PROGETTARE L’ECCELLENZA: L’ARCHITETTURA INCONTRA IL MANAGEMENT

l’Architettura incontra il Management’ organizzato dall’Area Organizzazione e Personale e dall’Area Strategia e Imprenditorialità della SDA Bocconi School of Management

with Guest: Rem Koolhaas, founder of Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)

March 16_2011

Last night Rem Koolhaas, founder of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, opened the series of events scheduled for the Workshop on ‘Management in Architecture’ at the University of the Bocconi in Milan. The Workshop, aimed at increasing the level of coordination between Project Management and Architecture in large architectural projects, is looking to amplify this field currently lacking in Italy as compared to levels of integration at the global level.

Ever the social critic, Koolhaas took this opportunity to present the work of OMA and a histogram of his career and to question the current state of Global Architecture and Urbanism.

He demonstrated his ability to contemporarily inflate and deflate the importance of OMA in relationship to the current international architectural scene with a natural and remarkable mix of humility and ego.

Asked to present his point of view on the relationship between management and Architecture, Koolhaas not surprisingly followed through with a deeper reading of Architecture, an approach evidently unpracticed in Italy since the Radical groups of Superstudio, Archizoom, Pettena et al.

Although invited by the Bocconi to discuss the relationship between Management and Architecture, the invitation was obviously aimed at demonstrating a deeper relationship between Architecture and Society at large. Koolhaas, Journalist, Anthropologist, Sociologist, Economist, AS Architect, discussed clearly how Architecture and Architectural practices are interdependent on the current cultural condition and Political climate from which they spring and in which they interact.

Koolhaas did not hesitate to criticize, but never denigrated the notion of  Management and Architecture as brethren (as some in the Workshop introduction did). Instead he sincerely applauded the attempt to cross borders, but warned of the need to cross ALL borders, not just the ones that lead to instant gratification.

As always, Koolhaas demonstrated his commitment to the ‘non-ideal’ and respect for complex systems and cycles, and the relationship between current affairs and Artistic and Architectural production.