#koolreview 03, great leap forward
Tags: Rem Koolhaas, Research, Design, Urban Planning, Architecture

2001

“It doesn’t matter if the cat is yellow or black as long as it catches the mouse.” Comrade Liu Bocheng. “I have come here to study money” Stephanie Smith.

2001 was productive for OMAMO who released 4 books that year. In its complete anticipated form, Great Leap Forward and Harvard Guide to Shopping were printed. Or so it looks that way. Two other modules from the Project on the City did not get published (*back page gossip). Mutations, a summary of the exercise leaves traces behind of Lagos and a ‘systematic’ Roman City. All these are studio reports, fieldwork, conducted by thesis students of architecture, landscape architecture and urban design at the Graduate School of Design. The last one from the press for the year was Prada, Works in Progress, an AMO pursuit (chronology for the year is assumed here). The necessity to piece this information is to answer the question, how does going East happen for OMAMO?

The East at a time for them seemed urgent. There was some amount of incomprehensible construction activity going on that did not fit into patterns of the West. The document is a telling of a reconnaissance mission by 6 individuals who travelled across the Pearl River Delta/ PRD, investigating its infrastructure, ideology (@Shenzhen), architecture (@Shenzhen), politics (@Guangzhou), landscape (@Zhuhai), and money (@Dongguan) as thematic urban situational conditions. Christening it as City of Exacerbated Difference© or COED©, the project compiles a set of observations to help explain whatever was on in 1996. It is around 72/3ish copyrighted terms (a glossary) starting from Architecture© to Zone©. These are found between the site photographs, descriptive essays, letters, interview transcripts and even footnotes. They are meant to create a “cloud of unknowing”, an envelope to help describe whatever is understood as an exercise of imagining a version of globalisation as interpreted in another part of the globe.

This model though seems quite like the dictionary in S,M,L,XL but now titled, branded in a way, something how an SEZ does it. Books by Koolhaas/ OMAMO are sites of #koolnarratives, when compiled together create #koolknowledge. For this Great Leap Forward© other than the colours the form presented looks borrowed. Pace repetitive. A second-hand iteration of what is already sold by the agency. It depends on how you take it. Either it works in a way or it looks contradictory to the ideas already presented in other #koolresearch. You could argue there is a bit of Delirious New York in the glossary, just that it is presented as an exacerbated “©” situation here. And its all red and nice, not that nice though. First, it was a grid in Manhattan, then they shifted the grid a bit when showing it from Rotterdam and now in the PRD, the #koolredeast a messy blob (found operating in stealth mode).

The study happened in 1996 around the time S,M,L,XL came out. They/ he was understandably overworked and there was an aura of the #koolbigbook in the air then. It is imperative to question at this juncture, are #kooltheories on the city creative reinterpretations of #koolfacts malleable as per #koolcontexts they are found? Most of the #koolcontent expired by the time it got to print in 2001. Thus, after 25years, is the glossary the only part of the project still worthy of consideration? Or should we consider it dated too? Would Glossary 2.0© of a Great Leap Forward© exacerbated eastern city be no longer the stealthy blob but a #koolgreatwall?