132 Quotes by Rem Koolhaas

A building has at least two lives – the one imagined by its maker and the life it lives afterward – and they are never the same.

Let’s put it this way: One can be happy or unhappy in a building. But some buildings make us more depressed than others.

If less is more, maybe nothing is everything.

The institutions are working better now, the banks are much more functional. At this time, 1997, there were no mobile phones! It’s a whole different thing now with mobile phones: technology has created a form of regulation, because people can actually talk to each other a lot more.

It is not possible to live in this age if you don’t have a sense of many contradictory forces.

Without a tighter union, Europe will disintegrate.

I’d say that my profession ends where architectural thinking ends – architectural thinking in terms of thinking about programs and organizational structure. These abstractions play a role in many other disciplines, and those disciplines are now defining their ‘architectures’ as well.

Lagos was the ultimate dysfunctional city – but actually, in terms of all the initiatives and ingenuity, it mobilised an incredibly beautiful, almost utopian landscape of independence and agency.

The word ‘celebrity’ and the word ‘architect’ are basically incompatible.