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00:00Rem Koolhaas is here. He is one of the most influential architects at work today of course you knew that. He's also an author theorist and a professor at Harvard. He was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2000 16 years ago. Some of his most notable projects include the CCTV headquarters in Beijing the Seattle Central Library and cost of Ocho in Porto Portugal . The two major buildings have been open in the last year are the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and the Prada in Milan. I am pleased to have Rem Koolhaas back at this table . Welcome. Hi. We missed out on doing when you were in two years ago when you were a year and a half ago when you were at that in Venice. It continues to be a great life for you. A great life a great life. It's an amazing life because it really enables me to be at places in the world when things are really radically changing. Yes or when there is a need to articulate particularly ambition or rather for the reasons. There is a need to intervene in the kind of situation which is more or less it was until it's really a great sequence of opportunity. And I mean because what you do what you and you helped define the time we're in what we're missing. Even yes. I. I see my role to some extent to more is a kind of reporter who is simply alert and who is describing it changes and kind of basically as you describe the change you also find the opportunities and where to intervene . So in that sense I don't have the kind of sense of forming the time between being part of it and being part of that moment in time when things are changing from one condition to another. In fact you began life as a writer did you as a journalist as a journalist as an interviewer. You mean I have Pope as an architect maybe you could never do that but at 71 you're going strong. I just mentioned the two big projects you had this year Prada and the garage. Well maybe I go strong but but of course I'm part of a large organization. Yeah our office and I think I could never do what what I do. We could never do what we do without our foreign collaborators. And I would say that the average age of the office is maybe 32. So maybe I'm kind of getting older but there is this really. But at the same time like children you have people who come to work with you and then go off and do great things on their own. Ingles I've enabled many people to emancipate themselves from our former environment your early collaborate our old friend Peter ise said of you recently. I love him. I think it's very important to have lived in the time of room like Doug lived in the time of CAC . How do you mean a legend in BBC B . I'm Dutch and that means that I'm incapable of dealing with those questions and I think the Dutch can't handle praise. They cannot handle praise and therefore they cannot receive celebrity and therefore their kind of safe haven for that kind of speculation. So part you keep your base in opium as in Rotterdam England for them that because it keeps your feet on the ground which is this city which is completely immune to who you are and completely indifferent to where you are. So we live in a kind of looks Alix steel looks over his life of indifference. A big difference in the cold indifferent environment and therefore totally free. Someone else though said and I think this was an architecture critic said you remain a first rate provocateur and you do. I mean you've been that all your life. I don't know whether it's the kind of issue of star sign or something. I don't know you. I think it's not the kind of provocation and his DNA . It's partly DNA but it's also an intellectual interest to formulate in the sharpest possible way what the issues are and kind of and that enables me to constantly kind of see where issues are occurring what the issues are and to to name them . And I think that that particular ability to name them is of course going to perceive this provocation because it may not always be that the world is ready to to draw the same conclusions. And when some people suggested you work more like a theory or historic conceptual artist than an architect you say yes that's right. I would say that we operate in a very range wide range of things. And I think that a world of ideas is where you start. Yes. But I think at the same time you see that in the world around us kind of fewer and fewer professions kind of retain their previous identity than that many streams are getting blurred. And I'm benefiting from the blur and being able King I'm benefiting from Matt Miller benefiting from the way richer an. No I'm benefiting from the fact that currently people are willing not only to consider a pre-defined profession or a pre-defined territory or predefined role but are willing to kind of experiment and to kind of see how things can be combined or or redefined or reinvented. But aren't you. That's what you've done all your life. Yeah. But how can I redefine the way we think of space. How can I redefine the way we think of old and new. How do I think about redefining the relation between urban and rural. But I'm kind of really lucky to live at this time because it's not me who's going into redefinition but it's the time itself that is going to redefining all those conditions something new. You've also resisted the idea of a singular aesthetic. I've tried to you know I mean some would argue that that's what Frank has done and Zaha have done. They have a single aesthetic. You may disagree with that but some would say that you resist that even allowing anybody even think that it's partly we. We love camouflage and leave. We are not always interested to assert our own identity in every condition and we think that architecture is a kind of very interesting combination of imposition and yielding position and yielding you you yield to an environment you yield to a context you also imposed. But anyway you also absorb difference from it or you absorb certain needs that exist on a certain place. So for this reason I think there is maybe a kind of subtlety that means that the need to be different in every case because every case is different. If I went to Beijing with a group of architects architects who know the history of architecture who know the identification of artist and I showed them CCTV would they say that's cool house. I know that's cool house I promise you . That's a good point. Well because they probably is. But mean I everybody knew it was such a popular and identifiable building and it was yours you you'd have to try. What do you think. I think you think there's something in that building other than the fact that it is so different. I would define it. It's maybe you know it was a huge challenge and therefore I basically try to accept every part of the challenge. And so therefore it is a kind of building that has not only one dimension is not only a shape but it's also an organization. It's also a feat of engineering. It's also just a part of it. It's also an identity that is not stable. It's also kind of building that looks completely different from every side. So it's a very complex entity and perhaps people would recognize that complexity as a characteristic. In the end how did you win that mission. It was very interesting. The competition was run by a very young Chinese lady who'd studied international law in Oxford. Thirty five years old who called me one day and said we are going to do a competition for the headquarters level invite five foreigners and five Chinese people to Americans to Europeans and one Japanese. So it was very statistical right. Yes. And we wanted to be completely honest process in speaking to her. I got a kind of confidence that at least it was going to real intelligence there and so there was a jury. The jury can more selected us. And then there was an interesting period when the issue became how to convince the government and the different parties in government that this was the right step. And it was also orchestrated by her. In terms of meetings with Chinese politicians kind of showing the project talking to them personally sometimes in their holiday address I stayed for a long time in Beijing kind of two to do it. But slowly but surely we were really able to convince people . What's interesting too is that recently Xi Jinping as you know maybe said we have to be weird buildings . Well that's in a way. It's very rare that politicians talk about architecture. So in that sense I find it encouraging Francois Mitterrand Francois Mitterrand was the previous one. So yes . And of course we became associated with that kind of weird building kind of syndrome. Yeah. And and of course the building is an original building but also a very serious building. And I can say in confidence that recently CCTV was visited by one of the Chinese ministers who came to the conclusion that it was a very sincere and serious contribution to China. So the weird stigma has been taken away. Officially his private contribution to high flyers. Yeah. So. So that's a good thing. I think you know what's interesting and you know I talk about this right before you started to turn the cameras on. It is you won that competition . Five other people lost. They invested as much time as you did . They care deeply. They thought about it. They listened. They pushed and shoved and imagined and reimagine and some of them were my friends and my friends and some of the projects were incredibly amazing and exciting ones to I tell you what my dream is is to put together and have an exhibition from the best architects in the world. All the projects that didn't get sold out because it's not a perfect process. You know that wins or loses you know it has to do with a range of human emotions and experience and education and compliment and then you know Matt Miller politics all that. And so this didn't you know it wouldn't be great. You just see all the buildings that we never saw. The only person ever saw them was the architect. It's an ambiguous issue me because of course it's it's interesting to compete per say. And I think that there is an compelling argument that actually by competing you get the best but it is also certainly the case that some of our most imaginative buildings were not able to convince people at the right moment . And you you certainly sends a leg that you are the things we did 10 years ago might be accepted today. So there is also an inherent sadness in the whole thing. But I think why being a writer I was able to kind of reduce that sadness and still make use or convey the contents or the meaning of certain things in order media and kind of simply building because I think it's very important to you know as an architect to that actually building something is so rare but you also develop forms of communication or forms of presentation whether it's an exhibition or a book or other kind of media or even kind of film to to make sure the things don't simply disappear. Are you happiest writing are building designing or teach it's two completely different two forms of happiness. In the first case it is the happiness of teamwork and humor and collaboration and I can sincerely say that I've worked with people together and had the most stimulating and kind of amazing insights that I would never have to have to on my own but simply through the construction of collaboration you you're pushed in a different direction. So that is really a wonderful feeling. At the same time it is kind of really wonderful to be like a monk in a cell and to have a feeling that you are actually capturing reality or a new reality or an insight to the world of ideas in a world of ideas intervals over these or the rules of observation. How do you think of you more as an observational Quark character or a innovated character. Well I'm I'm betting or trying to. I try to be both and I think it's also a message very do it to be. But basically I'm an analytical person. But in our case or in my case the analysis is very often what triggers the innovation or the invention. So you cannot say I'm either this or that. It's going to really analysis it is the basis for for new thinking here some things that you have said that you admitted that you're somewhere between bored and irritated by the current course of architecture irritated and bored. Okay. Do you. Maybe. Maybe I take the last thing back. I'm not the first one. I'm off. You're certainly irritated but not necessarily bored. Fair enough etc. . Well yeah but you also said that the architecture today is forcing people to be extravagant even if they do not want to or need to. Well it to satisfy some I think I think the important thing and the important thing is that until the 60s or even parts of the 70s these were typically used and connected to a kind of public claimed. So in a civil way we were we could be complacent or we could be convinced that we were actually serving kind of the general cause and I think since the enormous escalation of the market economy yes we're working more and more with private individuals rather than sustaining everything. Let's start with that more and more with a lot of money. And so for that reason alone leave you're no longer we. We're not playing the same role and we're playing a totally different role and in that different and new role we sometimes have to build icons because that is important to a particular brand or we have to build a building that nobody else has seen before because that is the source of pride. So basically the ambitions have really radically changed. Kind of simply to the effect of the market economy .

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Architect Rem Koolhaas: Charlie Rose

Tonight is a rebroadcast of an hour with Rem Koolhaas. He is one of the most influential architects at work today. Some of his most notable projects include the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing, the Seattle Central Library, and Casa de Musico in Porto, Portugal. Two new major buildings have opened in the last year – the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and the Fondazione Prada in Milan. (Source: Bloomberg)

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