Content

by Rem Koolhaas

This book takes place at the cusp of the 20th and 21st centuries, in the pre and post-September 11th world. It is a singular product of its time, packed full of words and images portraying the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3822830704
• ISBN13: 9783822830703
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Taschen
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.7" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Rollercoaster Review

A rollercoaster review of past, present and future of OMA / Rem Koolhaas, dazzling, inspiring, breathtaking, irritating and presumptuous, like his best work. A remorseless insight into the man, his method and his madness.

Real Kool man!

The latest Koolhaas and the gang book (actually a paperback) is summed up in the Editor's letter on page sixteen, part of which reads "Content is a follow-up to 'SMLXL', an inventory of seven years of OMA's tireless labor. In many ways it is structured according to what its predecessor is not-dense, cheap, disposable".The 546 pages are a textual and visual pot-pourri of articles, mostly architecturally related with several general interest items thrown in, like the one about Martha Stewart and her views on eastern lifestyles, or 'Red Radio', the story of the Cold War fight for Africa's airwaves (no, really) and if you get frustrated trying to read some of the tiny type that inevitably gets used in this type of book you can look at a few ads that are scattered throughout the pages.I bought the book for its strong visual interest (it is mostly visual) and the seventy-six articles are presented in all sorts of graphic ways, from the nearly unreadable 'Junk Space' which stretches over ten pages of text in one continuous paragraph to the rather fascinating 'Yes/No' using a clever collage technique to explain the rise and fall of the global economy. The pace is unrelenting with colorful whiz-bang graphics and photos from pages one to 546.Perhaps the most interesting chapter is the penultimate one devoted to the work of OMA-AMO since the publication of 'SMLXL', unfortunately the huge amount of information is presented in nearly unreadable paragraphs over twenty-seven pages. To quote the Editor's Letter again "Content is, beyond all, a tribute to what are perhaps OMA-AMO's greatest virtues - its courage, its dogged, almost existential pursuit of discomfort, its commitment to engage the world by inviting itself to places where it has no authority, places where it doesn't 'belong'". I'll certainly drink to that!