Rem Koolhaas: S, M, L, XL,
Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence andimpotence. Ostensibly involved in “shaping” the world, for theirthoughts to be mobilized architects depend on the provocations ofothers-clients, individual or institutional.
Therefore, incoherence, or more precisely, randomness,is the underlying structure of all architects’ careers: they are confrontedwith an arbitrary sequence of demands, with parameters they did not establish,in countries they hardlyknow, about issues they are only dimly aware of, expected to deal with problemsthat have proved intractable to brains vastly superior to their own.
Architecture is by definition a chaoticadventure
Coherence imposed on an architect’s work is eithercosmetic or the result of self-censorship. S,M,L,XL organizes architectural material according to size;there is no connective tissue. Writings are embedded between projects not as cement but as autonomous episodes. Contradictions arenot avoided. The book can be read in any way.
To restore a kind of honesty and clarity to therelationship between architect and public, S,M,L,XL is an amalgam that makes disclosures about theconditions under which architecture is now produced. Its epic scale is botharrogant and hesitant. It tries to deflate and reflate architecture-to destroyand rebuild. On the basis of contemporary givens, it tries to find a newrealism about what architecture is and what it can do. In other words, this isa painfully utopian enterprise.
The more architecture mutates, the more it confrontsits immutable core. Yet S,M,L,XL is a search for “another” architecture,knowing that architecture is like a lead ball chained to a prisoner’s leg: toescape, he has to get rid of its weight, butall he can do is scrape slivers off with a teaspoon.
