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 is often cited as a representative of Deconstructivism and is the author of Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. He is seen by some as one of the significant architectural thinkers and urbanists of his generation, by others as a self-important iconoclast. In 2000, Rem Koolhaas won the Pritzker Prize. In 2008, Time put him in their top 100 of The World's Most Influential People. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2014.
Koolhaas is not wrong, but by the end of this I felt as if I'd been driving around town all day with a well read and precocious teenager. I've rarely heard the obvious so exceptionally described.
Il Junkspace sembra un'aberrazione, ma è l'essenza, ciò che conta... il prodotto dell'incontro tra la scala mobile e l'aria condizionata, concepito in un'incubatrice di cartongesso (tre cose che non compaiono nei libri di storia).
"Junkspace" is more of a vibe than a structured bit of reasoning. The term "junkspace" is amorphous, undefined, encompassing malls, airports, museums and whatever architectural non-entity Koolhaas is bothered by in the moment. Such spaces are the inevitable expression of the modern consumer economy and the limit of architecture as an artistic and humanistic discipline: since such places are contingent and mutable (new shops open and close in a mall) they escape rational planning. I think if you've ever experienced a kind of existential dread at the hands of such spaces, the book will be a cathartic expression, and if not it will be an annoyance.
(maybe 2,5, taking an average) two different works, complementing each other:
junkspace reads like a manifesto, but uses mimetic practice to make its point in the same format as the criticized object, gathering disparate elements under one roof that goes on too long. in its own, it loses concrete meaning under emotional noise
running room bridges the gap by gathering the different fragments left behind into a cohesive whole; it works, but can't go much deeper than some brushstrokes, working as a compendium of ideas that clarify and solidify the previous essay. generally more successful than junkspace, but literally doesn't exist without it
It was interesting, and it bounced back at me some thoughts I’ve been having. However, some applications of the concept of “junkspace” are arguably a stretch, and lacking nuance. I enjoyed it overall, but why are there no paragraph breaks.
Running room: This companion essay I found to be pretty boring with not much to add.