S M L XL [Hardcover]

Rem Koolhaas (Author), Bruce Mau (Author), Hans Werlemann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1998 | ISBN-10: 1885254865 | ISBN-13: 978-1885254863 | Edition: 2nd

S,M,L,XL presents a selection of the remarkable visionary design work produced by the Dutch firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.) and its acclaimed founder, Rem Koolhaas, in its first twenty years, along with a variety of insightful, often poetic writings. The inventive collaboration between Koolhaas and designer Bruce Mau is a graphic overture that weaves together architectural projects, photos and sketches, diary excerpts, personal travelogues, fairy tales, and fables, as well as critical essays on contemporary architecture and society.

The book's title is also its framework: projects and essays are arranged according to scale. While Small and Medium address issues ranging from the domestic to the public, Large focuses on what Koolhaas calls "the architecture of Bigness." Extra-Large features projects at the urban scale, along with the important essay "What Ever Happened to Urbanism?" and other studies of the contemporary city. Running throughout the book is a "dictionary" of an adventurous new Koolhaasian language -- definitions, commentaries, and quotes from hundreds of literary, cultural, artistic, and architectural sources.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Koolhaas, Dutch architect, author (Delirious New York) and cult figure, wants architecture to be "a chaotic adventure," and this massive tome certainly is. Created with Toronto-based designer Mau, it's a huge collage splicing freewheeling essays, diary excerpts, photographs, architectural plans, sketches, cartoons and surreal montages of images. There's also a running glossary of Zen-like definitions, plus fables and parables intended to shake modern architects out of conventional thinking and to dispel urban despair. In one essay, Koolhaas admires Japan's metabolist movement, which fuses organic, scientific, mechanistic and romantic vocabularies. That approach seems compatible with his own innovative, eclectic vision as head of the Dutch firm Office of Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.), whose houses, villas, office towers, libraries, colleges, cultural complexes and other projects are showcased here. While some readers may be mystified by a nonlinear hodgepodge, architects, planners and designers will find this frequently outrageous assemblage a provocative repository of ideas. Author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Rem Koolhaas is founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.); the firm's most important projects include the Lille Grand Palais in Lille; the Kunsthal in Rotterdam; Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague; Nexus Housing in Fukuoka; the Dutch House in Holland; and Villa dall'Ava in Paris, all of which are included in S,M,L,XL. Koolhaas is author of the seminal Delirious New York and professor in practice of architecture and urban design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Bruce Mau founded the critically acclaimed firm Bruce Mau Design in 1985. He is the author of Life Style and Massive Change.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1376 pages
• Publisher: Monacelli Press; 2nd edition (October 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885254865
• ISBN-13: 978-1885254863
• Product Dimensions: 7.3 x 2.6 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #157,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

98 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Extra Medium..., November 13, 2004

By 

tierny - See all my reviews

This review is from: S M L XL (Hardcover)

There's a terrific line in Breakfast at Tiffany's. George Peppard proudly hands neighbor Audrey Hepburn a copy of his just-published book. She has no idea what to do with it, so she puts it on a shelf next to a vase, backs away and says "Doesn't that look nice?"
This book is a lot like that. A self-conciously designed object for the homes of style consumers who already have the right clothes and the B&B Italia furniture. A prop for the still-life they want to inhabit. If they ever got around to "reading" it, they'd discover to their great relief... it's NOT a book to be read in any strict classical sense.

It also reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon where one associate asks another, "Read the first few pages of any good books lately?" The age of the short attention span is not going away any time soon. This hefty grey slab is easily recast as the shiny new headstone for verbalized intelligence.

As Kracauer holds it, there's nothing wrong with framing a culture via fragments, but I have plenty of qualms about advancing one's own ideas that way. And I'm suspect of ideas that trowel on style in the abundance seen here. If I could believe Bruce Mau's intentions were more than just trying to look new, (This 'look' now permeates architecture publications) I'd have more respect for this, but it was obviously calculated as a totem of style and style-suffusion.

For better or for worse, the book got noticed, the industry was distracted by the pretty surfaces and the ascent of Koolhaas is a done deal.
If you want to actually READ a book full of Koolhaas' thoughts, skip this and get a copy of Delirious New York.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to pack a city into a book - Lesson 1, June 14, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: S M L XL (Hardcover)

This is a dense manifesto of ideas. It might be termed a printed hypertext, with a continuous glossary of terms being defined by Koolhaas this could serve as an alternative dictionary. The book is too broad for simply architecture, urban planning theory &c. which it professes to having as its infrastructure. It deals with all design issues, from the content of OMAs projects, to the beautifully printed and assembled object that is the book itself. Attempt to read as a linear narrative at your own risk.

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A MASTERPIECE, March 28, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Atlanta Georgia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: S M L XL (Hardcover)

I'm about half way through it and already it has profoundly changed my view of the world around me. This book transcends architecture and touches on spirituality, politics, society and culture. A stirring manifesto for the convergence of several aspects of the global condition. Reading it has sparked a wave of creativity in my own line of work (financial analyst/software developer). Why is architecture important? Because it deals with the design of systems. Physical systems, biological, computer and natural systems. Architecture is life. I beleive Mr. Koolhaas understands this by evidence of his writings. Bravo!