Topic > Rem Koolhaas's views on generic phenomena

The term "generic" occurs at the end of the last century and has become linked to several discourses on modern architecture and urban planning. The cultural, historical and social aspects of the local ideogram, as well as the character of the city, are exponentially more changeable. These features are interchangeable and may be located worldwide. Only by repeating the same aspects and forms can the rapid expansion of the city be achieved. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayFor architect Rem Koolhaas one of the main reasons for the generic phenomenon is globalization and increasing mobility. In his remarkable 1994 essay “The Generic City”, he put many hypotheses on the global city model on the world architectural scene. He doubted whether the modern city had begun to resemble a modern airport. "In the fullness of their capabilities, airports are like the neighborhoods of the city in general, sometimes even the cause of its existence, with the further attraction of being hermetic systems from which there is no escape, except towards a another airport. Koolhaas looked more globally at the different functions of the modern metropolis with its huge airports, shopping malls, hotels, theme parks, air-conditioned offices and glass skyscrapers. He describes it as "urban identity is like a bathroom in which always More mice need to share an original bait, and one that, upon closer inspection, may have been embroidered for centuries. The most important elements of the city become the infrastructure of bridges, tunnels and highways, rejecting the relationship with its historical identity. The public segment is becoming less represented and the city takes the form of a "patchwork" divided from the private sector. The distances between the center and the periphery increased and people became victims of transport and circulation. For Koolhaas, a city with a strong identity became too static, fixed and unacceptable. Losing the collective memory that is recognized in the action of constant change of the urban entity, as well as the possibility of using it as a mechanism for its transformation: the various signs of the physical structure are part of the act of updating city architecture in the same way of their shifted meaning. It seems that, at certain moments, the city is more a product of anxiety than a process of cause and effect. The physical signs, the urban elements, on the previous layer are always read through a new layer. In this way, the forgotten signs are still legible in the existence of the city.