Rethinking the American City: An International Dialogue

6 Designing the City

119 6 DesIgnIng the CItY AlBenA yAnevA in 2001, i BegAn an ethnography of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in Rotterdam, headed by Rem Koolhaas. Early on in my work, Rem gave me a tour of the office, and the first thing he showed me was the Whitney table. “This is the project of the extension of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. . . this is a table of democracy,” he remarked. It was the most important project for him at the time, as he was dreaming of building in “delirious” New York. Later, I found out that the table of models contained not only scenarios for the future development of the building but also bits of history and traces of past controversies surrounding the building. Eventually I spent two years “living” in this office, just like the anthropologist Malinowski spent years on the Trobriand islands, and I also studied the culture and rituals of an unknown tribe: in this case, architects. Through this investigation of architectural practice, I learned much about how architects, although focused on individual projects, can have an influence on the larger process of designing the city. the prActice of DeSign On my first day at OMA, I discussed my project with Koolhaas. At one point, he remarked, “Tu veux être la ‘ femme invisible’ à OMA? How would you like to observe us? Would you need a room full of cameras to do so?” I was embarrassed, because he tried to translate immediately my intention to observe his and his colleagues’ everyday practices into architectural terms. He tried to “architecture” my presence at OMA. To be sure, he was joking, a Foucauldian joke if you wish, because I imagined, just for a second, the panoptical horror of sitting in an office full of moni6 ALBENA YANEVA 120 tors “overseeing” architects and designers at work. Then, interrupting me again, Rem added, “It is not a question of offices here.” It took weeks of ongoing participant observation before I was finally able to unravel the meaning of his joke. They were all invisible at OMA: objects and architects, foam cutters, sketches, and maps moved together and changed their positions in relation to each other according to the dynamics of the current architectural projects. In observing the specific routines that distinguished OMA from other architectural firms, I had no intention of grasping the general rules of the design process. I just wanted to be able to follow the details of their day-to-day activities. I wanted to watch the architects draw and handle the models, to see them smoke and discuss the latest development of their projects on the terrace, to listen to their jokes in the kitchen, to feel the pressure in the air when Rem’s tall silhouette appeared in the office—to see all these tiny fragments of daily routine and to be part of that routine. And that is what I did as a participant observer: I followed and described meticulously the design process. To capture this rhythm, I used various techniques of observation that allowed me to stay at varying distances: close to the actors and the course of their actions, intervening and participating in little tasks, and at a greater distance, more detached, so as to be able to translate and decipher traces of actions and speech acts. Many historians and theorists of architecture who have had the chance to interview Koolhaas and spend time in his office would believe that to linger for more than a day with this practice would be a waste of time. For them to “explain” Koolhaas’s design approach or a project like the NEWhitney, it would suffice to refer to the larger theoretical influences on his design: for instance, the impact of surrealism on his early works, or the influence of the modern movement, or his rapport with functionalism, or the theoretical influence of Mies van der Rohe or Le Corbusier or Russian constructivism.1 Another approach would follow his childhood in Indonesia and his background as a journalist for the Haagse Post and as a screenwriter, connecting his past with his architectural approach and trying to explicate its distinctive features. His fascination with Manhattan and his theory of DESIGNING THE CITY 121 the skyscraper, of density and congestion, would then be explained by his “Dutchness” and the fact that the first settlers of Manhattan were Dutch, recreating their land with...