Thursday, April 06, 2006

Rem Koolhaas: Faster Architect! Build! Build!

Courtesy of the indispensable ArchNewsNow newsletter, here's a link to a great in-depth interview of Rem Koolhaas by Der Spiegel's Matthias Matussek and Joachim Kronsbein. It covers a lot of ground, with the expert interviewers getting Koolhaas to talk of his stint as a scriptwriter for Russ Meyer, maker of porn films Koolhaas labels "the last form of humanism"; to defend both his work for Prada and CCTV, and ugliness in the service of appropriateness; to name The Pantheon as his possible nominee for world's most beautiful building; and even to admit, after testily trying to dismiss a question about architects not having to live in the buildings they create ("Oh, come on, now, that's really trivial") that "I live in a Victorian apartment building in London." It offers up an essential insight into Koolhaas, his thoughts and contradictions, and an exemplary example of the interviewers' art.

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