Rem Koolhaas interview

You lived and trained in London for a long time. You finally have a permanent building here now and a big exhibition at the Barbican. How does it feel to be back?
'It's wonderful to work in a city that I know so well. Since I first came to London in 1968 I've seen an incredible transformation. Back then it was a very English world with English habits and English people. I have to say it took me a long time to like it, but after 20 years I got it.'

You also taught here for many years at the Architectural Association, where famously one of your students was Zaha Hadid. That was also a time when visually radical practitioners, such as yourself, were discussed as 'paper architects', a term of derision for those who couldn't get their work commissioned. Do you now feel vindicated after those years of research?
'It was partly an economical thing. There was very little building and we were very young. Basically we were all living off drawings that we sold. The drawings themselves were not research but became a commodity. I wouldn't use the word vindication, but we can now show that it can be a productive cycle to first explore and establish a territory - not necessarily as an architect - and then operate in that niche in a slightly different way.'

Is this what you've previously called the 'journalistic intent' in your work?
'I was a journalist from the age of 18 to 24 for a weekly newspaper in the early ' 60s [in Holland]. It was a time of incredible freedom, when I could interview Fellini, Fassbender or Polanksi, so naturally I became interested in films and wrote some scripts. But I would say that the curiosity of journalism is still driving a lot of my considerations as an architect.'

You've also been labelled an expressionist, perhaps because you don't fit into the axis of the Foster/Rogers/Piano aesthetic. Is that because you used to cite such opposing influences as Salvador DalÌ on one side and Le Corbusier on the other?
'DalÌ was one of the smartest thinkers of the twentieth century, but he was never an influence visually, it was for his writings. Of course, I am pulled in many different directions, although I have a repertoire that is available to be pursued intellectually and coolly, so I'm not torn in any agonised sense. It's not only that you want to do the right thing, but that architecture is a constant technical operation of going with or against expectations. Repetition or alternation - it's all part of a rhythm that enables you to retain a vitality.'

When you came to set up OMA, your inclusion of the word 'metropolitan' suggests that you were always keen on a grander vision and not just on single buildings.
'It was not about that: you have to understand the context. This was the '70s - there was postmodernism, which had almost no affinity with cities anyway, and in terms of architecture we had just gone through a period of extreme welfare stateism, where it became almost a social service. So OMA was more about announcing our different interests.'

When you were based in New York, you set about reimagining the skyscraper, which has continued in recent buildings such as the CCTV in Beijing.
'The skyscraper was not an idea simply about height, it was as much an intersection between different technologies - steel, elevators and air conditioning - as it was a kind of popular expectation. However, whether it's a tower or a flat pancake makes no difference, because it's about the essence of what architecture can do now. In that sense, CCTV is more a polemic against the skyscraper: it's not only consuming space but also adding something, creating a place where you can exist independently of the building. Part of the essence of CCTV is that it doesn't look the same from any angle.'

How do you compare that monumental structure with a much quieter building such as the New Court Rothschild Bank?
'Well, it's on a site in the City of London that is so dense that no one will ever see the whole building. The most significant part is the reopening of the vista to the Wren Church of St Stephen Walbrook in the street behind. We have tried to pull the spectacle inside in this case, but I believe that CCTV is not extravagant or alien, but is also a building that has a surprising ability to connect to everything in its environment.'

There's a section in the Barbican exhibition devoted to this notion of using buildings as framing devices, but doesn't that denigrate the function of architecture and make it somehow secondary?
'I've never felt that we were operating from a position of strength, rather from a position of weakness. There are many aspects of weakness that can be, not only appropriate but also convincing, in the current moment. In art, my greatest sympathies lie with arte povera which, in a way, has a similar stance.'

The show also explores the exponential growth in size of museums. What's so bad about this?
'Museums are expanding beyond topological terms and are growing to the scale of a city. I think the Guggenheim in Abu Dhabi was scrapped because it tried to be architectural at a scale that architecture couldn't handle. Architecture is currently terrorised by the impetus to create landmarks.'

Your description of architecture is often not very flattering, but you've never been keen on the idea of the celebrity or 'star' architects, have you?
'We get more attention, but we get taken less seriously. There's a denigration that comes with the current definition of celebrity - as someone who is basically an asshole - and so that connection is really evil. What is more, there are those who should know better, like architecture critics for example, who still use the term “starchitects”. It's like a dagger in the heart, because they should show some solidarity. Also, we all compete with each other in competitions and I find that very dispiriting. Once we were in competition with Herzog & de Meuron for one project and we proposed to work together - it was a very interesting and positive experience but it hasn't been repeated.'

Less pessimistic is the title of the OMA show: 'Progress'. You've also said in the past that architects should never be passive, they should be agents of change. Do you still believe that?
'To some extent that's the expectation, however, maybe 15 years ago I began to realise that actually it's a very lopsided profession in the sense that there's no way to abstain from this idea or to theorise abstention as another possible attitude. That was one of the other reasons we set up AMO: to find a way that we could abstain or pursue architecture by other means.'

Will you ever abstain from architecture and retire from the Office of Metropolitan Architecture?
'I don't think so, but I now want to start writing again and that is my main focus next year. I really want to work on an exploration of the countryside.'