Rem Koolhaas and the Landscape as an Urban Medium

This chapter investigates Rem Koolhaas’ early architectural work in the perspective that he gradually adopted the landscape as a concept to innovate OMA’s architecture practice and communication, also by means of the negotiation of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s achievements. After introducing the historical rise of the landscape, this hypothesis is explored along three parallel levels, dealing with concept, experience, and representation. The chapter enquires: the idea of using the landscape, through the postcard-mediated experience of New York, as a medium to get free from architectural figures, conventions and ideologies; then, OMA’s office organization able to turn the design process into a collective process, in which Koolhaas plays the role of editor and critic, and to give centrality to program, actions and movement, by declining Le Corbusier’s idea of promenade architecturale; finally, the role of representation in orienting both the research and the communication to present OMA’s work inside a fictive landscape made of different gazes and popular images.