This document provides information on several projects by OMA, Rem Koolhaas' architecture firm. It summarizes key details about the Casa da Musica concert hall in Portugal, the Seattle Central Library, and the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing. It also describes the think tank AMO and its investigations into topics beyond architecture.

1. OMA - AMOTOPICSOMA - REM KOOLHAASCASA DA MUSICA - PORTUGALSEATTLE CENTRAL LIBRARY - USACCTV HEADQUARTERS - CHINA AMO - THINK TANKPRESENTED BY ARTHUR MAKHNEVICH

2. OMA – OFFICE for METROPOLITAN ARCHITECTUREWas founded in 1975 by Rem Koolhaas and Elia Zenghelis with Madelon Vriesendorp and Zoe Zengelis.Leading International partnership practicing contemporary architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis. With offices in Europe, North America & Asia, OMA/AMO employs a staff of around 220 and more than 35 nationalities: architects, researchers, designers, model makers, industrial designers and graphic designers.REM KOOLHAAS - ARCHITECTBorn : 11/17/1944 Rotterdam, NetherlandsStudied scriptwriting and journalism before becoming an architect. Studied architecture in Cornell University, NY.Became famous after winning a number of international competitions.Harvard University Professor.Published influential books about architecture and his design approach.Won Pritzker Prize in year 2000.This book gives an insight into the restless, ingenuities thinking of the office through an era when architecture became a mere bystander to the explosion of the market economy and globalization. (1995)Documents the symbiotic relationship between its mutant metropolitan culture and the unique architecture to which it gave rise.

3. With every project OMA goes to the roots of the ideaWhat is a library, what is a shop, what is an office building, why does it have to be this way, why can't it be that way? LOGIC IS THE KEY

4. CASA DA MUSICA – PORTO, PORTUGALCompleted: 2005 Program: 22,000 m2 including grand auditorium with 1,200 seats, small auditorium with space for 350 seats, rehearsal rooms with recording facilities, music shop, computer and educational facilities, VIP room, restaurant, roof terrace and parking (600 cars)

5. RE-INVENTING CONCERT HALLThe idea was to create a very public building, where public will be engaged both outside and inside of the building. Throughout architectural history, the enclosed shoe-box concert hall has been the ideal acoustic shape, but rather than to struggle with this shape, OMA decided to excavate / eliminate the show box from the building (as illustrated), by doing so, they opened up the relationship of the concert hall interior to the exterior of the building. To further strengthen this relationship, they put a window in the opening created by the excavation, this window has view of the city while you listen to the concert.

6. Redefining the relationship between the hallowed interior and the general public outside.

7. Grand Auditorium has corrugated glass facades at either end that open the hall to the city, and offer Porto itself as a dramatic backdrop for performances.

8. A distinctive faceted form, made of white concrete, which remains solid and believable in an age of too many icons.

9. There is deliberately no large central foyer; instead a continuous public route connects the spaces around the Grand Auditorium by means of stairs, platforms and escalators: the building becomes an architectural adventure.

11. SEATTLE CENTRAL LIBRARY – SEATTLE, WACompleted: 2004Program: Total 38,300m2, including 33,700m2 reading room, book spiral, mixing chamber, meeting platform, living room, staff floor, children's collection, auditorium, and 4,600m2 of parkingBudget: $111.9 million

12. ANALYZING THE PROGRAMIn this design, OMA tried to create a library that is no longer exclusively dedicated to the books, but rather as an information store where all potent forms of media, new and old, are presented equally and legibly.They analyzed the program given to them by the librarians and the client, then they identified which parts of the program are stable (safe for the future), and parts that are unstable (books in the future?), it’s a logical process.The building in a way is a diagram, vigorous planning was applied to fixed stable areas first, such as parking, staff, meeting, book spiral and the headquarters. After that, public areas were integrated into the diagram, such as the kids, living room, mixing chamber and the reading room.

13. The fixed platforms are wrapped with a curtain wall, creating activity areas in between.

15. An open public space, where people can do other activities besides reading books.

17. THE BOOK SPIRALOMA wanted to create a continues experience, where library’s ever expending collection of books will be uninterrupted by floors. By creating slopped ramps, from level 6 to 9, they were able to achieve that experience.

18. STAIRCASES - ESCALATORSThe experience elaborated for the travelers on the escalators attempts to actively engage with our current mode of perception by offering several views of artworks during their ascent and descent, as well as some glimpses into the crossed spaces.

19. CCTV HEADQUARTERS – BEIJING, CHINACompleted: 2004Program:CCTV: total 473,000m2: administration 64,800m2, multi-purpose: 54,900m2, news broadcasting 65,000m2, broadcasting 31,800m2, production 105,400m2, loop 11,100m2, services (canteens, gym) 22,500m2, parking 59,700m2. Budget: 5 billion RMB (€850 million)

20. RE-INVENTING THE SKYSCRAPEROMA’S Largest project to date, combines the entire process of TV-making, administration, production, broadcasting, into a single loop of interconnected activity.This project was commissioned at the moment of serious dilemma, right after 9/11, this played a big role on this design."How can you make a high-rise building that's not about height? How can you make a high-rise building that can define a place rather than simply occupy it?"

21. EVERYTHING IS IN THE LOOPAll the function CCTV China Central Television Headquarters are contained within a loop. From film-making to broadcasting, administration and to creative activities, there is a continues sense of direction. Where the workers are able to interact with each other. The main point of the loop is that there is no separate organization, all the parts of the media are connected together in a loop of activity.

22. ENGINEERING MASTERPIECEThe ambition was also to engineer a complex structure in China, paving a way for the future of construction.The physical model shows stress points in red, the more stress the more structure was put into the façade, the less stress the more open spaces. The construction of this tower is an engineering masterpiece of the 21st century.

23. CCTV HEADQUARTERS – BEIJING, CHINACompleted: 2004Program:CCTV: total 473,000m2: administration 64,800m2, multi-purpose: 54,900m2, news broadcasting 65,000m2, broadcasting 31,800m2, production 105,400m2, loop 11,100m2, services (canteens, gym) 22,500m2, parking 59,700m2. Budget: 5 billion RMB (€850 million)

24. The structure "breaks every single building code in China," a beaming Scheeren says, but still won the official go-ahead for construction. "The approval authorities were not able to judge if it could function, so the government formed an expert group of the 13 most senior structural engineers — the people who wrote the codes!"

25. CCTV HEADQUARTERS – BEIJING, CHINACompleted: 2004Program:CCTV: total 473,000m2: administration 64,800m2, multi-purpose: 54,900m2, news broadcasting 65,000m2, broadcasting 31,800m2, production 105,400m2, loop 11,100m2, services (canteens, gym) 22,500m2, parking 59,700m2. Budget: 5 billion RMB (€850 million)At 750 feet it seems comparatively puny, but "You can only lose that race," says Ole Scheeren, the German architect-in-charge of the new CCTV headquarters. Instead, Scheeren, a partner with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, says they reinvented the traditional skyscraper by turning it into "a tube folded in space."

26. "The project is one of the most visionary since modernism and beyond. It pushes the limits of architecture, not just formally but, more importantly, socially, culturally, and technologically through the reinvention of the tall building. The various functions of buildings, their spatial articulation and organization, have been completely rethought to provoke a new kind of collective construct with the potential for social and urban change."– Tina did Carlo, assistant curator of architecture and design at the Museum for Modern Art (MoMA)CCTV HEADQUARTERS – BEIJING, CHINACompleted: 2004Program:CCTV: total 473,000m2: administration 64,800m2, multi-purpose: 54,900m2, news broadcasting 65,000m2, broadcasting 31,800m2, production 105,400m2, loop 11,100m2, services (canteens, gym) 22,500m2, parking 59,700m2. Budget: 5 billion RMB (€850 million)

27. In 1999, Koolhaas founded AMO, a think tank within OMA dedicated to producing non-architectural work including exhibitions.The formation of AMO was the result of Koolhaas and OMA’s realization that knowledge and expertise accumulated in the development of large-scale architectural projects, even uncompleted ones, was the valuable resource worth developingAMO has become one of the most visible and original knowledge based design practices in the world today

28. INVESTIGATIONAMO tries to investigate and analyze current issues in architecture and the world, by looking at many different variables such as the economy, political and social events.In a way, through this research and knowledge they are trying to almost predict the future architectural career, and also integrate their research into their projects.They are mostly about research and investigation, an architectural think-tank of the office.

29. RE-INVENTING THE EUROPEAN FLAGThe barcode elongates and merges the flags of current EU member states into a single colorful symbol. It intends to represent the essence of the European project, showing Europe as the common effort of different nation states, with each state retaining its own cultural identity while sharing the advantages of acting together.

30. PRADA CATWALK 2012The audience is organized in a perfect field. 600 visitors sit on individual blue foam blocks distributed over a 1.5 x 1.5 meter grid spread through the entire hall. Models flow through the highly-organized audience, following multiple choreographed routes that allow maximum visibility. The field is a commentary on the audience, transformed from indeterminate crowd to regimented, possibly anxious, isolated individuals. Each guest becomes a challenge for the new fashion; each confrontation becomes highly personal…

31. TRANSFORMAMO designed this mobile exhibition space for Prada, which requested the space to be used for four different events. Koolhaas explains that they tried to combine those four events into one fixed space, but it didn’t work. Instead they re-thought the idea where they would put all those events into one structure, which could be turned and flipped by the construction cranes to change an event from fashion show to a movie theater, and so on.

32. THE ENDSTARCHITECT IS BADRem Koolhaas is deeply uncomfortable by the title of "starchitect", he says, that an architect has become less important due to this title, he hopes this title will disappear soon.