Rem Koolhaas

It is not possible to live in this age if you don't have a sense of many contradictory forces.

— Rem Koolhaas

Most old cities are now sclerotic machines that dispense known qualities in ever-greater quantities, instead of laboratories of the uncertain. Only the…

— Rem Koolhaas

There's something really interesting about current urbanism: the only model is the universal model, and there is increasingly incapacity to consider the…

— Rem Koolhaas

Nobody should be anything, but because I once had a different profession and I'm interested in writing, I took it upon me.

— Rem Koolhaas

That has been my entire life story. Running against the current and running with the current. Sometimes running with the current is…

— Rem Koolhaas

As more and more architecture is finally unmasked as the mere organization of flow—shopping centers, airports—it is evident that circulation is what…

— Rem Koolhaas

“Like architecture, all paraphernalia of warfare are PC objects: the most rational possible instruments at the service of the most irrational possible…

— Rem Koolhaas

Architecture is a rare collective profession: it's always exercised by groups. There is an essential modesty, which is a complete contradiction to…

— Rem Koolhaas

If you have this reputation you can sit back and endure it, or you can try to do things with it.

— Rem Koolhaas

We know that Las Vegas is junk, but at the same time I think that exactly the same process and ultimately also,…

— Rem Koolhaas

In this branch of utopian real estate, architecture is no longer the art of designing buildings so much as the brutal skyward…

— Rem Koolhaas

Asia is still dominated by skyscrapers. I hope that, in European cities, it will become a declining trend. They were almost never…

— Rem Koolhaas

We live in an almost perfect stillness and work with incredible urgency.

— Rem Koolhaas

When shopping was still connected to the street it was also an intensification and articulation of the street. Now it has become…

— Rem Koolhaas

Lagos was a city that had been turned against itself. There was a bridge that became the perfect trap for crimes, which…

— Rem Koolhaas

You need to look at inequality as a typical condition of modern society.

— Rem Koolhaas

The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.

— Rem Koolhaas

“Architecture is a fuzzy amalgamation of ancient knowledge and contemporary practice, an awkward way to look at the world and an inadequate…

— Rem Koolhaas

Architecture is a dangerous mix of power and importance.

— Rem Koolhaas

Infrastructure is much more important than architecture.

— Rem Koolhaas

The good is not a category that interests me.

— Rem Koolhaas

Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of…

— Rem Koolhaas

Talk about beauty and you get boring answers, but talk about ugliness and things get interesting.

— Rem Koolhaas

Criticism per se does not worry me. I've always solicited it as part of the design process.

— Rem Koolhaas

Journalists seem mostly interested in what brand of shoes I wear.

— Rem Koolhaas