“Such an architecture is an aleatory form of “planning” life itself: in the fantastic juxtaposition of its activities each of the club’s floors is a separate installment of an infinitely unpredictable intrigue that extols the complete surrender to the definite instability of life in the Metropolis. (Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1997) p. 157
Rem Koolhaas’s retroactive manifesto, Delirious New York, studies how diverse forces and pressures (developers, zoning constraints, and metropolitan anxieties) gave form to Manhattan. In his analysis of the Downtown Athletic Club Koolhaas illustrates the odd condition of having an oyster bar in a locker room facing the Hudson where men with boxing gloves are eating oysters, which satirically demonstrates how the superimposition of different human activities (program) can generate diverse and exciting modes of living and architecture. This ideology can be seen in projects produced by OMA such as the Parc de la Villete where the park is organized through a series of programmed zones in horizontal bands. This is as if the Downtown Athletic Club was turned horizontally. The project is a literal representation of the program.
The Center for Research and Museum, located at N.P. Dodge Park along the Missouri River north of the Omaha Metro, will focus on the programmatic arrangement of a research facility (soil, water, fl ora) and museum. Exploring the possibilities of cross programing and the creation of unique interstitial spaces as these programs become intertwined.
All work by students.
studio ambiguous 