Rem Koolhaas Quotes

Architecture is by definition a very collaborative process.

I wanted to be an architect. I used to draw houses and buildings and construct buildings on my own.

Who I am as an architect and the history of my work - that's clear to anybody who hires me. But I come in literally with nothing in my brain about what the building will look like.

Just taking a piece of dirt and envisioning the building you'd like to put on it - it's an amazing process.

Architects design houses. I live in a home.

If, early on, you know how things are put together, then you can build. The architect is in charge of making - he is not an artist.

Woodworking requires a completely different kind of thinking and problem-solving ability than writing. With writing, you take a set of facts and ideas, and you reason your way forward to a story that pulls them together. With woodworking, you start with an end product in mind, and reason your way backward to the raw wood.

I think a lot of people have the Frank Lloyd Wright model in their brains. The architect comes in with this act of creation and lays it down, and that's it. But that's not me.

About 1998, when 'Wide World of Sports' and the 'Footy Show' came to an end for me, I couldn't type. When I started architecture, it was a very aesthetic, creative, an almost art process, where lettering and thick line were how you expressed yourself on the paper.

A designer is someone who constructs while he thinks, someone for whom planning and making go together.

Something like 'Abstract' can really give people access to the behind-the-scenes of how our physical surroundings take shape.

When I get a beautifully written piece of material, I immediately start imagining how I would interpret it. I love just daydreaming about it for months, breaking it down, seeing where I can spin something. How I can turn this into the most fun ride for the audience that I can make it? That's my job.

It's like when you read a book and you know that the words are important, but the images blossoming in your imagination are even more important because it's your mind that allows the words to come to life.

Architects themselves tend to shy away from the word, preferring instead to talk about the manipulation of space.

I have an expensive hobby: buying homes, redoing them, tearing them down and building them up the way they want to be built. I want to be an architect.

This is what I like about being a designer: You can't really get it until you see it.

Writing a film is like building a brick wall. You have a plan, and you have the blocks. Then, somebody says, 'I think we'll take this stone out of here and put it over there. And while we're at it, let's make this stone red and that stone green.'

Ever since I was young I loved making things and being part of the design process.

I am but an architectural composer.

Design is an unknown.

Some people think architecture is about the genius sketch; I don't. Great architecture is a collaboration among a lot of people over a long period of time.

Of course I'm schooled in the old school method: taking what I think the director wants, then reworking it through my own brain and heart.

I love being able to create something from the page and bring it to life.

I see the Beijing National Stadium as an architectural project. I accepted Herzog and De Meuron's invitation to collaborate on the design, and our proposal won the competition. From beginning to end, I stayed with the project. I am committed to fostering relationships between a city and its architecture.

I have deliberately left Sylvester and Julia's appearances to the reader's imagination.