ArchDaily has teamed up with the The Berlage to provide exclusive access to their newly digitized archive of lectures. The Berlage is a postgraduate international institute where some of the world's most renowned architects, thinkers, designers, photographers and other professionals come to share, exchange and critically reflect upon their ideas. Over the last 23 years, The Berlage has built up an extensive lecture archive of seminal lectures. Thanks to this partnership now we can now share them with you. ArchDaily is committed to providing inspiration and knowledge to architects all over the world, so please look forward to monthly publications of these lectures during the coming year, which include talks by Rem Koolhaas, Jacques Herzog, Toyo Ito, and more.
This 1998 lecture reflects Rem Koolhaas' desire to initiate a direct meeting of the critic and the architect, so it's no surprise that the he called upon Kenneth Frampton to join him in conversation. (Koolhaas--with his tendency toward polemic, hyperbolic statements--even refers to Frampton as "maybe the only critic left.") The two spend a significant time debating the role of the critic, often disagreeing and playfully challenging the other's theories.
Recorded at a time when the Office for Metropolitan Architecture was working on the Educatorium, the Maison à Bordeaux and the recently completed De Rotterdam, the conversation also delves into discussions of China's emergent urbanization (which was, in 1998, still relatively young) as well as "the star system."
