S M L XL: Second Edition

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Editorial reviews

Product Description
S,M,L,XL presents a selection of the remarkable visionary design work produced by the Dutch firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture (O.M.A.) and its acclaimed founder, Rem Koolhaas, in its first twenty years, along with a variety of insightful, often poetic writings. The inventive collaboration between Koolhaas and designer Bruce Mau is a graphic overture that weaves together architectural projects, photos and sketches, diary excerpts, personal travelogues, fairy tales, and fables, as well as critical essays on contemporary architecture and society.

The book's title is also its framework: projects and essays are arranged according to scale. While Small and Medium address issues ranging from the domestic to the public, Large focuses on what Koolhaas calls "the architecture of Bigness." Extra-Large features projects at the urban scale, along with the important essay "What Ever Happened to Urbanism?" and other studies of the contemporary city. Running throughout the book is a "dictionary" of an adventurous new Koolhaasian language -- definitions, commentaries, and quotes from hundreds of literary, cultural, artistic, and architectural sources.

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Amazon.com Review
This extraordinary, massive, and mind-boggling 1,300-page book combines essays, manifestos, diaries, fairy tales, travelogues, a cycle of meditations on the contemporary city--and complex illustration--with work produced by Koolhaas' Office for Metropolitan Architecture over the past twenty years. This almost overwhelming accumulation of words and images illuminates the condition of architecture today--its splendors and miseries--exploring and revealing the corrosive effects of politics, context, the economy, and globalization. In some ways, this is the "Medium is the Message" of 1990s architectural discourse: guaranteed to be hugely influential in the coming decades, but grossly misunderstood by those who have not read it. The core arguments it makes about metropolitan architecture--accepting complexity and lack of centralized control--are similar to those of Kevin Kelly's Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World. Very highly recommended.

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Customer reviews

review by: gigi 83 date: 2008-11-09 rating:
urbanism clasics
I am grateful and happy to have in my presence one of the greatest urbanism clasic books of 20th century. Remarkable book. I learn a lot! Rem is outstanding and extraordinary.

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review by: date: 2008-09-01 rating:
not gotten the book yet
please, i have not gotten my book yet. give me an information about it. Glenda

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review by: date: 2008-08-15 rating:
"Don't judge a book by its cover" by Lira Luis, AIA, RIBA, LEED-AP
I received a copy of this book as a christmas gift. As an architect, I tell you the guy who gave it to me scored some major brownie points from me that holiday.

Rem Koolhaas defies tradition both in his architecture and his literature. He is foremost a journalist before fully shifting gears to architecture. In this book, he engages the reader by making you realize that while an immediate impression of intimidation engulfs you at first glance of its sheer density, once you start flipping the pages, you realize that you don't have to follow any order in reading it. There are no rules or boundaries on how you read the book: you can flip, you can toss, you can flicker, and in each and every method you will find amusement with the visual eye candy the images, graphics, and text, this book gives you. Nice addition to any architecture book collection/library/coffee table.

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review by: Brian date: 2007-06-29 rating:
Browse someone else's copy
An acquaintance had a copy of this so I looked through it during a dinner party. Blah. Bah! It's full of facetious, egotistical monoliths (from the edifices to the book itself) that offer nothing but themselves to the rest of the urban experience. Le Corbusier of the late 20th century. Gawd, I hope Koolhaas doesn't take that as a compliment.


review by: date: 2007-05-08 rating:
Uma boa aquisição!
Realmente atendeu as expectativas. Um belíssimo livro em um bom preço e no prazo de entrega informado.

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