PLATFORM/KOOLHAAS Rem, MAU Bruce S,M,L,XL (1995)
PLATFORM / KOOLHAAS Rem, MAU Bruce S,M,L,XL (1995)
191101

A mammoth compendium of 20 years of OMA’s projects, arranged in order of size, S,M,L,XL gives an insight into the restless, ingenuitive thinking of the office through an era when architecture became a mere bystander to the explosion of the market economy and globalization.

This massive book is a novel about architecture. Conceived by Rem Koolhaas – author of Delirious New York – and Bruce Mau – designer of Zone – as a free-fall in the space of the typographic imagination, the book’s title, Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large, is also its framework: projects and essays are arranged according to scale. The book combines essays, manifestos, diaries, fairy tales, travelogues, a cycle of meditations on the ground of contemporary city, with work produced by Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture over the past twenty years. This accumulation of words and images illuminates the condition of architecture today – its splendors and miseries – exploring the revealing the corrosive impact of politics, context, the economy, globalization – the world.

A mammoth compendium of 20 years of OMA’s projects, arranged in order of size, S,M,L,XL gives an insight into the restless, ingenuitive thinking of the office through an era when architecture became a mere bystander to the explosion of the market economy and globalization.

This massive book is a novel about architecture. Conceived by Rem Koolhaas – author of Delirious New York – and Bruce Mau – designer of Zone – as a free-fall in the space of the typographic imagination, the book’s title, Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large, is also its framework: projects and essays are arranged according to scale. The book combines essays, manifestos, diaries, fairy tales, travelogues, a cycle of meditations on the ground of contemporary city, with work produced by Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture over the past twenty years. This accumulation of words and images illuminates the condition of architecture today – its splendors and miseries – exploring the revealing the corrosive impact of politics, context, the economy, globalization – the world.