The Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas has focused almost exclusively on research over the last two years in preparation for his architecture installation at this year’s Venice Biennale for Architecture. Together with students from Harvard and a handful of other researchers, he has revisited elements of architecture – ceiling, floor, facade, etc. One of Koolhaas’s former lecturers, the architecture writer Charles Jencks, in an interview with Koolhaas in Architectural Review indicates that everything is becoming smaller and lighter.
Koolhaas is not in total agreement. He thinks that architecture has changed drastically due to technological developments since 1850, but that the developments are not seen as part of architecture yet.
“…CJ: So again the argument is a kind of technical determinism.
RK: That’s right. But what’s interesting about this inequality – and that’s why I am hesitant to confirm that everything is becoming lighter – is that certain things are definitely staying very heavy, while still others are becoming heavier and heavier….”
