Architect Rem Koolhaas, right, talks with President David Skorton before his lecture in Bailey Hall. Robert Barker/University Photography
Since the 1980s, Koolhaas said, showing a world map with the symbols for the yen, euro and dollar, “we have been submitted to what we call the ‘YES’ regime — the regime of the market. Sometime in the ’80s we reached a state of consensus, seemingly unraveling at the current moment. This phenomenon of the ‘YES’ regime has had a very great impact on architecture, and everything we do is really related to that impact.”
He noted that attention has also shifted from the design to the architect, many of whom are treated like celebrities.
Referring to Gehry’s Spanish museum, he observed: “You can see that the level of individual expression has become infinitely stronger, and you can also see that this is not necessarily a building that expresses shared values, it seems more a building that expresses a unique cluster of values. For me this is an important point of the architecture we are producing at this moment.”
For the rest of the story by Daniel Aloi, please visit http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct11/KoolhaasCover.html