105. The House of Dr. Koolhaas

Rem Koolhaas is nothing if not enigmatic, which makes him and his first major built work, the Villa dal’Alva, Paris (1990), an ideal first subject of the “Gumshoe” series of architectural mysteries. Cutting through the conventions of academic jargon and trade press, The House of Dr. Koolhaas reopens the “cold case” of Koolhaas and examines evidence in a pulp-detective novel format. Unfrozen turns the lamp back on writer/editor team Francoise Fromonot and Thomas Weaver.

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Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane

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Discussed:

Gumshoe Architectural Mystery Series

Thomas Weaver (AA Files)

Villa d’Alva, OMA

S, M, L, XL

Luis Bunuel

City of Glass by Paul Auster

Ways of Seeing by John Berger

Aramis, or the Love of Technology by Bruno Latour

The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe

Mannerism

Madelon Vreisendorp with Teri Wehn-Damisch: The Film of Delirious New York

Countryside, The Future

Dali’s paranoiac-critical method

Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye

Next up: Oscar Neimayer’s Communist Party Headquarters, Paris, by Littell Shaw

Then: The Parthenon

Then: Case Study House by Craig Ellwood

Poelzig’s I.G. Farben Building, Frankfurt

Raymond Chandler

James Ellroy