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Title: S,M,L,Xl by Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Mau, Hans Werlemann ISBN: 1-885254-86-5 Publisher: The Monacelli Press Pub. Date: May, 1998 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $75.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (21 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Perfect desert island fare, huge range, its own Web site!
Comment: The book's designer, Bruce Mau, has as much to do with its impact as the famed architect author, Rem Koolhaas. This is a "drop-in-anytime" book. Open any page, and let yourself go on the main story, squint at the working drawings, cruise the side margins gleaned from a multitude of literary and professional sources.
I compare it to a rich Web site... you enter anywhere and link to new topics and images in a surprising and stimulating way. As a personal challenge, I attacked the book in the most plebeian fashion- from cover to cover, an effort spanning several months, hence true desert island satisfaction.
Certain of the stories have been reviewed by others as fairy tales, and I did read them as such. Imagine my surprise reading other architectural histories to find they were virtually true! The graphically-assisted view of project relationships is welcome to any project planner.
After a dose of Koolhaas' generic city, you will see your world through new eyes. Despite its uncomfortable bulk, S M L XL contains enormous energy and insights, and is not for the architect or urban planner only. Also, despite its enormous bulk, it is well bound and will not disintegrate as you lug it all over in the significant amount of time it will take you to finish it! Compliments to Monacelli for publishing it, and risking our tolerance for a behemoth edition.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Big Mega-Mega
Comment: S, M, L, XL, love it or hate it, is seminal; Rem Koolhaas is one of the most important cultural figures on the planet at this time. S, M, L, XL serves as memoir, manifesto, documentation, diagnosis, prognosis, prophecy, plan, agenda, & propoganda -- local and/or global historicocriticophilosophical montage, collage, and barrage. The book is beautiful. Bruce Mau has indeed "given form" to the silver juggernaut. The cover, the illustrations, typographies, photos, and text come together in the manner of a Tristam Shandy or Finnegan's Wake. S, M, L, XL as literature is a commentary on the condition we call "modernity". Koolhaas seeks an understanding of both his profession and the chaotic dynamics of the world his profession leaves structures in. Koolhaas is at home in the chaos, and like Pynchon in fiction, or Antonioni in film, is remarkably detached and involved in the process at the same time(maybe this is false, but Koolhaas as a writer and architect is an auteur possessed by genius, and S, M, L, XL is both comforting and uncanny at the same time). S,M,L,XL is proof that Koolhaas is aware of the increasingly global nature of the architect's profession. I am fascinated by the concept and practice of traveling, and activity Koolhaas knows all too well as a traveler in the discourse and practice of "modernity". Essays within S,M,L,XL such as "Islam After Einstein" and "Singapore Songlines:Thirty Years of Tabula Rasa" show his knowledge of the increasingly important relation between the East and West, and the implications involved. Perhaps the most brilliant essay/manifesto in the book is one of the most recently written, "The Generic City" which questions notions of progress in history and the archeology(ies) of modernism. One photo in the back of S,M,L, XL is particularly haunting in its image and message. It shows a larger-than-life and late Deng Xiaoping in the foreground of a painting of a coastal city, rais! ing his right hand gently to his people looking at the mural. The insert reads, "Two billion people won't be wrong." We'll find out. This is where much of Koolhaas' importance lies, his insight into what the great comparative historian and Sinophile Joseph Needham called the "Grand Titration". S,M,L, XL must endure, though it will not be read by the masses. It transcends (a dangerous word to use) architectural writing. Anyone concerned about the future of both the arts and sciences and those who wish to gain a greater understanding of our relation to our environment(s) must read this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: S,M,L,XL
Comment: Possibly one of the many great books on architecture of today with plenty of references and clean graphics. A must have for all architecs or if you just want a wonderfully beautiful book for your home or office.
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Title: Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan by Rem Koolhaas ISBN: 1885254008 Publisher: The Monacelli Press Pub. Date: December, 1997 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Mutations by Rem Koolhaas, Stefano Boeri, Sanford Kwinter, Nadia Tazi, Daniela Fabricius ISBN: 8495273519 Publisher: Actar Editorial Pub. Date: 15 March, 2001 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping / Harvard Design School Project on the City 2 by Chuihua Judy Chung, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tsung Leong ISBN: 3822860476 Publisher: TASCHEN America Llc Pub. Date: April, 2002 List Price(USD): $50.00 |
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Title: Immaterial/Ultramaterial: Architecture, Design, and Materials (Millennium Matters) by Toshiko Mori ISBN: 0807615080 Publisher: George Braziller Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $23.50 |
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Title: Parallax by Steven Holl ISBN: 1568982615 Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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