Delirious New York

I’ve heard of the text Delirious New York multiple times before. Someone described it as Rem’s take on New York as a city whose development over the years has lacked a consistent and concrete ideology. Honestly, I quite like the writing style of the extract on Raymond Hood. Through Rem’s narrative style we see that Hood’s ultimate arrival at the 1950 Manhattan Plan was not through a necessarily linear path.

I was also able to connect Mies’ approach to the design of the Seagram building with Raymond Hood’s City of Towers. Hood’s suggestion that strips of land on the perimeter of the site be left undeveloped so as to create opportunities for the facades of the building to be supplied with more windows is very similar to Mies’ idea of providing space to the public in order to be allowed to build higher. What I found interesting in both cases was the appeal to capitalism that these ingenious solutions made (Hood’s solution allowed for more rooms with access to light and air which enabled landlords to charge higher prices, while Mies’ solution allowed for building higher thus increasing rentable space).

I had some difficulties with the Typical Plan. I have heard that Rem Koolhaas is someone who has often viewed the architectural profession itself with some skepticism. I know that my last blogpost seemed verbose and maybe even pretentious. Honestly what I was expressing was my sincere confusion and frustrations over comprehending architectural theory. As a civil engineering student, I am often required to peruse through structural design codes that have been arrived at by extensive research and verified by an extensive network of professionals. Comprehension is possible because the concepts are concise (not necessarily simple). There are no extreme assertions in an attempt to somehow present a certain design guideline as totally unifying. 

I do understand what he means by the typical plan (it is even ironic that a concept which was meant to generate endless possibilities in planning, the domino house, has been used to create generic results). Somewhere in the text however he says that the typical plan is a product of the New World (I am guessing he meant America). And I might be wrong (after all I am just a student), but from my basic knowledge of European architectural history it seems that the typical plan has been around for centuries (the basilicas and palaces) and from what I have garnered architects  have mostly only be able to think extensively in 3D with the recent developments in technology (I may also be wrong). Vidler also states that the first typology (during the neoclassical period which we also discussed in class) involved the stripping down of complexities in contemporary architecture in order to arrive at some fundamental concept (which can then be generically reproduced multiple times- Claude Nicholas Ledoux’s building types). I am just confused as by these extreme assertions in Koolhaas’ work (as a student trying to connect the dots it can be frustrating). He  says  ”Typical Plan is Western. There is no equivalent in any other culture”– something which I think is a very broad assertion in a discipline which has for the most part highly been Eurocentric in nature (I have, however, heard that Rem does do extensive research across the world, even in Nigeria where he studied daily patterns in dense urban centers).

I am not trying to criticize or ramble for the sake of it. I am just simply confused.

Koolhaas. 1978. Delirious New York.

Koolhaas. 1985. Typical Plan.