Koolhaas fala bem do comunismo, escreveu um lindo artigo sobre a arquitetura do muro de Berlin e tem o governo Chinês como cliente. Daniel Zalewski pega esse espírito muito bem no artigo para a New Yorker:
"Koolhaas has what he calls a “socialist sensibility,” and he was convinced that the Russian state, even in its current capitalist phase, was an ideal client for him. He rejects the idea that Communism became a relic of history in 1989. In a recent essay, he acknowledged that Communists were responsible for a “body count that hovers around a hundred million victims,” but he argued that “every architect carries the Utopian gene,” and that “the more radical, innovative, and brotherly our sentiments, the more we architects need a strong sponsor.” At the St. Petersburg airport, he had stopped to visit an empty Stalinist terminal. “It’s very festive, isn’t it?” he said about a ceiling fresco that depicted paratroopers floating amid the clouds, like armed putti. “What I love about Russia is that the fantasy level here is higher than anywhere else.”No artigo sobre o Muro de Berlin, escrito durante o período de Rem na AA, ele comenta que o lado oriental era o lado "bom", e esquece de mencionar que o muro foi construído pelo lado oriental para impedir as pessoas de irem para o ocidental. Já na sua pesquisa na Harvard Design School chamada Project on the City, Koolhaas elaborou diversos artigos e livros criticando o atual cenário capitalista globalizado, denunciando um consumismo exagerado e o suposto fim da identidade cultural. Porém, há diversas evidências que o puxam para um crítico do autoritarismo no planejamento, que o distanciaria de uma posição comunista ou socialista.
No famoso S,M,L,XL, várias frases que mostram o seu entendimento de que o planejamento centralizado das cidades - uma organização espacial inerentemente caótica dada a infinidade de ações individuais não planejadas por um superior - é impossível. Ao falar sobre o que ele chama de Bigness, projetos que excedem uma certa escala de tamanho, ele diz o seguinte:
"Beyond a certain critical mass, a building becomes a Big Building. Such a mass can no longer be controlled by a single architectural gesture, or even by any combination of architectural gestures."E dá a seguinte definição à palavra "Caos":
"...The only relationship that architects can have with caos is to take their rightful places in the army of those commited to prevent it, and fail. And it is only in failure, by accident, that chaos happens."Em Delirious New York, onde ele conta a história de Nova Iorque a partir da sua arquitetura, ele também conta a reação do jornalista soviético Maxim Gorky durante uma visita à cidade no início do século 20, quando ela estava no auge do seu crescimento:
"Gorky's disgust represents the modern intellectual dillema: confronted with the masses, whom he admires theoretically, in the flesh, he suffers from an acute distate. He cannot admit to this disgust; he sublimates it by identifying external exploitation and corruption as the reason for the masses' aberrations."No mesmo livro, perto do final, Koolhaas também faz uma forte crítica ao Le Corbusier, contando a história de como ele andou pelo mundo inteiro tentando implementar seu projeto da Ville Radieuse mas tendo encontrado portas fechadas onde quer que ia, em regimes políticos de todos os espectros. Em Delirious, Rem até mesmo demonstra que entende que o trabalho dos construtores capitalistas acaba sendo apenas a realização do desejo das massas:
"Manhattan's knowledge was stored in the brains of architects who made businessmen foot the bill - ostensibly for their own myths of hyper-efficiency, but in fact for the creation of a Culture of Congestion, distilled by the architects from the desires of the population."Mais impressionante ainda é o resultado do seu estudo feito em Lagos, a maior cidade africana da atualidade e de mais rápido crescimento, que se transformou no documentário Lagos Wide and Close. Koolhaas monstra as entidades auto-regulatórias da cidade, e como os indivíduos se organizam mesmo com um estado completamente desorganizado:
"Lagos is a city of huge contrasts. It has the elements of a modern city - skyscrapers, roads - but also a strong presence of the "informal". We are fascinated by the self-organizing entities of Lagos, like the Alaba International Electronics Market, which has become very powerful - it is the largest importer of electronics in Africa. Because of the defeciencies of the public sector, there are enormous initiatives taken by private institutions... The market is completely organized; it organizes itself - it has a chairman, and even its own system of law and order. Three days ago we watched a court case. There's even a small prison."O comentário de Uche Ubochi, um dos entrevistados que aparecem no documentário, também surpreende nesse sentido:
"...we want a dynamic society. Give them free hand to operate. Let there be changes, economic revolutions. Let the money flow, let there be free economy. When everybody is busy the economy will take care of itself."Pra fechar o pacote, Koolhaas há anos é o principal designer para a grife Prada, que não poderia ser um símbolo mais forte do consumismo que ele mesmo critica. Em artigo para o Design Observer Group, William Drenttel faz uma crítica interessante à posição anti-capitalista do arquiteto ao projetar o edifício da CCTV na China:
"It's one thing to build the building. But isn't Koolhaas sounding like an apologist for the corruption and extreme capitalism of Beijing? His manifesto seems to embrace the language of Mao for a media conglamerate that is one of the the great powers in the People's Republic of China, and the source of much of the censorship in that country. According to Koolhaas's thesis of Forward Compatibility: "China is characterized by the need to spread opportunity and information rather than protect manufacturers and other established interests. It could use its dominant position, the force of its numbers, its economic power, and its central government to lead the world into a digital future." What would lead an architect of Rem Koolhaas's standing to voice such propaganda? Perhaps Koolhaas is simply taking advantage of the pervasive authoritarianism that is still the Chinese norm. Design approvals? No problem, when everyone serves at the pleasure of the Party! He almost seems to be luxuriating in the absence of the nuisance of the free market."A conclusão que eu chego com esta análise é de que Rem Koolhaas não tem coerência quando se trata de assuntos políticos, demonstrando ora irracionalidade para destas questões (um anarquista de esquerda, talvez?) ora uma tremenda flexibilidade verbal para agradar cada público a quem ele se apresenta, por motivos de interesse próprio. Seja qual for a opção escolhida, sugiro ter cuidado ao citar suas opiniões, deixando a parte mais relevante do seu trabalho apenas no campo arquitetônico, pela qual ele merecidamente recebeu o Pritzker.
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Rem Koolhaas is probably one of the world's most influential architects when it comes to politics. One of the world's most influential designers by Bloomberg and a finalist on Time's 100 list, Koolhaas has also created AMO, a counterpart to his OMA office for projects outside the architecture and urbanism design field, such as social and political projects. He was also invited to join a special think-tank for the European Union to come up with innovative ideas for it's future, after his proposal for a new EU flag. Being interviewed twice by Der Spiegel he gives strong positions on foregin policy, and also talks about his interest in joining politics - as a socialist. Nevertheless, it is very hard to locate him on a Nolan Chart, as his ideas are rather paradoxical.
Koolhaas says good things about communism, wrote an article on the Berlin wall as architecture and has the chinese government as his client. Daniel Zalewski gets the spirit on his article for the New Yorker:
"Koolhaas has what he calls a “socialist sensibility,” and he was convinced that the Russian state, even in its current capitalist phase, was an ideal client for him. He rejects the idea that Communism became a relic of history in 1989. In a recent essay, he acknowledged that Communists were responsible for a “body count that hovers around a hundred million victims,” but he argued that “every architect carries the Utopian gene,” and that “the more radical, innovative, and brotherly our sentiments, the more we architects need a strong sponsor.” At the St. Petersburg airport, he had stopped to visit an empty Stalinist terminal. “It’s very festive, isn’t it?” he said about a ceiling fresco that depicted paratroopers floating amid the clouds, like armed putti. “What I love about Russia is that the fantasy level here is higher than anywhere else.”In Rem's article on the Berlin Wall, written while he studied at the AA, he says the eastern side was the "good" side, and forgets to mention the wall was built by the eastern side to prevent people from crossing over to the western side. On his reasearch for Harvard Design School called Project on the City, Koolhaas wrote several articles and books criticizing today's globalized capitalist system denouncing it's overconsumerism and a supposed end of cultural identity. However, there are several evidences that puts him as a critical of authoritarian planning, which would distance him from a communist or socialist position.
In S,M,L,XL, many sentences show his understanding that central planning in cities - a inherently caotic spatial organization due to the infiniture of individual actions taken with no superior planning - is impossible. When talking about what he calls Bigness, projects that exceed a certain scale, he says the following:
"Beyond a certain critical mass, a building becomes a Big Building. Such a mass can no longer be controlled by a single architectural gesture, or even by any combination of architectural gestures."And gives the following definition to the word "Caos":
"...The only relationship that architects can have with caos is to take their rightful places in the army of those commited to prevent it, and fail. And it is only in failure, by accident, that chaos happens."On Delirious New York, where he tells the history of New York through it's architecture, he also narrates the reaction of soviet journalist Maxim Gorky during a visit to the city in the beginning of the 20th century, when it was booming:
"Gorky's disgust represents the modern intellectual dillema: confronted with the masses, whom he admires theoretically, in the flesh, he suffers from an acute distate. He cannot admit to this disgust; he sublimates it by identifying external exploitation and corruption as the reason for the masses' aberrations."In the same book, near the end, Koolhaas also makes a strong critique of Le Corbusier, showing how the swiss architect travelled the world trying to sell his Cité Radieuse and finding closed doors, no matter which political spectrum was in charge. In Delirious, Rem even shows he understands that capitalist builders end up attending the interest of the masses:
"Manhattan's knowledge was stored in the brains of architects who made businessmen foot the bill - ostensibly for their own myths of hyper-efficiency, but in fact for the creation of a Culture of Congestion, distilled by the architects from the desires of the population."Though even more impressive is the result of his study of Lagos, Africa's largest and fastest growing city, which turned into a documentary called Lagos Wide and Close. Koolhaas shows the city's self regulating entities, and how individuals organize themselves even with a completely unorganized state:
"Lagos is a city of huge contrasts. It has the elements of a modern city - skyscrapers, roads - but also a strong presence of the "informal". We are fascinated by the self-organizing entities of Lagos, like the Alaba International Electronics Market, which has become very powerful - it is the largest importer of electronics in Africa. Because of the defeciencies of the public sector, there are enormous initiatives taken by private institutions... The market is completely organized; it organizes itself - it has a chairman, and even its own system of law and order. Three days ago we watched a court case. There's even a small prison."Uche Ubochi's comment, one of the interviewed, is also a surprise in that matter:
"...we want a dynamic society. Give them free hand to operate. Let there be changes, economic revolutions. Let the money flow, let there be free economy. When everybody is busy the economy will take care of itself."And the cherry on top is that Koolhaas is Prada's lead architectural designer, which could not be a stronger symbol for the consumerism he himself criticizes. In an article for the Design Observer Group, William Drenttel makes an interesting critique of the architect's anti-capitalist position while desining the CCTV building in China:
"It's one thing to build the building. But isn't Koolhaas sounding like an apologist for the corruption and extreme capitalism of Beijing? His manifesto seems to embrace the language of Mao for a media conglamerate that is one of the the great powers in the People's Republic of China, and the source of much of the censorship in that country. According to Koolhaas's thesis of Forward Compatibility: "China is characterized by the need to spread opportunity and information rather than protect manufacturers and other established interests. It could use its dominant position, the force of its numbers, its economic power, and its central government to lead the world into a digital future." What would lead an architect of Rem Koolhaas's standing to voice such propaganda? Perhaps Koolhaas is simply taking advantage of the pervasive authoritarianism that is still the Chinese norm. Design approvals? No problem, when everyone serves at the pleasure of the Party! He almost seems to be luxuriating in the absence of the nuisance of the free market."The conclusion I reach with this analysis is that Rem Koolhaas is incoherent when talking about political affairs, demonstrating either irrationality on the subject (maybe a left-anarchist?) or a huge verbal capacity to please whoever he is talking to, probably by self-interest. Whichever two of these options, I suggest everyone to be aware when quoting his opinions, leaving the most relevant part of his work only in the architecture field, where he deservedly won the Pritzker.
Gracias
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