Small, Medium, Large, Extra-large: Office for Metropolitan Architecture

Rem Koolhaas & Bruce Mau

ISBN 10: 1885254865 / ISBN 13: 9781885254863

Published by New York: The Monacelli Press, 1995

About this Item

### IMPORTANT: Weighing 3.2kg. overseas shipping will be with ParcelForce, additional postage will be requested. Within the UK I will request £15.00 to send it along, also by ParcelForce. ### Hardback. Silver boards with black titles to the spine & upper board; Measures 9½" x 7¼" (3.2 kg); pp 1344; Edited by Jennifer Sigler; Includes: Sketches; Floor plans; Photographs, black-and-white and colour, within the text with some full page; Photographic lining papers; || The book is on the shelf, ready to be appropriately packed, and posted from the pastoral paradise of Peasedown St. John, Bath, by a real bookseller in a real book shop - with my personal guarantee and beady eye on the Consumer Contracts Regulations. REMEMBER! Buying my copy means the book shop Jack Russells get their supper! My Book #201829 ||. Seller Inventory # 201829

Bibliographic Details

Title: Small, Medium, Large, Extra-large: Office ...

Publisher: New York: The Monacelli Press

Publication Date: 1995

Binding: Hardback (No Dust Wrapper.)

Illustrator: Hans Werlemann (photos.)

Condition: Very Good

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.