An Incomplete Encyclopedia: Rem Koolhaas and S,M,L,XL

ARCHITECTS

“All imbeciles. Always forgetting to put the staircase in.” (Gustave Flaubert)

BIGNESS

It is the fate of all seminal works (as S,M,L,XL is destined to become) that they are reduced to memorable tags. Thus: BIGNESS. Koolhaas thrusts forward the concept of Bigness as the way first to unravel and then to reform architectural practice. As a word, Bigness is insolent, ugly and, at first sight, disarmingly banal - all qualities that have been associated with the built work of OMA. As with the architecture, it is these very qualities that will make the concept liable to unthinking appropriation and to easy dismissal. One can anticipate a rash of truly bad projects being legitimated through recourse to Bigness and, conversely, can see a theoretical overturning of the concept by spotlighting the inherent (and magnified) poverty of such projects.

It is in the nature of any polemic that it lays itself open to deliberate misreadings. Le Corbusier’s “Architecture or Revolution” is not to be taken as a direct choice, but as a provocation against which to measure action. To accept the word Bigness at face value is a misunderstanding that ignores the liberating potentials that the concept offers. Bigness is not to be read simply as a matter of physical scale but as a catalyst that precipitates sets of complex and uncontrollable urban interrelationships. In a different context, Koolhaas describes how the Berlin Wall “forever severed the connection between importance  and mass.”

The book itself neatly identifies the dilemma of Bigness. It is big, the beauty of its bulk rendering it a desirable object. But beyond this superficial aesthetic reading, the book also has the qualities of Bigness. The different modes of representation (narrative, photo-journalism, poetry, diary, polemic, drawings and so on) accumulate to give fluid readings of the subject in which the “elements react to create new events”. Such an interpretation demands an act of faith in which not every page is seen as equal to another. Whole portions of the book are there as background (parking lots of ideas both good and not so good), places (as in the city) of banality from which the more charged moments emerge. It is only in moments of cross readings and in the interstices of the book that the full alchemical potential of Bigness is released.

CATALOGUE

S,M,L,XL:  A catalogue irraisonné.

CONTAGIOUS

S,M,L,XL  was launched in London on 8 December 1995. On 12 December, a quote from the book appeared writ large on one of my student’s presentations. A nasty little rash. The book is in danger of becoming a major source of theoretical infection, contagious polemic lifted from a healthy host to invade less robust bodies. Koolhaas’ astonishing use of language - the book is worth reading for the linguistic force and delight alone - makes him particularly susceptible to quotation. I suspect that the book is destined remain largely unread, but used as a fetishised source of fragments for the millennium, the intellectual equivalent of a European bathroom catalogue. Such pillaging may be consistent with Koolhaas’ own re-appropriation of cultural references to structure his work, but the danger is that is misses the full force of Koolhaas’ and Bruce Mau’s brilliant interweaving of the fragments into something far greater than the sum of the parts.

FREEDOMS

In an interview with Koolhaas, Alejandro Zaera identifies the work of OMA with a series of freedoms. Freedom from ties, freedom from structures, freedom from ideologies, freedom from models ... always freedoms FROM. Koolhaas is at his best in S,M,L,XL in identifying the shackles that have tied architecture. His critique, often caustic, is always to the point and is used as a method of dialectically reformulating his own position. So if context is seen  as the artificial imposition of an idealised historical continuity, then “Fuck Context!”. If rationality is seen as a corrupted reworking of type in the name of authenticity, then subvert the concept through the tactic of random “typological bombardment”.

However, this dialectical working leaves an aporia in which the new-found freedoms FOR are never identified. To some extent this avoidance is consistent with Koolhaas’ rejection of the modernist’s belief in the programmatic determinacy of architecture, but it inevitably leaves him in an ambivalent ethical position (q.v. power(less)). Koolhaas defends the postponement of judgement on the grounds that it allows him to assimilate as many influences as possible. A strength of S,M,L,XL is in the experimentation and speculation that this postponement has enabled, unburdened by the pious stance of the liberal humanist. This may be acceptable to a point, but with the essay Singapore Songlines, and the associated postscript Generic Cities,  that point is passed.

Where Manhattan was the spirit that drove Delirious New York, Singapore is the spectre that haunts S,M,L,XL. Where his love for Manhattan comes through every line of the previous book, here Koolhaas can only summon up morbid fascination for Singapore and Atlanta. And yet he needs these two cities to drive his train of thought. Atlanta supplies the model of de-urbanisation and flux which challenges the stability, centrality and order of the decaying Eurocentric city. Singapore supplies the uniquely Asian megastructure which captures the qualities of Bigness missing from the “lobotomised modernism” he identifies in the early stages of island’s development. Whilst the authoritarian regime of Singapore is introduced at the beginning of the article, the main thrust of the piece is the tracing of an architectural genealogy. It is as if the recourse to a detached architectural mythology (a traditional methodology that Koolhaas scrupulously avoids elsewhere) relieves him of the responsibility of  making judgements about the political conditions that have produced this particular urbanism. The piece ends with an ominously convincing prediction that Singapore’s urban (and by association political) model will become the blueprint for Asian city states of the future. Koolhaas ends with the glib statement “Two billion people can’t be wrong”. The point is that two billion can’t be wrong because they are not allowed to be wrong, and this fact alone demands positioning on the part of the architect.

HERO

S,M,L,XL presents a sustained assault on the notion of architect as hero. Koolhaas kills of the already sickened holy cows of architecture - the fetish of detail, the iconic status of the single building, the imposition of order and the delusion of control through form. This critique represents a paradigm shift for architecture. The book makes uncomfortable reading as it consistently undermines the assumed “truths” that have sustained the myth of architecture for so long. Like a cornered animal acutely conscious of its own mortality, the threatened establishment of architects (q.v.) lashes out at Koolhaas with derision, as in the miserable dismissal of OMA’s built work on the grounds that it is ‘badly’ detailed. Such stupidity overlooks the fact Koolhaas is being cruel to be kind, because underlying the whole venture is an intense love for architecture. He yearns to resuscitate the discipline in a new mode. With the operations of the profession placed within the wider context of a system of forces beyond their direct control, Koolhaas argues that the profession must move into a post-heroic stage. At Lille, he orchestrates this through the role reversals that are imposed on the chosen architects. Portzamparc, master of high culture, is given a brutal office block. Nouvel, spender of big bespoke budgets, is given a unremittingly cheap, generic, shopping centre. In a moment of inconsistency in this playful miscasting, OMA give themselves a building full of the potential of Bigness (q.v.). This points to the difficulty of reconciling the post-heroic position with Koolhaas’ now stratospheric status and with the sometimes invasive immodesty of the OMA operation, which the book plays a major role in promulgating.

INTELLIGENCE

S,M,L,XL is both clever in its self-conscious structuring, but also the work of a formidable intelligence. Koolhaas’ achievement is to manifest this intelligence in both the writing about buildings and the making of buildings, so that each act continually informs and modifies the other. There are clearly other intelligent people operating in this field, but generally these can be divided into those theorists who build - in which case the architecture is seen as illustrations of the theory - or those builders who theorise (often after the event) - in which case the theory is seen as a legitimation of the architecture. In S,M,L,XL  Koolhaas occupies an indefinable middle ground between the two positions, inventive and provocative as both thinker and maker. Unfettered by the demands of practice, S,M,L,XL reasserts the extraordinary importance of critique and speculation in reforming architectural culture.

KOOLHAAS

The authorship of the book is presented on the one hand as hybrid - Rem Koolhaas, The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (itself an amorphous body) and Bruce Mau - on the other it resonates with one identity, that of Koolhaas. In the end, the power (q.v.) of the word persuades me to refer to a single author, Rem Koolhaas, even though it pains me in so doing to apparently ignore his collaborators. Alex Wall’s miraculous painting of Parc de la Villette is but one of many unaccredited examples where the manifest contribution of individuals is too conveniently subsumed under the guise of OMA - for which we now read Koolhaas.

MANIFESTO

Architectural culture is always hungry for manifestos. We have waited thirty years since Rossi’s Architecture of the City and Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction, two manifestos to which S,M,L,XL will inevitably be compared. Where Delirious New York  (which partly filled the gap) was firmly subtitled ‘a retroactive manifesto, the status of S,M,L,XL  is less obviously identifiable. To a certain extent it is a working through of the issues identified in the first book, the fulfilment of an unrequited love, but it does not provide such a direct model for action, possibly because of the undesirability of looking to Atlanta and Singapore (Manhattan’s successors) as exemplars. Rossi and Venturi both used theory to lead directly to architectural production, drawing on history to give a certain legitimacy and determinacy to their respective methods. In contrast, Koolhaas is fundamentally suspicious of the instrumental use of theory and of any recourse to historical authentication. The determinist nature of previous manifestos is replaced with a conscious indeterminacy.  For this reason, S,M,L,XL should not be taken as a prescriptive manifesto. Rather, it structures a way of thinking with which to react to the radical contingency of architectural practice (q.v.).

POWER(LESS)

“Architecture relates to the forces of the Grossstadt  like a surfer to the waves:” With this image Koolhaas summons up the powerlessness of architecture, always alert to the shifting, relentless, forces which shape our cities, but unable to order them. There is a sense of relinquishment of control to these external influences and in this an abrogation of responsibility to make judgement. The ultimate manifestation of Tafuri’s despair at the fragility of architecture in the face of capitalism.

 

And yet there is also something heroic in the figure of the surfer. Against this background of powerlessness, Koolhaas retains an almost touching faith in the promise of modernity and the power that architecture may have in contributing to that promise. This resonates with Marshall Berman’s All  That’s Solid Melts into Air, a clarion call for a revitalisation of the imaginative possibilities of modernity. Whilst Berman’s uncritical and unspecific acceptance of these potentials has been noted, there is an underlying optimism in his account which is absolutely compelling. And so with Koolhaas. In the most lyrical writing in the book (Whatever  Happened to Urbanism)  he calls for the “irrigation of territories with potential ... the creation of enabling fields...the urban is about to become a major vector of the imagination”. The architect (or rather urbanist) seizes the winds, spins and releases their energies. Whilst I may profoundly disagree with Koolhaas that this is a neutral act, I cannot help but be moved by the urgent forces of his book. Reader as surfer.

PRACTICE

Traditionally, there is theory and there is practice. Two worlds, ideally one guiding the other. Purified concepts leading to inevitable disappointment when their products are tainted by the disorderliness of the profession and the city.

 

At a stroke, S,M,L,XL dissolves the distinction between theory and practice. Throughout the book we are reminded of the vicissitudes of practice, the loss of innocence, the three stages of an architect (“elation, suspense, disappointment”), the joys of collaboration, the furious frustration of collaboration, wilful clients with all the power, willing clients with no power, the impossibility of order... Faced with this “chaotic adventure” of practice, it is inconceivable to formulate a determinist theory of architecture, and the two terms theory and practice elide. The book itself stands on the junction. Its complexity and scrupulous attention to making suggests a building project. Its freedom to speculate and ability to edit suggests a theoretical project.

THEORY

See practice.

ZED

Always difficult to find a sensible word beginning with zed.

 

Published as: Jeremy Till, ‘An Incomplete Encyclopedia: Rem Koolhaas and S,M,L,XL’, Artifice Vol 4 (University College London, March 1996) pp19-27.