OMA- The-Gulf

The Gulf


Lars Müller Publishers, 2006 An accordian-style foldout booklet accompanying OMA/AMO's exhibition on the Gulf at the 2006 Venice Architecture Biennale, investigating the feverish production of urban substance on sites where nomads roamed unmolested only half a century ago.
Buy now Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers, 2006 ISBN-10: 3037780886 ISBN-13: 978-3037780886 From Rem Koolhaas's introduction: The world is running out of places where it can start over. We live in an age of completions, not new beginnings. Sand and sea along the Persian Gulf, like an untainted canvas, provide the final tabula rasa on which new identities can be inscribed: palms, world maps, cultural capitals and financial centers. In its current state, the Gulf is a landscape of vast means and ambition translated with gargantuan effort in ambiguous and sometimes disappointing results, a kind of farewell performance of an 'Urban' that has become dysfunctional through sheer age and lack of invention. But for that very reason - call it historical inevitability or sheer coincidence of timing - the Gulf will also be the terrain where the current architectural repertoire are so blatant, comprehensive and destructive that it has become unthinkable to rely on them as a toolbox.