On Bigness and the Problem of Urban Form

Abstract

The term ‘bigness’ refers to large-scale, mixed-use buildings and was introduced into the architectural vocabulary by Rem Koolhaas. Contrary to Koolhaas’s focus on the ‘generic city’ and the Asian context, this essay explores the role that large-scale buildings may play in establishing a dialogue between new areas of urban expansion and the formal and typological characteristics of European cities. By looking at three designs by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron in the light of the early twentieth-century debate on urban design and the skyscraper in Europe, the problem of bigness will be seen as a continuation of a discussion on urban form and type spanning more than one hundred years. Bigness will thus be seen as a tool capable of reworking and even continuing existing urban formal types, even if devoid of ideological and symbolic meaning.