The Generic

City
by Rem Koolhaas
 Rem Koolhaas
REMMENT LUCAS “REM” KOOLHAAS
Born: 17 November 1944
Rotterdam, Netherlands

Nationality: Dutch

Occupation: Architect
Architectural Theorist
Urbanist

Koolhaas is widely regarded as one of the most important architectural thinkers and
urbanists of his generation. In 2000, Rem Koolhaas won the PRITZKERPRIZE. in 2008,
Time put him in their top 100 of The World's Most Influential People.

He is also the mentor of Zaha Hadid.

1. INTRODUCTION
2. STATISTICS
3. GENERAL
4. AIRPORT
5. POPULATION
6. URBANISM
7. POLITICS
8. SOCIOLOGY
9. QUARTERS
10. PROGRAM
11. ARCHITECTURE
12. GEOGRAPHY
13. IDENTITY
14. HISTORY
15. INFRASTRUCTURE
16. CULTURE
17. END
 1
INTRODUCTION
“... As the world become more globalized and
information exchanges are so fast, many cities in the
world are trying to position themselves apart from other
cities to attracr different resources such as INVESTMENT
and MANPOWER...”
 “
CITY + IDENTITY = DESTRUCTIVE
“ ...Identity is like a mousetrap in
which more and more mice have “... The stronger the identity, more
to share the original bait, and it imprisons, the more it resists
which, on closer inspection, may expansion, interpretation, renewal,
have been empty for centuries...” contradiction...”

“... Identity centralizes; it insists on essence, a

point...”
 ◎ The Generic City is the city liberated from
the captivity of center, from the straitjacket
of identity.
◎ The Generic City breaks with this destructive
cycle of dependency: it is nothing but a
reflection of present need and present
ability.
“... it is the city without history. it is big
enough for everybody. it is easy. it does not
need maintenance...
...if it gets too small it just expands. if it gets
old it just self-destructs and renews..
... it is equally exciting - or unexciting -
everywhere...”
Big concept

2. STATISTICS
 “...The definitive move
“...The Generic City has
away from the
grown dramatically over
countryside, from
the past few decades.
agriculture, to the city is
Not only has its size
not a Move to the city
increased, its numbers
as wew know it: it is a
have too...”
move to the Generic City.
..”
3. GENERAL
The Generic The Generic The Generic City
has easy phone
City is what is City is fractal, numbers, not the
left after an endless resistant ten-
large sections repitition of figure front-lobe
of urban life the same crunchers of the
traditional city but
crossed over simple smoother versions.
to cyberspace. structural Its main attraction
module. is its anomie.
4. AIRPORT

“...Once manifestations of
ultimate neutrality, AIRPORTS
now are among the mist singular,
characteristic elements of
Generic City, its strongest vehicle
of differentiation...”
 Together, airports contains populations of
• In the Millions - plus the largest daily work force.
completeness of
their facilities,
they are like
quarters of the
Generic City.

• The date/age of
the Generic City
can be
reconstructed
from a close
reading of its
airport's
geometry.
 5. POPULATION

The Generic City is

seriously multiracial, on
average 8% black, 12% The Generic City is
white, 27% Hispanic, Gray always founded by
37% Chinese/Asian, 6% people on the move,
indeterminate, 10% poised to move on.
other. Not only
multiracial, also
multicultural
6. URBANISM

The great originality of the Generic City is simpy

to ABANDON what doesn't work - what has
outlived its use - to break up the blacktop of
idealism with the jackhammers of realism and to
accept whatever grows in its place.

Generic city only accomodates...

1. PRIMORDIAL
2. FUTURISTIC
The best definition of the aesthetic of the Generic

City: “free style”

“...Specific cities still seriously debate the mistakes of the
architects.... but Generic City simply enjoys the benefits of
their inventions: decks, bridges, tunnels, motorways...”
7. POLITICS
“...The Generic City resists the DICTATORIAL...”

- The Generic City has a (sometimes distant)

relationship with a more or less authoritarian
regime - local or national
 8. SOCIOLOGY
“...The Generic City is Sociology, happening...”

the generic city is

loosening every structure
that made anything
coalesce in the past
 9. QUARTERS
“...there is always a quarter called LIPSERVICE, where a Minimum
of the past is RESERVED...”

◎ LIPSERVICE - also called Afterthought,

Waterfront, Too Late, 42nd Street,
simply the Village, or even
Underground - is an elaborate
mythic operation: it celebrates the
past only the recently conceived can.
It is a machine.
 10. PROGRAM
It describes a city of ten million all locked in their
rooms, a kind of reverse animation - density
imploded.

Offices -(converted to)- Homes

11. ARCHITECTURE
“ ... THE Built at incredible The style of choice
ARCHITECTURE OF speed, and is POSTMODERN,
THE GENERIC CITY conceived at even and will always
IS BY DEFINITION more incredible remain so.
BEAUTIFUL...” pace.
 “... it is a
12. GEOGRAPHY concept in a
state of
migration...”

The Generic City is in a warmer than usual

climate; it is on its way to the south - toward the
equator - away from the mess that the north
made of the second millenium.
 There is a calculated redundancy
in the iconography that the
Generic City adopts.
13. IDENTITY
Its identity is like a MANTRA
 14. HISTORY

“...The Generic City, like a sketch which is never

elaborated, is not improved but abandoned...”
15. INFRASTRUCTURE

Infrastructures, which were mutually reinforcing and totalizing,

are becoming more and more competitive and local; they no
longer pretend to create functioning wholes but now spin off
functional entities.
 16. CULTURE

The Generic City is like a dating

agency: it efficiently matches supply
and demand.
 “
17. END

The progress, identity, architecture, the city and the

streets are the things of the past:

"Relief.... It's over. That is the story of the city. The city
is no longer. We can leave the theatre now... "
 "People can inhabit anything. And they can be
miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything
More and I more think that architecture has
nothing to do with it. Of course, that's both
liberating and alarming. But the generic city, the
general urban condition, is happening
everywhere, and just the fact that it occurs in such
enormous quantities most mean that it's habitable.
Architecture can't do anything that the culture
doesn't.
 "... We all complain that we are confronted by
urban environments that are completely similar.
We say we want to create beauty, identity, quality,
singularity. And yet, maybe in truth these cities
that we have are designed. Maybe their very
characterlessness provided the best context for
living..."

-Rem Koolhaas
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