Proximity: The Unfolding of a Koolhaasian Hypothesis in Book Space and Architectural Space

Abstract

Proximity and contradiction, understood as strategic and productive devices analogous to cinematic montage, figure prominently in Rem Koolhaas's thinking, writing, and making. He expresses them in rhetoric (oxymora), in architecture (cross-programming), in graphic technique (collage), and in references (cadavre exquis). S,M,L,XL appropriates ordering systems, such as taxonomies and lists, and redirects these to produce new meaning through proximity and fertile contradiction between projects, hypotheses, essays, dictionary entries, and reference images. Antitheses are not resolved, but rather integrated into an all-inclusive book-world. S,M,L,XL strategically exploits proximity to expound on, as well as embody, Koolhaas's complex and original conception of context, woven from its physical, temporal, epistemological, and autobiographical dimensions.