We appreciated reading de Monchaux’s essay not least because it helped reinforce our own optimistic opinion about the Office for Metropolitan Architecture’s expansion to the New Museum, which we previously articulated in a review for The Brooklyn Rail. It must be acknowledged that de Monchaux’s writing is exceptionally sharp. But is it convincing?
He reads Rem Koolhaas’s self-described Calvinism as a belief in predestination. That is, if the form is already determined, by God or by zoning law, no one is responsible for the consequences. But perhaps Koolhaas’s “involuntary inevitability” is not to be taken so literally. It is possible for a building to both impose against and defer to the relentless forces of reality. To dance between confrontation, acceptance, and denial.
Who is doing the most harm in the built environment? Certainly not OMA nor any architect you can name. The offices that build prisons, data centers, and other infrastructural buildings of mass human harm and climate impact are faceless. They avoid responsibility by becoming invisible to our cultur…
