REM KOOLHAAS AND ELIA ZENGHELIS, WITH MADELON VRIESEN DORP AND ZOE ZENGHELIS
In 1972 Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis collaborated with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis on a series of eighteen drawings entitled Exodus, or the voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, The Strip, Project (1972), which was to become a virtual incubator for radical architectural theory in the 1970s.
Based on a study of the Berlin Wall as Architecture, the drawings show the wall superimposed on images from Manhattan, its suburbs and the city plans of the London and a collage of rock-and roll, Cold War, and pornographic imagery, thus portraying an urban "delirium within which "suddenly, a strip of intense metropolitan desirability runs through the center of London." The project proposed to erase a section of central London in order to establish a zone of metropolitan life - inspired by Baudelaire -- and to protect this zone with walls from the old city. The people of London could choose; those who wanted to be admitted to this zone of hyper density became "The Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture." A city where the "desperate and savage use of architecture,"create the face of "division, isolation, inequality, aggression,destruction," a wall that troubled social domains but also attempts to provide desirable alternatives.
Exodus illustrates the archetype of urban processes and their direct relationship to capitalist development. It emphasizes that the power of architecture is ambiguous and dangerous. Despite its political inventiveness Exodus pointed to the impossible nature of architecture and attempt to escape the inequalities of the capitalist metropolis. It thus marks a political questioning in the work of Koolhaas, one that would be important to his subsequent work.
Koolhaas, Zenghelis and their collaborators' response to ongoing modernization is cast as a negotiation between the formal and the programmatic so difficult held together by modernism. It is this paradox between the stability of architecture and the instability of its function that characterizes the reality of the metropolitan milieu. It is precisely this indeterminacy that raises the spectrum of responsibility and, hence, an ethic. It is through this negotiation that they have attempted to avoid to set architecture and reality, as they saw it, apart.-B.V.
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Rem_Koolhaas.html
http://www.pritzkerprize.com/mediakit2000.htm
http://architecture.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.greatbuildings.com%2Farchitects%2FRem_Koolhaas.html
http://architecture.about.com/msubarc-k.htm
http://www.iit.edu/departments/pr/arch.comp/koolhaas.html
http://www.oma.nl/index_flash.htm
http://www.archinform.net/arch/434.htm?ID=aff3943211e65c8db36910cf4af5ce5f
http://www.archi.com.tw/chianan/2001-5-7-2.htm
http://www.how.org.tw/class/discussion_material.asp?CTID=%7B8712831F-D64D-4C71-B9E6-4A317D52AD54%7D&TopicID=%7B3955FCF1-B653-4E21-BC67-1E437E57BCED%7D
Born 1944 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Lives and works in Rotterdam, The Netherlands; London, Great Britain
Exodus, or the voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, The Strip. Project, 1972
Installation based on the drawing series: Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, The Strip. Project, 1972 Courtesy Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Rotterdam Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York Photo credit © Sanne Peper
Installation based on the drawing series: Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, The Strip. Project, 1972 Courtesy Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Rotterdam Collection Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York Photo credit © Sanne Peper
In 1972 Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis collaborated with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis on a series of eighteen drawings entitled Exodus, or the voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, The Strip, Project (1972), which was to become a virtual incubator for radical architectural theory in the 1970s.
Based on a study of the Berlin Wall as Architecture, the drawings show the wall superimposed on images from Manhattan, its suburbs and the city plans of the London and a collage of rock-and roll, Cold War, and pornographic imagery, thus portraying an urban "delirium within which "suddenly, a strip of intense metropolitan desirability runs through the center of London." The project proposed to erase a section of central London in order to establish a zone of metropolitan life - inspired by Baudelaire -- and to protect this zone with walls from the old city. The people of London could choose; those who wanted to be admitted to this zone of hyper density became "The Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture." A city where the "desperate and savage use of architecture,"create the face of "division, isolation, inequality, aggression,destruction," a wall that troubled social domains but also attempts to provide desirable alternatives.
Exodus illustrates the archetype of urban processes and their direct relationship to capitalist development. It emphasizes that the power of architecture is ambiguous and dangerous. Despite its political inventiveness Exodus pointed to the impossible nature of architecture and attempt to escape the inequalities of the capitalist metropolis. It thus marks a political questioning in the work of Koolhaas, one that would be important to his subsequent work.
Koolhaas, Zenghelis and their collaborators' response to ongoing modernization is cast as a negotiation between the formal and the programmatic so difficult held together by modernism. It is this paradox between the stability of architecture and the instability of its function that characterizes the reality of the metropolitan milieu. It is precisely this indeterminacy that raises the spectrum of responsibility and, hence, an ethic. It is through this negotiation that they have attempted to avoid to set architecture and reality, as they saw it, apart.-B.V.
http://www.greatbuildings.com/architects/Rem_Koolhaas.html
http://www.pritzkerprize.com/mediakit2000.htm
http://architecture.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.greatbuildings.com%2Farchitects%2FRem_Koolhaas.html
http://architecture.about.com/msubarc-k.htm
http://www.iit.edu/departments/pr/arch.comp/koolhaas.html
http://www.oma.nl/index_flash.htm
http://www.archinform.net/arch/434.htm?ID=aff3943211e65c8db36910cf4af5ce5f
http://www.archi.com.tw/chianan/2001-5-7-2.htm
http://www.how.org.tw/class/discussion_material.asp?CTID=%7B8712831F-D64D-4C71-B9E6-4A317D52AD54%7D&TopicID=%7B3955FCF1-B653-4E21-BC67-1E437E57BCED%7D