"One of our theories is that one can offset this excessive compulsion toward the spectacular with a return to simplicity"
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Koolhaas is poking at a late-20th-century sickness he helped diagnose: the built world’s addiction to spectacle as a substitute for meaning. When he calls it an “excessive compulsion,” he’s framing flashiness less as taste than as behavior - almost clinical, almost uncontrollable. Architecture, in this view, isn’t just responding to markets and media; it’s been trained by them, chasing the photo-ready skyline moment the way a platform chases engagement.
The canny move is the word “offset.” He doesn’t promise a moral purification or a heroic rejection of the iconic. He suggests a counterweight: “a return to simplicity” as strategy, not nostalgia. That matters because Koolhaas isn’t a pastoral traditionalist; his career sits inside the machinery of global capital, branding, and the star-architect economy. So the line reads as both critique and self-implication, a designer acknowledging the gravitational pull of the spectacular while offering a practical corrective.
The subtext is that simplicity has become radical only because complexity has been commodified. When everything is engineered to impress - parametric curves, atrium theatrics, instant landmarking - restraint becomes legible again, even political. Simplicity isn’t about less effort; it’s about recovering priorities that spectacle tends to bulldoze: use, clarity, civic dignity, durability. Koolhaas’s “return” is pointedly not “retreat.” It’s a recalibration aimed at a culture that keeps mistaking visual noise for progress.
The canny move is the word “offset.” He doesn’t promise a moral purification or a heroic rejection of the iconic. He suggests a counterweight: “a return to simplicity” as strategy, not nostalgia. That matters because Koolhaas isn’t a pastoral traditionalist; his career sits inside the machinery of global capital, branding, and the star-architect economy. So the line reads as both critique and self-implication, a designer acknowledging the gravitational pull of the spectacular while offering a practical corrective.
The subtext is that simplicity has become radical only because complexity has been commodified. When everything is engineered to impress - parametric curves, atrium theatrics, instant landmarking - restraint becomes legible again, even political. Simplicity isn’t about less effort; it’s about recovering priorities that spectacle tends to bulldoze: use, clarity, civic dignity, durability. Koolhaas’s “return” is pointedly not “retreat.” It’s a recalibration aimed at a culture that keeps mistaking visual noise for progress.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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