Each building has to be beautiful, but cheap and fast, but it lasts forever. That is already an incredible battery of seemingly contradictory demands. So yes, I'm definitely perhaps contradictory person, but I operate in very contradictory times. — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share Image
That has been another interesting discovery: that basically a city [Lagos] could recover from a really deep, deep, deep pit. — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
Manhattan has generated a shameless architecture that has been loved in direct proportion to its defiant lack of self-hatred, has been respected exactly to… — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
In a script, you have to link various episodes together, you have to generate suspense and you have to assemble things - through editing,… — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
The beauty of my profession [architecture] lies in its randomness and surprise. And don't think I can choose my projects. I have to build… — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
Our office acts like a kind of educational establishment and we are very careful who we educate. — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
We discovered a person in Lagos who had a fish stall, and within a single square metre she carried two children all the way… — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
Nigeria [in 1990] was all rumour, an unbelievable amount of rumour - largely about crime and almost mythical manifestations of evil. — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
Let's put it this way: One can be happy or unhappy in a building. But some buildings make us more depressed than others. — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
Nigeria was a blank on the map - there weren't even any maps. The US State Department, everyone said don't go there. It was… — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
The work in S, M, L, XL was almost suicidal. It required so much effort that our office almost went bankrupt. — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
Manhattan has no choice but the skyward extrusion of the Grid itself; only the Skyscraper offers business the wide-open spaces of a man-made Wild… — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
The stronger the identity, the more it imprisons, the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction. — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
Why I talked about political correctness: the colonial is now such a major taboo that any achievement of the colonial period, or any generosity… — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
The thing is that I have a really intense, almost compulsive need to record. But it doesn't end there, because what I record is… — Rem Koolhaas Copy Share
