Junkspace

Article published in «October» — 2002 — Vol.100 (Obsolescence) — p. 175-190.In 2001, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture published the Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, a slab of graphics and stats describing malls and the mallification of cities and space in general. OMA founder Rem Koolhaas, the seer of Rotterdam, made just one contribution to the Harvard Guide: an essay called Junkspace. In about 7,500 words Koolhaas describes the new kind of space that is advancing over the face of the planet, uniting the shopping mall, the airport, the convention centre, the hotel, the art gallery ­­– uniting everything, in fact, into a seamless, provisional, superficially appetising morass without past or future. This junk space, rather than modern architecture, is the true product of modernisation.