the Prada Shops in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, the public library in Seattle, the Dutch Embassy in Berlin (2004) and the Casa da Musica in Porto (2005). At present OMA is working on its biggest commission ever, the new head office of the Central Chinese Television (CCTV) in Beijing.