The Dutch had planned to catch a flight around noon on Tuesday, June 28th, he finally arrived on an overnight flight, after eleven o'clock, getting the organizers on their nerves. The Congress began at ten o'clock the next day, the emcee was Luis Fernández Galiano who explained this year's motto: "Climate Change".
"Actually this is the real climate change, the inability to negotiate is "pathetic" and this inability is more important than climate change caused by the thaw."
Rem Koolhaas
CONGRESS I
Following the presentations, Congress I and Congress II took place. The narration that i will write about what happened there will follow a similar structure to the one Koolhaas used in the Haagse Post. (*)
It was only one Congress, but given the impact of what happened there, I think we all will understand better if we differ them in two parts. So we can say that Congress I was exclusively for the Rem Koolhaas' turn, who began his talk in a room that was too small for the influx of spectators.
After a few seconds of waiting, while he had the wireless microphone placed, he began the flood of images and ideas. Repeatedly rubbing his head with his hand, Rem Koolhaas began his presentation. As in any good conference the best was hat it transmitted from the very beginning to the end. To start he made a clear statement on his position in favor of Europe and against Brexit: "I am a European architect".
EUROPEAN CULTURE. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
Rem spoke in "European culture" terms, he began with a image of his city devastated after the Nazi bombings of II World War to explain himself and to explain his position “From here I start, I grew up thinking that anything would be better than it was".
"Too much comfort narcotizes"
He presented the European culture as a counterweight to the stereotype that Europe will only be a matter of economic agreements and he explained it with his own life story. He showed footage images from the Antonioni's film La Notte and images of the Woodstock concert, Antonioni and the Stones, an European culture always at two speeds at the same time or dual. This double comparison will be repeated with Apollo and Dionysos, the known debates between Banham and Rogers, between Milan and London, between the two European trendiness, Koolhaas exemplifies them by a double image of two sculptures, Apollo for Italy and Dionysos for the English-speaking world.
He explains how such duality, integrated in the Treaty of Rome in 1957 (Treaty of Rome, EEG 1957), the treaty was recently discussed at various events and conferences such as those organized by Bozar in which OMA participated, presenting BERL 13/057, the replica of the Jean-Claude Juncker's office, President of the Commission of the European Union. He parallely explains what happened in Holland two years later, in 1959, with the arrival of the Haagse Post newspaper by the new Art Editor Betty van Gan and the simultaneous construction of the Berlin Wall, which influenced decisively in one of its first projects as an architect.
CONSTRUCTION OF EUROPE
Koolhaas explained the construction of his own DNA in parallel to the construction of the European idea. The need of reinvention in the early years, the difficulties of living and even eating, his relationship with journalism (he showed a picture of his press pass), his moving to London and the need to establish a relationship with people who, at his same age, were active in that Swinging London.
Leaning on the lectern with both arms and almost only moving his right arm, he continued to explain the transformation of that union with an image of Reagan and Thatcher from 1984, in parallel to the arrival of the post-Soviet world.
The speech continued with constant parallelisms, remaining focused and with particular intensity on two of them:
- On the one hand the image of the French Revolution, with its ideals of equality, fraternity and liberty, generated by the old continent.
- On the other one, Koolhaas contrasts the current image of 2015, a comfortable bedroom (representing the American culture by Luna Mattress Smart) on which are written the words Comfort, Security and Sustainability vs Comfort, Convenience and Surcity.
- On the other one, Koolhaas contrasts the current image of 2015, a comfortable bedroom (representing the American culture by Luna Mattress Smart) on which are written the words Comfort, Security and Sustainability vs Comfort, Convenience and Surcity.
"Too much comfort narcotizes", it impedes learning, negotiating, being open to situations like the current population movements arising from conflicts. A Europe that is more frightened today by immigrants than from being able to negotiate. This idea is exemplified by a strong and atrocious diagram in which it can be seen how the number of victims of terrorism in our society has clearly decreased up to the present. "In those years, terrorism was understood as a vital part of the ongoing process of social negotiation, politics. Today is seen as a threat to comfort".
ARCHITECTURE AND POLITICS
Today, with a much safer situation, the ability to dialogue has been lost. Actually this is the real climate change, the inability to negotiate turns out "pathetic" and this incapacity is more important than climate change caused by the thaw.
"Architecture is more related to political action than to beauty"
He uses an image of Donald Trump and the Brexit to illustrate the breakdown of Europe by the British. A new geopolitical situation that has nothing to do with a world organized by the dollar, euro or yen (one of the known images to explain the world economy).
Europe has been broken by the stigmatization of the idea of a large bureaucracy, when actually there is much more in any European capital. As a counterpoint, Koolhaas exemplifies the enormous potential in the development of the infrastructures that have been generated by the union and how beneficial it has been, in terms of research, to join forces.
The EU has been "unable" to convince and show everything that has been achieved in recent decades, and show how those successes have benefited countries such as the United Kingdom itself, where among others "went two-thirds of the Union's budget for scientific research so far. Let's see what researchers working there will do now. "
About the construction of Europe. Rem speaks frantically explaning what things and ideas made it possible. He moves, gesticulates, fixes the black sweater on his left sleeve and occasionally joins his hands together in a typical gesture, leaning on his right shoulder. He pours water from the blue bottle on the cup, he drinks. The remote control falls from the lectern and it doesn't seem to matter, Rem continues his lecture. Occasionally he takes off his glasses to have a more direct relationship with the audience. He stands up, crosses his hands to explain the idea of negotiation, he moves his right hand to his nose, Koolhaas continues his conference.
ACTIVISM AND COMPROMISE
He develops all these ideas showing images of his recent intervention in a discussion program,he speaks about the ideological position of the members of that table and exemplifies the need of compromise alluding to a young French activist. He continues his speach with images that show the currently people's traffic when they have to flee from war and its contrast with the comfortable Europeans and the need to understand.
Rem presents quickly, almost giving no time to see them, some projects such as the Katar library, the Axel Springer headquarters in Germany or the Taipei project.
He bombs the auditory with new data to compare the current situation of energy consumption and emissions.
2% 50% population energy cities 75% 80% CO2
Surface 50% 98% 25% energy population 20% CO2
Rem presents quickly, almost giving no time to see them, some projects such as the Katar library, the Axel Springer headquarters in Germany or the Taipei project.
He bombs the auditory with new data to compare the current situation of energy consumption and emissions.
2% 50% population energy cities 75% 80% CO2
Surface 50% 98% 25% energy population 20% CO2
"We are destroying the planet, we must create awareness and there should be activism"
TECHNOLOGY, AGRICULTURE and GIGAFACTORIES
The ducth architect analyzes the existing connectivity between different parts of the globethanks to the new technologies. He highlights that in some cases this connectivity, despite our current high ability to communicate, has been reduced. He puts Russia, where current flights connect fewer points than during the communist period, as an example.
The conference ends delving the idea of how technology is radically transforming our enviroments. He shows some of the current most radical changes, exemplifying them through the brutal transformation tha technologized agriculture is producing. To show this, he takes the center of United States as a reference, where farmers work on tractors whose cabins are actually heated offices with computers, drones, (autocopters), controlling satellites and technologies, very different from those agricultural production profiles of workers that suffered early in the twentieth century.
He talks about a technology, that given its transformed capacity, its magnitude, scale, growth and concentration of mechanization in the center of the country with giant machines, actually generates a new transformation of the territory.
This technology transforms the territory into detritus, something that is repeated in some architectural examples as the Tower monument of London Olympics. This transformation process demands the creation of the fully automated distribution GigaFactories and where human presence hardly exists. Buildings of a giant scale and size with measurements in kilometers also made for other industries such as Tesla or Amazon.
Dutch Rem Koolhaas relaxes, we are very close to the end. He puts his hand close to his head and makes us remember the prescient ability of some projects such as Superstudio's continuous Monument. A kind of circular closure back to his beginnings and influences.
COLLOQUIUM
After a small break before the symposium, in which they change the microphones and arises the surprising refusal from Pierre de Meuron to take part in the debate scheduled. During some seconds a Dasy-like yes-no-yes-no moment in which Fernández Galiano tries to convince de Meuron is produced. Simultaneusly, Rem Koolhaas takes advance of this time preparing the image about Comfort, Security and Sustainabilty as a background. The debate will finally be constituted by Galiano and Richard Ingersoll asking to Koolhaas.
Ingersoll begins and Rem quickly articulates his speech to the image (the one with tha bed on top of which rest the three current ideals of Comfort, Convenience, Security vs Comfort, Security and Sustainability).
Galiano continues talking about the coincidence of the initial approach of their presentations and about how against the huge growing of structures, a situation of fragmentation like he Brexit is being produced. Koolhaas coments that it is not a political but a intelectual position.
Ingersoll returns and re-asks "taking the current problems into account, do you believe that the current problem is architecture?" Rem replies that he is simply explaining the situation of his time. Ingersoll keeps going and talks about the extreme toxic situation of machinery for agriculture and how its size is destroying the territory. The idea of sustainable architecture, and the development of plastic for agriculture.
Rem thinks about it, a few seconds pass by, the gap between what he has said and what he was asked now is huge (it gives us, the listeners, the impression that he is speaking in different terms, exposing a brutal reality of what it is happening nowadays and that, wheather we want it or not, is changing our lives, versus the "moralizing" of its consequences) and responds: "speaking only in those terms is very boring". The Dutch architect attempts to remedy the situation by explaining that he is simply explaining an existant realityas the increasing of technology is.
The debate ends strongly with one last question to which Koolhaas answers "It is not an interesting question". There will be a reformulation of the question, but the debate is already over.
COLLATERAL EFFECTS
After this torrent of statements at the conference, to which they join in 7 minutes the ones made to Anatxu Zabalbeascoa for the newspaper El Pais:
"I passing to politics to prevent Netherlands being the the next to leave the EU" or "That gave me a left point of view for the rest of my life "
Rem Koolhaas left many baffled, specially the disoriented that already had a label for Rem, as a result of misinformation. At the same time he also left many others excited by his ability of intellectual commitment. The most of us simply were delighted for being able to hear him again.
"Most critics are negative people, they are against things. I am critical, but I'm in favor. I want to do, not destroy. That makes a difference."
NOTE
(*) The Haagse Post was the newspaper where Rem Koolhaas was hired as a journalist, working with Betty van Garrel, and where among other methods to write articles, he used the purely descriptive, which includes not only what the rapporteur has but also his physical reactions when exposing. It was used by Rem Koolhaas for an article on Le Corbusier in 1964.
José Juan Barba. "Inventions. New York, vs Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, Piranesi". Architecture Monographs 07. UAH. Madrid, 2014, p.100-101.
