Showing posts with label Koolhaas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Koolhaas. Show all posts

Tuesday, 13 April 2010

Nihilism for the Money

The Treachery of Images, 1928, Rene Magritte


Until very recently, nihilism was just a cultural stand that made leftists look culturally elegant. Since 1989, nihilism has become the common ground for right and left wing intellectuals, especially in American and European Universities. In fact, John Gray affirms in his The Enlightenment's Wake (1995) that nihilism is Western's "only truly universal inheritance to humankind", and one of the main reasons why non-western cultures will take the lead in the global world.

In my "Arquitecturas virtuales" in Revista de Occidente (2002), I related Koolhaas's architectural approach to a precise political praxis that had more to do with marketing than art.

Some political analysts consider now as postmodernist the right wing strategy of twisting the meaning of language to impose their ideas: "regulation is bailout" is the new one that tries to stop Obama's financial reform. The best example of the deconstruction of language for the money is Frank Luntz's Memo to kill the bill. The thing is that as a media strategy it really works: the lie of mass destruction weapons allowed already the huge business of the Iraq war. That was another initiative to take the money away from tax payers. Paul Krugman calls it the "black is white strategy".

PD (30/04/2010):

On the 28th Obama gave a strait answer to what I have called "Nihilism for the money". After saying that this crisis is not a cyclical one he responded to the "White is Black, and Up is Down" strategy. The three points of Obama's Wall Street Reform are:
  1. Protection to consumers
  2. End of bailouts
  3. Financial Transparency

Have a look at the video:


Friday, 21 November 2008

Koolhaas and the cinema


The film on the Bordaux House of Rem Koolhaas is an exception on architectural documentaries. Maybe too Dogma style, but the idea of presenting the house through the experience of the person who does the cleaning is great. The most interesting part is the begining because is truly cinematographic. Enjoy it. I am afraid the rest of the film is able to make dizzy because of the abuse of the subjective camera. Curious that the architecture that is supposed to derive from cinema is not so easy to become a film.

Wednesday, 11 June 2008

Las islas de Rem Koolhaas

Waterfront City, Dubai, OMA (render), en proyecto


Exodus, o los prisioneros voluntarios de la arquitectura, 1972



La ciudad que Koolhaas proyecta en Dubai (El País 09/06/08) es la cristalización de todo su universo arquitectónico, como no podría ser de otra manera. La arquitectura urbana se le suele atragantar incluso a los arquitectos más brillantes. No hay escapatoria posible en esa escala: el edificio, las calles, los parques, los objetos, su contexto, incluso el paisaje está diseñado por la misma mano en las ciudades de autor. No hay excusas posibles en estos casos. En Waterfront City una sucesión de anodinos prismas vidriados sirven de telón de fondo a unos cuantos edificios-icono como re-creación del autor de Delirious New York.

Si Mies se lamentaba de las copias que se habían hecho con la mejor intención de su Seagram Building (véase el libro Curso Abierto donde Javier Carvajal lo cuenta), no es difícil de imaginar lo que sentiría frente esta new Manhattan en la que simplemente se ha prescindido de su obra. Ya hace tiempo que sostengo que la arquitectura de Koolhaas es más rompedora en lo ético que en lo artístico (véase mi Arquitecturas virtuales: una utopia negociada). Ahora descubro que el profesor Juan Calduch de la Universidad de Alicante piensa lo mismo, aunque yo no estaría de acuerdo en que la "ética utilitaria" del arquitecto holandés está enraizada en la autonomía que Kant le asigna al arte. Creo más bien que es en pensadores como Milton Friedman donde hay que buscar las raíces de la postura de Koolhaas: su rentable utopismo estratégico ya estaba claramente expuesto en su PFC Exodus en 1972.