The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international architectural firm with offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. The firm is currently led by eight partners - Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and managing partner and architect David Gianotten.
History
Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis started working together in the early 1970s at the Architectural Association, the London-based architecture school, where Koolhaas was a student and Zenghelis an instructor. Their first major project was the utopian/dystopian project Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture (1972). This project proposed a linear structure, cutting through London like a knife. Other projects included City of the Captive Globe (1974), Hotel Sphinx (1975), New Welfare Island/Welfare Palace Hotel (1975–76), Roosevelt Island Redevelopment (1975) – all "paper" projects that were not (intended to be) built, and all located in Manhattan, the subject of Koolhaas's book Delirious New York, A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (1975).
OMA was founded in 1975 by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and Greek architect Elia Zenghelis, along with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis. The founding of OMA coincided with the firm's entry in the architectural design competition for a new Dutch parliament building in The Hague in 1978, with Zaha Hadid. OMA was one of the first-prize winners (among some 10 others), and the project was widely discussed and published.[1] The commission, however, was given to an architect who did not participate in the competition. The entry for the Dutch parliament competition was the first of a series of controversial and successful international competition entries by OMA in the 1980s that were not built by OMA.
OMA in the 1980s
OMA's first major commissions were The Netherlands Dance Theatre (1981) in The Hague and IJ-Plein Urban planning (1981–1988) in Amsterdam. Due to change of location a second design for the Dance Theater was made in 1984. Once completed in 1987, the building received international attention. Although full of "first mistakes", the Dance Theater is the first realized design in which the ideas of Rem Koolhaas were made apparent. IJ-plein is located at Amsterdam's IJ, a river that serves as the city's waterfront, opposite the city center. The master plan consists of 1,300 dwellings and several facilities. OMA designed the school, the community center, and two blocks of housing.
A few other designs were realized in the 1980s: a police station in Almere (1982–1985), a bus station in Rotterdam (1985–1987, demolished in 2005), Byzantium apartment block in Amsterdam (1985–1991) and Checkpoint Charlie Housing in Berlin (1984–1990). Two houses were built in this period; the first house was a duo of patio villas (1985–1988) in the style of Mies van der Rohe, inserted in a dike in Rotterdam. The second – arguably the most full-grown design of OMA until that date – was Villa Dall'Ava in Paris (1984–1991). The client, according to Koolhaas, asked for a "masterpiece". He wanted a glass house. She wanted a swimming pool on the roof. So many delays plagued the house that it "became a record of our own (OMA's) growing up".
Several studies were made during the late 1970s and 1980s: Study for the renovation of a panopticon prison in Arnhem in 1979, Boompjes tower slab in Rotterdam (1979), Housing for Berlin IBA (1980, not realised, and the reason OMA would not design anything in Berlin anymore in the 20th century, the Dutch Embassy Building being the comeback), master plan for a world exhibition in Paris (1983).
AMO
In 1998, Rem Koolhaas and Reinier de Graaf founded AMO, a think tank within OMA dedicated to producing non-architectural work including exhibitions, branding campaigns, publishing, and energy planning. AMO has produced exhibitions at the Venice Biennale (on the Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg) and Venice Architecture Biennale (on the development of the Gulf, and, in 2010, on preservation), and guest-edited issues of the magazines Wired and Domus. AMO has produced work for Universal Studios,[4] Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Harvard University, Condé Nast, Heineken, and IKEA.
AMO projects also include the development of in-store technology for Prada, a strategy for the future of Volkswagen, a strategy for TMRW, work for Platform 21, new design institute in Amsterdam, a curatorial master plan for the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, and Roadmap 2050: A Practical Guide to a Prosperous, Low-Carbon Europe. In 2008 AMO curated the exhibition "Dubai Next" at the
Notable works
Seattle Central Library
In 1999 OMA won a competition to design a new central library for the city of Seattle. The Seattle Central Library was completed and opened to the public on May 23, 2004. In 2005, the library earned a national American Institute of Architects Honor Award for Architecture. The building has also been described as "the most important new library to be built in a generation, and the most exhilarating" by New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger.
Casa da Música, Porto
Completed in 2005, the new home of the National Orchestra of Porto, the Casa da Música, stands on a new public square in the historic Rotunda da Boavista. With a distinct faceted form, New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff called it "a building whose intellectual ardor is matched by its sensual beauty". Inside, the elevated 1,300-seat Grand Auditorium, in the shape of a shoebox, has corrugated glass façades at either end that open the hall to the city and offer Porto itself as a dramatic backdrop for performances. As well as the Grand Auditorium, conceived as a simple mass hollowed out end-to-end from the solid form of the building, the Casa da Música also contains a smaller, more flexible performance space with no fixed seating.
Netherlands Embassy, Berlin
Current projects
As of 2021, OMA's current projects included:
Europe
North America
Asia and Oceania
Asia Pacific
Middle East
- Al Daayan Health District Masterplan, Doha, Qatar
- HIA Airport City, Doha, Qatar
- Wafra Tower, Kuwait City, Kuwait
Asia Pacific
Middle East
Gallery
Further reading
External links
References
- AD Classics: Dutch Parliament Extension / OMA ArchDaily, 2018-10-11, retrieved 2021-12-07^
- Tibor Pataky. OMA’s Kunsthal in Rotterdam: Rem Koolhaas and the New Europe Park Books, 2023^
- Hannah Nepilova. New Taipei Performing Arts Center opens in Taiwan Classical Music, BBC, 2022-08-09, retrieved 2022-08-17