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‘ON HOLD’, OMA AT THE BRITISH SCHOOL IN ROME
Rome, 3 May, 2011 – As the sixth event of The British School’s programme “Three Cities in Flux, an investigation into urban regeneration in London, Milan and Rome”, OMA Partner Reinier de Graaf will present the lecture and exhibition “On Hold” on Wednesday.
The exhibition will show ten of OMA’s Masterplanning commissions which are now either on-hold or discontinued: an urban regeneration project in White City, London, a project for the ‘Nuova Bovisa’ science city in Milan, and a selection of projects in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Conceived in the virtual space of the computer, and with no imminent prospect of realization, these projects remain virtual in every sense. By retroactively creating physical originals, this exhibition hopes to make the virtual tangible. Prints on canvas, paper or card show the imagery as if dug up from some dusty archive – history with a message for the future, looking back as a way of looking forward.
The lecture will highlight the sometimes difficult role that architects play in masterplanning as they negotiate the forces of the private sector, political pressures, the declining power of the public sector, and the severe economic crisis. Through a body of work primarily known through its imagery, de Graaf will reflect on the rehabilitation of urbanism as the ‘other product’ of the construction boom, as well as the implications these plans have for the future.
“What will be next? The current time is mainly one of questions. Will the pre-crisis boom go into the history books as an aberration? Or, will the previous building boom prove only a precursor of things to come? Is ‘On Hold’ merely a convenient euphemism to keep hope alive (for clients and architects alike), a shared inability to face the facts, or does it really only signify the pause it seems to insist on, a coma from which these enterprises will one day awake?” Reinier de Graaf
The Architecture Programme British School at Rome curated by Marina Engel presents “On Hold” at The British School at Rome, Via Gramsci 61, from 4th May through 25th May 2011. Opening times are from Tuesday to Saturday from 17.00 to 19.30 pm
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OMA is a leading international partnership practicing contemporary architecture, urbanism and cultural analysis. The counterpart to OMA’s architectural practice is AMO, a design and research studio based in the company’s Rotterdam office. While OMA remains dedicated to the realization of buildings and masterplans, AMO operates in areas beyond the traditional boundaries of architecture, including media, politics, sociology, technology, fashion, curating, publishing, and graphic design.
OMA is led by seven partners: Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, David Gianotten, and managing partner Victor van der Chijs, and operates offices in Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Beijing, and New York. |
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