132 Quotes by Rem Koolhaas

The cosmetic is cosmic.

The areas of consensus shift unbelievably fast; the bubbles of certainty are constantly exploding.

Designs are increasingly winning competitions because they are literally green, and because somewhere they feature a small windmill.

We live in an almost perfect stillness and work with incredible urgency.

We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality, singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities that we have are desired. Maybe their very characterlessness provides the best context for living.

Escape from the architecture ghetto is one of the major drivers and has been from the very beginning.

That has been my entire life story. Running against the current and running with the current. Sometimes running with the current is underestimated. The acceptance of certain realities doesn’t preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.

People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both liberating and alarming.

Each building has to be beautiful, but cheap and fast, but it lasts forever. That is already an incredible battery of seemingly contradictory demands. So yes, I'm definitely perhaps contradictory person, but I operate in very contradictory times.