Architect Koolhass on Dubai in a presentation

Found this in the Design Notes newsletter:


Few of Koolhaas' own buildings were included in his presentation and he appears to have little interest in talking about himself. Instead, he prefers to pounce on political, economic and global ideas that he then uses to frame his largely conceptual work. Decrying Dubai (shown left) as a bad theme park for architecture, Koolhaas used elegant graphic slides to show how architecture has followed the fortunes of oil and the stock market in a new but "poisonous" silk route of trade across Europe. The yen, the euro and the dollar are held up as symbols of support and corruption, made elegant through his barrage of graphics and language. Less is not more with Koolhaas. He revels in complexity while simultaneously showing examples of new works that he designed with generic intent.