Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) has presented recommended readings of this week featuring The Origins of OMA/AMO: Interviews with Reinier de Graaf and Rem Koolhaas alongside The Greg Lynn Show:The second episode in our talk-show series. This week: Johan Bettum and Kivi Sotamaa, Found in Translation: Palladio – Jefferson: A look at Palladio in American translation, A Fish Is Kind of Aerodynamic: A conversation between Greg Lynn and Rick Smith on the digital in Frank Gehry’s. 

In this 43-min episode, Rem Koolhaas talks about OMA's new research entity 'AMO' which have come appear in 1999 and created its own metaphor in the architecture practice by gaining universal recognition. In 2015, Rem Koolhaas and Reinier de Graaf spoke with Giovanna Borasi and Mirko Zardini about the Universal project, challenges of creating an identity for an entire political system, and other formative experience for their two-faced practise.

Here's is a short transcript of the interview with Koolhaas:

Rem Koolhaas: I would like to some extend to talk about AMO as the only vehicle that enables to do utopian things even though we can not name the utopian and they are not necessarily or officially utopian.

Mirko Zardini: The reason is that how and why AMO? 

Rem Koolhaas: It's important to understand drastic order coincidence of our start as an architecture office, let's say in 1980 and to look at the same time at start new political system at that point, which was triggered by the simultanous election of won to Margaret Thatcher. Therefor, the beginning of neoliberalism and the beginning of the market economy. I think from the beginning our office coincides with that moment. It seems as if maybe my own metaphors have been responsible for establishing that myth. 

RK: But, it seems as if we from the very beginning were extremely eager to go long with this market economy and maybe my metaphor to be deserver kind of suggested also kind of pleasure or fun. But, actually the intended metaphor was to talk about the force and the inevitability of a wave and how you could as a kind of fragile as individual or profession somehow we were mainstanding in that way. 

The first fifteen years, we could simply made experimental but also incredible kind of focus on trying to find clients and trying to do the first buildings. It became very important for me become less dependent on all those forces, on one hand, those forces become more strong and strong or in a way we invent or find intellectual apparatus that could help us navigate groundswell of market economy. 

I was looking for an independent entity or to way that enable me to develop independent position and I had always done that as a writer and so but now I felt that I needed something stronger and I needed really equipped the office with its own intelligence producing entity. 

Koolhaas talked about 3 simultaneous things they have beed forced it and one of them was OMA's book titled ''S,M,L,XL'' published by OMA with its authors Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau 1995. He said that ''S,M,L,XL had documented a kind of methodness.''

I don't know when we actually first started the notion of AMO-maybe in 1999 and in the late 90's it became possible to make it explicit. There were many incentives so one hand it was way to create of our own intelligence bureau and it was also a platform on which we could collaborate with other people. 

Watch the interviews of Reinier de Graaf and Rem Koolhaas here.

Top image screenshot via Video.

> via CCA