Content
By OMA © All rights reserved
Taschen, 2004
Content is a follow-up to SMLXL, an inventory of seven years of OMA's tireless labour. In many ways it is structured according to what its predecessor is not - dense, cheap, disposable. The relentless internal logic that propelled SMLXL is here counteracted by the incorporation of critical, external voices.

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Paperback: 544 pages
Language: English
ISBN-10: 3822830704
ISBN-13: 978-3822830703
OMA/AMO blurb: Content is a product of the moment. Inspired by ceaseless fluctuations of the early 21st Century, it bears the marks of globalism and the market, ideological siblings that, over the past twenty years, have undercut the stability of contemporary life. This book is born of that instability. It is not timeless: it's almost out of date already. It uses volatility as a license to be immediate, informal, blunt: it embraces instability as a source of freedom. The subjects in Content are not arranged according to size but by geographical proximity: the trajectory moves ever eastward, beginning in San Francisco, ending in Tokyo. Content is dominated by a single theme - "Go East" - at once a response to 9/11's mounting wreckage and an acknowledgement of the eastward momentum that has, through AMO's political involvement with the EU and an increasing density of Chinese projects, redirected the office's energy. It is an attempt to illustrate the architect's ambiguous relations with the forces of globalization, an account of seven years spent scouring the earth - not as business traveler or backpacker, but as vagabond - roving, searching for an opportunity to realize the visions that make remaining at home torturous. Content is, beyond all, a tribute to what are perhaps OMA/AMO's greatest virtues - its courage, its dogged, almost existential pursuit of discomfort, its commitment to engaging the world by inviting itself to places where it has no authority, places where it doesn't "belong".

Statement regarding the publication Content (2004) by OMA/Rem Koolhaas

In 2004 OMA/Rem Koolhaas published the book Content; it is currently out of print and no longer in distribution. For the cover, the book's designers proposed a series of cartoons/caricatures of OMA's projects. OMA rejected these proposals and instead chose a version in which the CCTV building is presented as the positive and shining symbol of a changing world order - which reflects our sincere intention with the design.

The designers of the book included the rejected covers in miniature as an appendix.

In 2005, some of the rejected images circulated on internet in China. Now, four years later, the same images re-circulate on the internet, causing upset and speculation.

OMA did not produce the images and their content does not represent our opinion in any way.

We regret the renewed attention, and distance ourselves emphatically from the interpretations attributed to these images. Our sincere intentions with the design of the CCTV building have been stated and published countless times. It does not have a hidden meaning.


Rem Koolhaas