LECTURE 01

REM KOOLHAAS

Delirious New York: A retroactive manifesto for manhattan

New york is the most populous city in the United States which is great, astounding and miraculous place. New York—what visions of magnitude, variety and power the name New York conjures up for human comprehension. Buildings that house whole cities in themselves. We can say that New York is a wonderful city that made up my mind of all the exhilarating, diverse and inspiring things are here. It’s one of the hardest cities you’ll ever live in but if you survive you’ll never be able to live anywhere else.

New York City

This article is written about the bigness, power, drama and congestion, all of which, in Koolhaas's view are crucial to the city's identity. Congestion is in fact the vital key—it is the excitement and tension of crowding that are the leitmotifs for everything about New York, Koolhaas believes, inspiring both New York’s physical form and the way of life of its inhabitants.This also means that architecture generated the culture. Our site, Kajang is also developed gradually. Through my observation during weekends, the amount of transports coming to kajang are never ceased and there are more people taking the bus. I predict that kajang will developed into a new busy town with the culture and way of people's life now.

The City of Captive Globe

Through the simultaneous explosion of human density and an invasion of new technologies in New York, Manhattan became a mythical laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle: the Culture of Congestion and its architecture. This culture with the city block being the only source of organization amidst the chaos of rapid construction and change also reflects city of Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia now which is developed tremendously with high towers and skyscraper. Our bus stop near apartment Kajang Indah also have the culture of congestion during weekends compare to weekdays. One of the reason is the route of the bus is going to the MRT Kajang. The residents prefer going shopping or travelling around by free bus or cars during weekends.

Manhattan is testing which the entire city became a factory of man-made experience. We can see through the construction of some of its most well-known landmarks such as Central Park, Rockefeller Center and UN Building, there are mostly arranged or constructed in grid and repetitive that is prefabricated system. The Industralised Building System (IBS) in Malaysia is similar to the manhattanism that the city could be surrounded by the prefabricated items like the blocks in the future. Moreover, my understanding of Manhattanism is that it represents a reality in which extraordinary things happen when metropolitan density becomes extreme. In case of Manhattan, this effect is reinforced by a fixed space, on a micro level by the grid that surrounds the blocks.

Sunday at Sungai Chua Market

Koolhaas suggests that the “delirious” architecture of New York was irrational—fantasy was more important to the designers of New York’s great early skyscrapers than form following function. Koolhaas sets up styles as characters in a drama: New York is a flamboyant city whose architectural spirit is threatened by the powers of sober rationalism. I think fantasy become vital will increase the image of a city is no doubt but I still insist the function of the space and user experience must prior to the building form in design.

In a nutshell, instead of imposing some type of hyper rationalist, efficient, Utopian ideology on Manhattan, Koolhaas suggest that signs are essentially not read within an enlightenment sentiment anymore. It is about a flow of humanist desire. This may become a crisis in the future and you can imagine the whole country become a city of life that is extremely busy with robotic emotions. Our site Pasar Sungai Chua, Kajang is crowded with people in the recent year by the developed construction age. However, Kajang is still having a rural ambience compare to the city. I hope there is still naive in Kajang in the future because the robotic life will make the people become unconscious extremely with the behavior.


Written by Chiew Jing Yi, 1001644071