Neat interview at BusinessWeek with Joshua Prince-Ramus, the lead partner and owner of the New York branch of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), the firm founded by Rem Koolhaas. It’s all about the rational process of designing “outrageous” buildings:
We believe in a hyper-rational process where you accept the constraints, conditions, and challenges of a project, and you attempt to engage them by going back to first principles. You don’t accept any convention. If someone says, “This is how you solve that problem,” you give them the bird. You just say, “I don’t want to hear it.” [. . .]
We’re seeing constraints as opportunities. It’s not like we’re getting around the constraints. We’re saying, “The project’s just the constraints.” If we can solve the constraints, that’s where the form will come, that’s where the beauty will come, that’s where the logic will come. And more likely than not, you can get it built, you can get it financed, you can get it on budget.
I find this stuff fascinating, but I have a different view on art than some of my friends. Read more.