S,M,L,XL - Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large: Office for Metropolitan Architecture

KOOLHAAS, Rem and Bruce Mau

ISBN 10: 1885254865 / ISBN 13: 9781885254863

Published by Monacelli Press, New York, 1998

About this Item

Second edition. Hardcover. 1344 pages. A thick monograph from the important Dutch architect. Includes numerous illustrations. A near fine copy with some slight bumping to the bottom edge of the boards and some other minor wear. Overall, a very nice copy of a book because of it's size is prone to wear. This is a heavy and oversized book and will require extra shipping. Seller Inventory # 191085

Bibliographic Details

Title: S,M,L,XL - Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large...

Publisher: Monacelli Press, New York

Publication Date: 1998

Binding: Hardcover

Edition: 2nd Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

"S, M, L, XL" presents a selection of the remarkable visionary design work produced by the Dutch firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.) and its acclaimed founder, Rem Koolhaas, in its first twenty years, along with a variety of insightful, often poetic writings. The inventive collaboration between Koolhaas and designer Bruce Mau is a graphic overture that weaves together architectural projects, photos and sketches, diary excerpts, personal travelogues, fairy tales, and fables, as well as critical essays on contemporary architecture and society.
The book's title is also its framework: projects and essays are arranged according to scale. While Small and Medium address issues ranging from the domestic to the public, Large focuses on what Koolhaas calls "the architecture of Bigness." Extra-Large features projects at the urban scale, along with the important essay "What Ever Happened to Urbanism?" and other studies of the contemporary city. Running throughout the book is a "dictionary" of an adventurous new Koolhaasian language -- definitions, commentaries, and quotes from hundreds of literary, cultural, artistic, and architectural sources.

Review:

This extraordinary, massive, and mind-boggling 1,300-page book combines essays, manifestos, diaries, fairy tales, travelogues, a cycle of meditations on the contemporary city--and complex illustration--with work produced by Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture over the past twenty years. This almost overwhelming accumulation of words and images illuminates the condition of architecture today--its splendors and miseries--exploring and revealing the corrosive effects of politics, context, the economy, and globalization. In some ways, this is the "Medium is the Message" of 1990s architectural discourse: guaranteed to be hugely influential in the coming decades, but grossly misunderstood by those who have not read it. The core arguments it makes about metropolitan architecture--accepting complexity and lack of centralized control--are similar to those of Kevin Kelly's Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World. Very highly recommended.