Malcontent?CONTENT: TRIUMPH OF REALIZATION Edited by Rem Koolhaas Remment Koolhaas (born November 17 1944 in Rotterdam) is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist and "Professor in Practice of Architecture and Urban Design" at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, USA. . Cologne: Taschen. 2004. [pounds sterling]6.99 This revolting comic book comic book Bound collection of comic strips, usually in chronological sequence, typically telling a single story or a series of different stories. The first true comic books were marketed in 1933 as giveaway advertising premiums. for students--revolting in its tortuous graphic and typographical ty·pog·ra·phy n. pl. ty·pog·ra·phies 1. a. The art and technique of printing with movable type. b. The composition of printed material from movable type. 2. design, revolting in its charmless foreigners' English, revolting in its gratuitous pornographic imagery, and revolting in much else besides must surely mark a low point in Rem [Latin, In the thing itself.] A lawsuit against an item of property, not against a person (in personam). An action in rem is a proceeding that takes no notice of the owner of the property but determines rights in the property that are conclusive against all the Koolhaas's relentless campaign of self-promotion. Entirely without any coherence as a book or any continuity as an argument, it resembles an unedited, unselfcensored school magazine, or a juvenile office noticeboard noticeboard notice (Brit) n → Anschlagbrett nt towards Christmas. Consisting of page after page of graphic tat, some of it scarcely legible, it is a silly way of presenting ideas about building; and even the few short thoughtful articles that do appear here are utterly drowned in the incomprehensible shrieking mess of its hideous layout. Maybe there's a clever argument here about 'irony': I doubt it, because the mixture of arguments is so confused. As far as I can understand it, the idea is still that the wave of kitsch visual symbols commercially driving mass culture is simultancously dreadful but also inevitable and exciting. Hence, perhaps, the 'delirious' of the title of Koolhaas's best-regarded book. And yet he is after all a high-profile designer for PRADA, and the combination of the international high-fashion king of the super rich with the lefty political self-righteousness of his arguments and slogans sounds idiotic. Is there here some attempt at self-justification? If so, it doesn't work. Why doesn't this man find someone to talk about his buildings properly? They're surely worth it. They will also be here when all this chatterbox drivel driv·el v. driv·eled or driv·elled, driv·el·ing or driv·el·ling, driv·els v.intr. 1. To slobber; drool. 2. To flow like spittle or saliva. 3. is well forgotten. In the meantime Adv. 1. in the meantime - during the intervening time; "meanwhile I will not think about the problem"; "meantime he was attentive to his other interests"; "in the meantime the police were notified" meantime, meanwhile , stand by for yet more wide-eyed features in the Sunday newspapers. My dismay at the sight of the Triangle Bookshop below the Architectural Association in London doing a roaring trade in Content was however happily dispelled when a student pointed out to me that people were buying the book to get it signed by Koolhaas (who was visiting that day), in order to sell it on through the Internet at a higher price. Maybe, in that case, the free market has more to be said for it than Koolhaas likes to admit. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] |
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