Six Canonical Projects by Rem Koolhaas. Essays on the History of Ideas
architektur + analyse 5
Ingrid Böck
Berlin: Jovis, 2015
English, 369 pages, softcover
ISBN 978-3-86859-219-1
EUR 29.80

Rem Koolhaas (b. 1944) has been a part of the international architecture avant-garde since the 1970s. In addition to having received numerous distinctions worldwide, in the year 2000 he was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize for his lifework. In the book Six Canonical Projects by Rem Koolhaas, many of his structures and projects are interpreted for the first time with the aid of his comprehensive theoretical work that includes various polemics, manifestos, and cultural-science books like Delirious New York and the so-called “design patents.” Koolhaas has developed an evolutionary design method that engages both theory and practice, with one idea applied to several projects and combined with other projects in various ways, so as to continually evolve anew. The book by Ingrid Böck not only associates this knowledge of architecture with the ideational history of the related concepts, but also reinterprets the function of the author/architect—and his or her originality—in the context of current discourse.
Published with the generous support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF).

Ingrid Böck was an academic assistant in the Institute of Architectural Theory, Art History and Cultural Studies from 2008 to 2012 and has been a project assistant in the same institute since 2016. The fifth volume of the architektur + analyse series is an adapted form of her dissertation.