Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design from Moscow, Russia · CC BY 2.0 · source

Practice

OMA

Founded 1975 · Dutch, based in Rotterdam · 22 buildings on the wall

OMA, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, is an architecture practice founded in 1975 by Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zenghelis. Based in Rotterdam, with offices in New York, Hong Kong, Doha and Australia, it began with unbuilt "paper" projects about Manhattan, the subject of Koolhaas's book Delirious New York. Koolhaas, often linked with deconstructivism, won the Pritzker Prize in 2000.

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The Kunsthal in Rotterdam (1992) was one of OMA's early buildings to win critical attention. The Seattle Central Library (2004) stacks a set of "floating platforms" inside a steel net and glass skin; its "Books Spiral" keeps the non-fiction collection on one continuous run instead of breaking it up across floors. Casa da Música in Porto (2005) is a nine-storey polyhedron clad in white concrete and cut by large windows. The CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012) joins two leaning towers into a loop of six sections with an open centre. Students read OMA's buildings together with Koolhaas's writing, from Delirious New York to S,M,L,XL, which argues about the modern city as much as about buildings.

See the 22 buildings ↓