An impressive work, Congrexpo...

It was done in the French town of Lille in collaboration with other architects of some international renown, people such as Jean Nouvel, Gilles Clement and Christian de Portzamparc. The project, which is in fact located inside the old city walls between the historical city center and the outskirts, is a species of hybrid building 984 feet long.

It has a clear three-bay distribution: there is a room for rock concerts(Zenith), with a capacity for 6000 spectators; a congressional center (congress),  with three auditoriums, exhibition rooms, a banquet area, and kitchens; and a large exhibit space (Expo) of a surface area of 215,278 square feet, which subdivides into three equal areas. The complex also includes a large covered garage. 

The different building programs integrated under a single roof, are interconnecting and, in some cases, include the opinion of merging and carrying out new functions. The unit having one roof is emphasized by the use of materials in similar tones of gray, materials like cement, steel, and a medium gauge metallic screen (Koolhaas, 2002, p.26)

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      REFERENCES 

     N. A. (nd). Rem Koolhaas. Retrieved June 15, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rem_Koolhaas

   

     Koolhaas, R. (2002). Rem Koolhaas/OMA. Deusseldorf:  N.Y. teNeues. p.26.

     Gargiani, R. (2008). The Constructions of Merveilles. EPLF Press. p.3.

Congrexpo

       The master plan for Euralille, France is the largest realized urban planning project by Rem Koolhaas. The one-million-square-meter business, entertainment and residential complex is grafted onto the small medieval town of Lille, north of Paris. Scheduled for completion in 2004, the complex will include a train station, hotel office buildings, shopping mall and restaurants.


     The Grand Palais, or Congrexpo, is the centerpiece for the plan. The building flows with the subtle curves which are a Koolhaas hallmark. The main entry hall has a sharply sloped concrete ceiling. On the exhibition hall ceiling, slim wood slats bows at the center. A staircase to the second floor zigzags upward, while the polished steel side wall slopes inwards, creating a wobbly mirror image of the stairs. 

Rem Koolhaas's books and his prizes

Rem Koolhaas's Prizes

*Pritzker Prize (2000)

 *Chevalier de Légion d'honneur (2001)
 *Praemium Imperiale (2003)
 *Royal Gold Medal (2004)
 *Doctor honoris causa by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (2007)
 *Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale of Architecture for lifetime achievement (2010)

-S,M,L,XL (1995)

These are Koolhaas's some published books 

-Delirious New York (1978)

          -Living Vivre Leben (1998)

-Project Japan. Metabolism Talks... (2011) (with Hans Ulrich Obrist) 

   

-Content (2004)

Rem Koolhaas Projects listed chronologically:  

• Central Chinese Television Tower, Beijing, China 2006-08

• Cornell University School of Architecture, Art & Planning, New York, USA 2007-

• White City masterplan, northwest London, UK 2006-

• Illinois Institute of Technology - New Student Center, USA -

• Dallas Center for Performing Arts building, USA -

• Almere Megabioscoop - cinema multiplex, Netherlands 2007

• Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal 2006

• Seattle Public Library, Seattle, Washington, USA 2004

• McCormick Tribune Campus Center - IIT, Chicago, Illinois, USA 2003

• Prada New York, USA 2001

• Netherlands Embassy, Berlin, Germany 2001

• Maison at Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France 1998

• Educatorium Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands 1997

• Lille Grand Palais, Lille, France 1994

• Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands 1992

• Checkpoint Charlie building, Berlin, Germany 1990

• Netherlands Dance Theater, The Hague, Netherlands 1987-88

netherlands dance theater

checkpoint charlie building, berlin

educatorium, utrecht

Rem Koolhaas

The Architect: Rem Koolhaas

          Remment Lucas Koolhaas is a Dutch architect , architectural theorist, urbanist and Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. He was born in 1944 in Rotterdam, where bombing in World War II had erased , as in Berlin in the image of the historical city. With his family he moved to Jakarta , Indonesia in 1952 and staying until 1956 to Brazil, where he admired the works of Oscar Niemeyer.Back in Holland he would often spend time drawing in the architecture studio of his grandfather. His grandfather, Dirk Roosenburg (1887–1962), was a modernist architect. His grandfather had worked for Hendrik Petrus Berlage, before he opened his own practice. Koolhaas first studied scriptwriting at the Netherlands Film and Television Academy in Amsterdam. Koolhaas co-wrote The White Slave, a 1969 Dutch film noir, and later wrote an unproduced script for American soft-porn king Russ Meyer.He joined the group of the filmmakers “1,2,3 groep”. His experiences writing screenplays will later contribute to the development of his idea of the animated building , like actors on an urban stage , episodes organized in narrative sequences. In 1968 Koolhaas registered at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.(gargiani, 2008,p.3)

          On 1st January 1975 , after the work conducted since the start of the Seventies in London with the “Dr.Caligari Cabinet of Metropolitan Architecture”, Koolhaas founded , together with Elia and Zoe Madelon Vriesendorp , “The Office for Metropolitan Architecture” with offices in New York , London and Berlin. OMA is a leading international partnership practicing architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis. OMA's buildings and masterplans around the world insist on intelligent forms while inventing new possibilities for content and everyday use. OMA is led by seven partners - Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, David Gianotten and Managing Partner, Victor van der Chijs . They were later joined by one of Koolhaas's students,Zaha Hadid- who would soon go on to achieve success in her own right. An early work which would mark their difference from the then dominant postmodern classicism of the late 1970s, was their contribution to the Venice Biennale of 1980, curated by Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi, titled "Presence of the Past". Each architect had to design a stage-like "frontage" to a Potemkin-type internal street; and the OMA scheme was the only modernist scheme among them.

          In the 1990s Koolhaas and OMA saw several important works to fruition, including the Nexus Housing project (1989–91) in Fukuoka, Japan; the Kunsthal (1992) in Rotterdam; a private residence (1994–98) in Bordeaux, France; and the Educatorium (1993–97), a multipurpose building at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who developed a distinctive aesthetic, Koolhaas did not establish a constant look from project to project. Instead, he created architecture that, utilizing the best of modern technology and materials, spoke to the needs of a particular site and client. For instance, the Bordeaux house, made for a client in a wheelchair, utilized a dramatic glass room that acted as an elevator between the levels of the house. In these commissions, Koolhaas refused to refer to past styles (he called for an “end to sentimentality”), choosing instead to engage directly with the true gritty character of the modern world. For example, his Kunsthal dramatically engages with urban modernity through its electronic billboard and orange steel components. The combination of Koolhaas’s theoretical writings with his fondness for asymmetry, challenging spatial explorations, and unexpected uses of colour led many to classify him as a deconstructivist. However, his work, unlike that of other deconstructivists, does not rely heavily on theory, and it is imbued with a strong sense of humanity and a concern for the role that architecture plays in everyday life, particularly in an urban context. This grounding in reality was reflected in Koolhaas’s keen interest in urban planning, most notably in a master plan for a new city centre in Lille, France (1985–95), through which he transformed Lille into a business, entertainment, and residential centre. His celebrated Grand Palais, an elliptical structure utilizing plastic and aluminum, was at the centre of this plan.

Deconstructivism

The meaning and definition of deconstructivism

         There were so many different architecture styles throughout the history, that, probably, it would be difficult to put the history of all of them into a single article. All of them have their own features, which attract people for many ages. Some architecture would amaze the environment by its beauty and originality; however, others, like deconstructivism, would rather “scare” by their own strange appearance. It might seem strange to us, regular people, but not for those, who live with it.
          In comparison to other architecture styles deconstructivism would not be an old branch in the world of art architecture. The beginning of it goes back to late 1980s, the time that many of us would probably still remember. There were two sources that gave start to deconstructivism. There is a thought that it was started by the group of people called deconstructivists, who were attracted by the theories of French Philosopher Jacques Derrida. According to his philosophy, architecture is nothing but one of many ways of communication. Furthermore, another source reveals to us the idea that deconstructivism had a touch of Russian constructivism movement that took place at the same time in the history.

          Looking at the type of deconstructivism architecture it seems like different parts are glued together in order to form some bigger structure. Moreover, for an architect of the last century it would seem illogical since it contradicts with the rules of structure they knew. It changes all our knowledge we had before about architecture by creating new way of thinking and design in this field of art. Destructivists saw the architecture in the lenses of new century, where everything takes new shapes and new appearance. Even though this style might seem different or strange to many humans, it does not mean that it is not attractive to the eyes of art-loving people. The finished visual appearance of buildings that exhibit the many deconstructivist "styles" is characterized by a stimulating unpredictability and a controlled chaos.

          Many of us might know at least a bit of other styles in architecture, where artists love to put ornaments in order to make the decoration of the structure look beautiful. Furthermore, geometry, harmony and stability play a significant role in this field of work as well. On the other hand, deconstructivism would be completely opposite to it. Decoration and geometry is not necessary anymore in this branch of architecture. Deconstructivism is the wave of absolutely new style, which believes in irregular shapes of its own creation.

          There are many famous artists, whose works are marked as deconstructivistic. Among them we can find Coop Himmelblau, Daniel Libeskind, Eisenman, Gehry, Hadid, Koolhaas and a lot more. Their creations can be quite easy to recognize by their own irregular or awkward appearance. The examples of destructive creations would be seen in modern architecture, such as Michael Lee-Chin Crystal built in Toronto, Canada, Akron Art Museum in Ohio, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Dancing Building in Prague, Performing Arts Centre in Abu Dhabi, and a lot more of strange and wonderful creations of modern architects.

          Everything what is strange to the human eye usually keeps our attention. Whatever is not the way we know, or the way our logic and thinking work, amazes us more than those usual and traditional features we usually see in our life. Deconstructivism is exactly this style of architecture that creates works, equally amazing and attractive to the humanity. It keeps interest of the person by its originality and uniqueness. The awkward appearance of this type of architecture is its own secret to keep our attention.