Rem Koolhaas is nothing if not enigmatic, which makes him and his first major built work, the Villa dal’Alva, Paris (1990), an ideal first subject of the “Gumshoe” series of architectural mysteries. Cutting through the conventions of academic jargon and trade press, The House of Dr. Koolhaas reopens the “cold case” of Koolhaas and examines evidence in a pulp-detective novel format. Unfrozen turns the lamp back on writer/editor team Francoise Fromonot and Thomas Weaver.
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Intro/Outro: “Beancounter,” by the Cooper Vane
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Discussed:
Gumshoe Architectural Mystery Series
Thomas Weaver (AA Files)
Villa d’Alva, OMA
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Aramis, or the Love of Technology by Bruno Latour
The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe
Madelon Vreisendorp with Teri Wehn-Damisch: The Film of Delirious New York
Dali’s paranoiac-critical method
Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye
Next up: Oscar Neimayer’s Communist Party Headquarters, Paris, by Littell Shaw
Then: The Parthenon
Then: Case Study House by Craig Ellwood
Poelzig’s I.G. Farben Building, Frankfurt
