Rem Koolhaas

“Context is a lie, a fiction, created by architects to give their work a semblance of relevance.”

“I think one of the important things is to be able to be anonymous.”

“Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence.”

“The city is an addiction from which it is impossible to recover.”

“A building has at least two lives – the one imagined by its maker and the life it has. And they are never the same.”

“People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it.”

“The Generic City is the city liberated from the captivity of center, from the straitjacket of identity.”

“Junkspace is the residue mankind leaves on the planet.”

“Beauty is a conviction.”

“Not all problems have a spatial solution.”

“Skyscrapers are the instrument of capitalism.”

“The future is more like the past than we think.”

“Any architectural project is a unique combination of ambition and circumstance.”

“In the end, there is no escape from the mediocrity of the universe.”

“Heritage is not a static thing. It is a process of selection and interpretation.”