User:TheNk22/Delirious New York

Delirious New York

Author	Rem Koolhaas
Original title	Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan
Illustrator	Nigel Smith, Donald Chong, Bob Gundu, Chris Rowat and Nazik Tahri
Cover artist	Madelon Vriesendorp
Language	English
Subject	New York City, architecture
Set in	Franklin and News Gothic
Publisher	Oxford University Press, The Monacelli Press
Publication date	1978
Pages	320
ISBN	978-1885254009
OCLC	31765587
LC Class	94076577
Followed by	S,M,L,XL
Website	https://oma.eu/publications/delirious-new-york

Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan is a 1978 book, written by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, exploring the architectural history of New York, mainly between 1850 and 1960.

Overview

Downtown Athletic Club, talked about at length in the book.

The book serves as a retroactive manifesto for Manhattan, analyzing the development of architecture and urban design throughout New York's history from the founding of New Amsterdam by the Dutch, to the design of the Headquarters of the United Nations by Le Corbusier. Rem Koolhaas describes his concept of 'Manhattanism', the theory of the creation and functioning of the city of New York, at length in the book.

Coney Island: The Technology of the Fantastic

According to Koolhaas, Manhattanism was developed around the beginning of the 20th century, with Coney Island functioning as a labaratory for mechanisms and ideas for Manhattan. Amusement parks, such as Dreamland, Luna Park and Steeplechase Park functioned as incubators for mainland New York, sometimes literally, in the case of Luna Park, which had baby incubators since 1903 as part of a neonatal research project led by Martin A. Couney, but also architecturally and socially, in the case of the Blue Dome of Creation, an indoor recreation of Venice and Lilliputia, a human zoo for 300 people of short stature, all three in Dreamland.

The Double Life of Utopia: The Skyscraper

After having discussed the workings of Coney Island, Koolhaas analyzes "the birth of the Manhattan skyscraper" between 1900 and 1910. The design process of the skyscraper is formed from three main breaktroughs:

1. The reproduction of the world
2. The annexation of the tower
3. The block alone

The 'reproduction of the world' has been made possible by the invention of the elevator, especially the safety elevator innovations made by Elisha Otis from the 1850s onwards. These innovations, along with improvements in steel engineering, allowed for a whole new kind of space, namely, the skyscraper. This new kind of space gave rise to creating entire stacked cities in architectural theories from around 1909, with every floor of the building being an empty field, to be filled with housing.

The 'annexation of the tower' refers to... (p93)

The 'block alone' (...)

(gaudi, comparing the zoning laws to the amsterdam canal regulations)

(waldorf astoria, empire state) (downtown athletic club)

How Perfect Perfection Can Be: The Creation of Rockefeller Center

Manhattanism is the urbanistic doctrine that suspends irreconcilable differences between mutually exclusive positions; to establish its theorems In the reality of the Grid, It needs a human representative. Only he could conceive of the two positions quoted above at the same time without unbearable strains developing in his psyche.

— Rem Koolhaas on Raymond Hood

Architect Raymond Hood is cited as being the perfect representative of Manhattanism. In 1927, five years after having won the design contest for the Chicago Tribune Tower with John Mead Howells, Hood describes his vision for the future of Manhattan as a "City of Towers". In this theory, Hood makes a case for leaving the space around skyscrapers unbuilt, as to give every tower a sense of uniqueness and isolation, but also as a measure to prevent overcrowding . The first example of such a tower is the American Radiator Building in New York, which instead of having a blind wall on the west side for other strctures to be built adjacent to, has windows at all sides.

Koolhaas continues to investigate the Rockefeller Center, what he calls "a double paradox that only Manhattanism could transcend". (not only focussed on THE Rockefeller Center, but the rockefeller center as the seed in 1926)

Radio City Music Hall is highlighted as being the

(kremlin on fifth avenue)

Europeans: Biuer! Dalí and Le Corbusier Conquer New York

Like the title suggests, this chapter mainly focusses on the influence Salvador Dalí and Le Corbusier have had on the architectural development of New York since the early 1930s. Koolhaas sees the views of both as "episodes in the long history of attempts to 'reclaim' Manhattan".

The paranoiac-critical method, or PCM for short, is developed by Dalí, and is the concept of perceiving reality in such a way that objects that barely have any meaning evoke phantom images in the mind to build upon. As an example, this method is present in the paintings of Dalí, where his inspiration could come from a chunk of runny cheese, which is transformed into a melted clock.

Koolhaas argues that the PCM is present althroughout American architecture of the 1930s.

PCM sharply contrasts the modernist ideals of Le Corbusier, in which architecture is a formal and conscious act.

(paranoid critical method, see Delirious New York: The Revolutionary Revision of Modern Architecture FRANCES HSU Georgia Institute of Technology)

History

Rem Koolhaas in 1987

The first drafts for the book originate from 1969 in a manifesto by Rem Koolhaas titled 'The Surface'. Koolhaas had been studying at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London since 1968 and wrote the manifesto as a reaction against lectures by Tony Dugdale of the architectural collective Archigram.

In 1972, after obtaining a grant to study at Cornell University, Koolhaas moved to New York in an effort to research the city. In doing so, Koolhaas collected magazines, books and postcards from Manhattan for research and joined a postcard collectors' club. Furthermore, Koolhaas joined the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies. In an interview with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Koolhaas cites their book Learning from Las Vegas as being an influence on the writing of Delirious New York during this period at Cornell.

Delirious New York was published three years after Koolhaas founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture with Elia Zenghelis, Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp in London in 1975. During this period, Koolhaas further collaborated with Elia Zenghelis on several hypothetical projects in Manhattan, such as redeveloping Roosevelt Island (1975) or the design for the Sphinx Hotel at Times Square (1975).

In a 1993 interview with architecture critic Cynthia Davidson, Koolhaas stated that the aim of publishing Delirious New York was to lay the written foundation to work from as an architect, before actually starting out as one. In this sense, Koolhaas has been described as being a paper architect around this time, given that his first built design was in 1985.

In June 2003 issue of Wired Magazine, which he guest-edited, Koolhaas published the article 'Delirious No More', which follows up on the themes of Delirious New York. In this article, Koolhaas states 1972 as the negative turning point for New York City architecture, caused by the decline of modernism, an increase in crime in the city and socio-economic crises. (1977 comeback) (reaganomics of the 80s) (1994: giuliani mayor, bubbles, zoning laws) (9/11)

Cover

The cover image of the first edition of the book was designed by Madelon Vriesendorp. The painting 'Flagrant Délit' depicts the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building laying in bed, with 30 Rockefeller Plaza intruding on them. The gridiron street pattern of Manhattan is shown through the window, with the rooftops of skyscrapers being faces looking at the ordeal. Furthermore, the nightlight near the Empire State Building is the torch of the Statue of Liberty and a tissue in the shape of a Goodyear Blimp can be seen lying on the bed, referencing the zeppelin docking station built on top of the tower.

The 1994 republication of the book by The Monacelli Press changed the cover image to a black and white photo of the 1221 and 1251 Avenue of the Americas buildings as seen from 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

Publication

Delirious New York was first published as a hardcover in 1978 by the New York division of the Oxford University Press and was printed in France.

A paperback version with a new cover was published in 1994 by New York based Monacelli Press for distribution in the United States and Rotterdam based 010 Publishers for Europe. Further versions by the Monacelli Press have been printed in 1997, 2005, 2014. Aside from the covers, these versions do not differ from the original text.

The book was translated to French in 2003

Reception

Took some time. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1979/06/14/hell-take-manhattan/ https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/04/arts/architecture-review-rem-koolhaas-s-new-york-state-of-mind.html http://blog.yalebooks.com/2018/09/25/delirious-new-york-40-years-later/

Criticism https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713657027?src=recsys

Koolhaas himself criticized the concept of Manhattanism(?)

See also

• S, M, L, XL, the 1995 book from Koolhaas which includes excerpts from Delirious New York.

References

http://socks-studio.com/2015/02/02/madelon-vriesendorps-manhattan-project/