Rem Koolhaas

Each building has to be beautiful, but cheap and fast, but it lasts forever. That is already an incredible battery of seemingly…

— Rem Koolhaas

The word 'celebrity' and the word 'architect' are basically incompatible.

— Rem Koolhaas

When air conditioning, escalators, and advertising appeared, shopping expanded its scale, but also limited its spontaneity. And it became much more predictable,…

— Rem Koolhaas

I think one of the important evolutions is that we no longer feel compulsively the need to argue, or to justify things…

— Rem Koolhaas

Our society can no longer tolerate ugliness. You see that in cars, sofas and women. [But] ugliness also has a right to…

— Rem Koolhaas

There's nothing Dutch about my architecture.

— Rem Koolhaas

When we went in the late 1990s, Nigeria was still in a dictatorship. So we didn't go with a mission. It started…

— Rem Koolhaas

Architects work in two ways. One is to respond precisely to a client's needs or demands. Another is to look at what…

— 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

The Metropolis strives to reach a mythical point where the world is completely fabricated by man, so that it absolutely coincides with…

— Rem Koolhaas

Lagos was not very inviting even to Lagosians. It was considered a no-go zone, almost in its entirety.

— Rem Koolhaas

It's a weird city because the uglier the weather, the more beautiful the city. And the uglier the buildings, the more coherent…

— Rem Koolhaas

Escape from the architecture ghetto is one of the major drivers and has been from the very beginning.

— Rem Koolhaas

In the end, there will be little else for us to do but shop.

— Rem Koolhaas

I wanted to disconnect from contemporary architecture

— Rem Koolhaas

In Lagos there's a really strong case to resurrect strong parts. Embedded in all of it are some amazing pieces of planning,…

— Rem Koolhaas

Miami Beach is a completely interesting hybrid because it is, on the one hand, a resort and, on the other hand, a…

— Rem Koolhaas

Beauty isn't what I'm primarily interested in [in architecture]. I think appropriateness is more important.

— Rem Koolhaas

The Grid makes the history of architecture and all previous lessons of urbanism irrelevant. It forces Manhattan's builders to develop a new…

— Rem Koolhaas

There are essentially two possibilities. One is to be, shall we say, an average architect and do the same thing everywhere. The…

— Rem Koolhaas

Sustainability has become an ornament.

— Rem Koolhaas

One cannot completely avoid this landmark character with large buildings such as these. But the city itself is also gigantic.

— Rem Koolhaas

People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture…

— Rem Koolhaas

As an architect, I always have mixed feelings. On the one hand, your fingers are itching. As a human being, you are…

— Rem Koolhaas

It was a book [George Packer written on our presence in Nigeria] that was killed by the response of other people. Which…

— Rem Koolhaas