Rem Koolhaas

Rem Koolhaas trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in London, graduating in 1972. Before founding the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in 1975 with Madelon Vriesendorp and Elia and Zoe Zenghelis, Koolhaas studied with Mathias Ungers at Cornell University between 1972 and 1975. Cornell is the site of one of OMA’s most recently completed projects in the United States – Milstein Hall, 2011.

Koolhaas, an active theorist, established his critical discourse in the 1978 book, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. His 1995 title SMLXL chronicled the office’s first twenty years with the conceit of a novel. He has since published many other titles and essays, independently and through the research branch of his office AMO. Koolhaas is an active teacher at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, and maintains offices in Rotterdam, Beijing, Hong Kong, and New York.

Koolhaas was the 2000 Pritzker Architecture Prize recipient, and was more recently lauded with the 2010 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale. Koolhaas will serve as the 2014 Biennale curator.

Knoll introduced his first furniture collection, Tools for Life, at the 2013 Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan.