The Brave New World of Rem Koolhaas

Abstract

In 1972, Rem Koolhaas presented his thesis project at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. The work was a collaboration of four authors: Koolhaas himself, architect Elia Zenghelis, artist Madelon Vriesendorp, and painter Zoe Zenghelis. Titled Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, it used a pictographic storyboard to present an alternative scenario for the contemporary metropolis. The text, illustrated by eighteen drawings, watercolours and collages, envisioned the creation of a restricted (albeit expansive) enclave in central London. The new urban tissue, protected from any external influence by high walls, was designed to cut through the existing structure of the city, offering the metropolis an alternative – and superior – social environment. With this project, Rem Koolhaas joined a group of visionaries, and the work itself ultimately was a catalyst for the formation of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Studying Exodus, one cannot help noticing a number of literary parallels. The title explicitly refers to the Second Book of the Biblical Old Testament, but the design itself also bears some resemblances to the utopian novel The New Atlantis by Francis Bacon and Aldous Huxley’s notorious dystopia Brave New World, written over 300 years later. It is sure, however, that all three had a tremendous impact on shaping the mind-set of generations of readers. Drawing on Koolhaas’s merging of architecture and literature, the author seeks to offer an interdisciplinary approach to Exodus that would echo the multifaceted spirit of Koolhaas’s work. The aim of this paper is, therefore, to show that interpreting Exodus alongside these three texts allows us to see it in a new light. The author argues that the literary context allows for a more comprehensive approach to Koolhaas’s Exodus, making it possible to see him as a future “prophet of a new modern architecture”.