REM KOOLHAAS - PETER SLOTERDIJK
Tuesday, 29 November 2011

The video recording of the debate between Rem Koolhaas and Peter Sloterdijk moderated by Stephan Trüby is now available. We would like to thank Rem Koolhaas, Peter Sloterdijk and Stephan Trüby for an inspiring debate and the Dutch Embassy for hosting the event.

Video by: Moritz Dirks (MDX-Film) and Fred Plassmann (architekturclips.de)

Topic
Both architecture and philosophy stand for the attempt to merge the complexity of the world into an encyclopedic knowledge. Correspondingly, the dialogue between architect and philosopher goes a long way back. The debate between the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk falls into this long tradition. A tour d'horizon moderated by the architecture theoretician Stephan Trüby is to be expected; a conversation about biographies and ambitions, about metropolises and escapisms, about sustainability and futurology, about Europe and crises.

Biographies
Rem Koolhaas founded OMA in 1975 together with Elia and Zoe Zenghelis and Madelon Vriesendorp. Having worked as a journalist and script writer before becoming an architect, he graduated from the Architectural Association in London and in 1978 published Delirious New York. In 1995, his book S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA in “a novel about architecture.” As well as overseeing OMA’s work in architecture and masterplanning around the world, Koolhaas co-directs AMO, OMA’s internal think tank that operates in areas beyond the boundaries of architecture and urbanism – including fashion, technology, sustainability, and politics. The work of Rem Koolhaas and OMA has received several international awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize (2000), the RIBA Gold Medal (2004), the Mies van der Rohe Award for the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2005), the RIBA European Award for the Casa da Música, Porto (2007) and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, awarded in 2010 at the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.
oma.eu

Peter Sloterdijk, born 1947, completed his studies in Philosophy, German Literature and History in both Munich and Hamburg, obtaining his PhD with a text about modern autobiographical literature. Since 1980 he has been a free-lance author, and has written numerous publications in the fields of philosophy of culture and religion, art theory, psychology, architectural theory and many others. In 1983, his work The Critique of cynical reason became the best-selling book of German philosophy in the 20th century. Between 1998 and 2004 he has been working on his second main work, the Spheres-Trilogy, which deals with a philosophical analysis of humanly-generated space on more than 2500 pages.  After teaching at the Chair for Poetics in Frankfourt in 1988, Mr. Sloterdijk became Professor for Philosophy and Theory of Media at Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung, Karlsruhe and at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In 2001 he was elected Dean of the Staatliche Hochschule in Karlsruhe. In 2002 he began hosting the TV-show "Das philosophische  Quartett" on ZDF, Germany's national public television broadcaster, with the German philosopher Rüdiger Safranski. In 2005 he inaugurates the Emmanuel Lévinas – Chair in Strasbourg. He received the Ernst-Robert-Curtius-Prize in 1993, the Friedrich Merker- Prize in 2000 and  the Christian Kellerer- Prize for the future of philosophical thought in 2001.
www.petersloterdijk.net

Stephan Trüby (b. 1970) is an architect, theoretician, curator and Director of the Master of Advanced Studies Porgramme "Spatial design at Zurich University of the Arts. He studied architecture at the AA School, London. From 2007-2009 he was Professor of Architecture at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG). Amongst his best-known publications are "architektur_theorie.doc: Essays since 1960" (with Gerd de Bruyn, Birkhäuser, 2003), "5 Codes: Architecture, Paranoia and Risk in Times of Terror" (ed. by Igmade, Birkhäuser, 2006), "Exit-Architecture: Design between War and Peace" (Springer, 2008), "The World of Madelon Vriesendorp" (with Shumon Basar, AA Publications, 2008) and "Hertzianism: Electromagnetism in Architecture, Design and Art" (Fink, 2009). He is an Editorial Consultant of ARCH+.

In cooperation with the Dutch Embassy in Berlin