Interview with Rem Koolhaas[text by Rahn]

Scene_01:(Keep smiling slightly during watch the film…)

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(In Dutch) Was the bad weather a coincidence? …No? …En? (Shy smile…)

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Well, ma-maybe, e, a kind of big surprise with, e, my comment that, it, it, I found it’s surprising that somebody who search a, a kind of daily involvement. Ah… it’s so insisting on a kind of being generic technics of, of cleaning to something so exceptional. I, I can easily imagine if, if I were a cleaner and, and maybe that, that is something that we should have sort of is, to device some kind of portico of what is convenient to be done by hand and what is convenient to be done by machine. But I’m, I’m completely surprised that something as, e… harsh and exceptional is the spiral stair. It’s, it’s treated with a hover. I mean it seems completely insane and also virtually inefficient. And so maybe, you know, if, if I kind of speculate more UC2 systems colliding, yeah, the systems, e, of, e, you know the kind of platonic conception of cleaning with platonic conception of architecture. It’s not necessarily daily life confronting next to a structure, it’s to ideology is confronting each other.

Scene_04:

Maybe this is a kind of strange excursion but, but I, I had many moments I thought about Lagos. Because, e, what fascinating me there is also how can people didn’t have any choice are a kind of injected in a kind of urban system, in decline. You can see and there is also some decline here. And that kind of simply develop incredible intelligence e, e, through adaptation and, and through a kind of living, e, on the daily basis with, with all years world established by people that, you know, lived earlier that have no connection to. So I think that, you know, I can see very much the kind of similarity between her operating in this house and the population of Lagos inhabiting now, e… a kind of urban system that was put together a kind of very idealistic way in the seventies. And, and it’s exactly that kind of the improvisation that the city unables and on the other hand the creativity that they have to invest to make it work, that, that interest me.

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You know, this is on a scale of house, but I’m trying to, to look at it in a very similar way to, at, at what happens in cities.

Scene_06: “How it works” vs “how it looks”

In this case, we were in an exceptional situation, where we did not have to make a representation. But nowadays it’s often the case due to very sad reasons - the market system, gives an increasingly significant part to seduction. And also, with the market system, all the arguments put forward by architecture. Such as utilisation, utility, effect, or the “how things work” have been reduced to a very small subject, the “how it looks”. It’s the famous icon issue. It’s a real tragedy. But for me, this is linked to the market system, because of the large distribution of the same system throughout the world. We cannot use language and writing but need to find other “universal” means, the image once again.

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So, there, there is a kind of real tragedy, the issues are narrowed, e, the interest is narrowed, the, and the representation is more and more a kind of homogeneous, e, by, by computer which kind of removes any part of scientistic. I mean the model is still a kind of visual object, but more and more that also disappear. So, they can triple insistence on, on this lack of reality. The dissimulation of the world which a kind of forces you to find a, a more simplistic language, the economy which forces you to, e, sell things and, and make things that, you know, have, have an exceptionality but not in a couple of fonts sense but in a superficial sense and then, the media which is computer which is a kind of then erasing all the dresses. So, it’s a kind of hanlish situation for people who have more ambitions, because the ambitions are a kind of narrowed onto minimum, people don’t like computers and actually like physical things. And also people who like accidentally to, to be able to discuss pacifically with pacific cultures, cultural issues of that culture.

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If, if you look at some architecture, there’re architectures also is becoming a kind of more and more like fragile images. And another thing that there’s always been a kind of very large controversy about, you know, how we built, because we were always very interested in, in durt in fact and, and in, in perfection but not as conform with competent but also because we wanted to recognise all those sort of things and, and if you look at the work of our colleagues, more and more that is evacuated. And I, I think that if you look at, not that I’m comparing myself but, if you look at the work of Le Corbusier, there is that kind of in-perfection from the very beginning and as a intrical part of the whole, of the reproacher and of the value of the whole thing.

Scene_09:

There is a real crisis and that crisis has been a kind of narrowing and, and that narrowing is a kind of proceeding a kind of really alarming place, and it is a kind of build and, and cause by many different factors. And so it’s that everything that and also narrowing are gonna widen it again. Ah, it’s incredibly important and a kind of basically use or what happens after building is finished, or the life of the building. All of those are a kind of things w-we haven’t kind of really talked about for years. And, and so I think it’s very important and even a central and I don’t want to be appocelutic but it’s, it’s, you know, if it doesn’t happen, you know, we, we live in very soon into a kind of in totally different a kind of environment, a kind of really in-virtual space, but, but built!

Scene_10: About “Post-Occupancy”

Basically, we wanted to, e, kind of really insist that, e, o-of course we always a kind of operating a kind of polemical kind of space. And, and the typical architecture book now is a kind of beautiful kind of images. As beautiful as possible. And in, in this one we, we wanted to introduce a kind of democracy of the image. So many of the images are not kind of really made by us or chosen by us. But so we wanted to… it’s, it’s many different subjects, so we wanted to, e, give a voice to user. So that it also includes a sort of kind of negative comments, e, a selection by others. E, so that we disappeared as editors. Ah, also, e, really insisting on only non-aesthetic values of the all things that we try to create a kind of report of the, e, degree to reach, e, the expectations of the client and our intensions were a kind of just defined and realized in, in the real thing.

Scene_11:

Architecture is a profession that relies on hypothetical activities, on the production of hypothesis. Without really being, during realisation, able to verify these hypothesises. So it’s clearly distressing. So for us it’s important to see how the hypotheses are verified or not. So these comments are part of that.

Ah… That’s a kind of simple answer. Ah, then of course a kind of through e-mails and blogs there is also an entirely kind of alternative critical reality that is very shapeless but that can be sometimes very negative, sometimes very positive, and that it’s almost like, e, you could say secret life, because formly the architect now is a kind of huge status if you look informally kind of at blogs, It’s a kind of real, real being killed and every one of us. Unbelievable blackness. And, and that’s why I think your film is very interesting, because, it’s interesting because it shows the, the daily participants and of, of course it’s not flattering, e, but it’s realistic and it’s, e, not with, e, you can tell it’s not with evil intents. It’s just a kind of document with practical engagement with results. And, and that’s for me very beautiful, because it’s create a kind of stability. It’s stabilized image.

OMA - Rotterdam
http://www.koolhaashouselife.comhttp://www.oma.eu/index.php?option=com_projects&view=portal&id=19&Itemid=10

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