Tag: OMA

"Can we now say that OMA has grown up?"
– Hugh Pearman


Dezeen Wire: architecture critic Hugh Pearman has expressed admiration for the mature and understated nature of Dutch practice OMA's design for a new headquarters for merchant bank Rothschild on a sensitive site near the Bank of England – Hugh Pearman

Pearman suggests that it is "a miracle that a ‘foreign’ firm of architects with a reputation for the outrageous won the 2005 competition to redevelop the site," but describes their approach to this project as "well-mannered, corporate, svelte, positively self-effacing."

The area's history demanded a low-key approach and Pearman adds that, although he wishes the building "wasn’t on quite such good behaviour," its response to the brief "makes the right urbanistic moves and is enlivened by some flashes of wit."

See interviews with OMA partners on Dezeen Screen and all of our stories about OMA here.

"Without a tighter union, Europe will
disintegrate"- Rem Koolhaas


Dezeen Wire: in an interview with Farah Nayeri for Bloomberg Businessweek, architect Rem Koolhaas describes the European Union as "an incomplete machine" and claims that it will "disintegrate" unless political leaders complete the task of integration begun when the EU was founded.

Koolhaas also talks about working in China, the global workforce currently inhabiting the countryside and his former employee, Zaha Hadid, who he says was "a very independent and massively talented person from the beginning."

Dezeen spoke to Rem Koolhaas and other partners from his practice OMA at the opening of OMA/Progress, an exhibition at the Barbican art gallery in London. You can see the videos now on Dezeen Screen.