Pearce v. OMA: Architectural Authorship on the Courtroom Table
Name
grey_a_00357.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.5 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
0dd9e181a938dab429e727199b309d9c
Author(s)
Miljački, Ana
Date Issued
January 1, 2023
Journal
Grey Room
Publisher
MIT Press
Citation
Ana Miljački; Pearce v. OMA: Architectural Authorship on the Courtroom Table. Grey Room 2023; (90): 6–39.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
On a seasonably foggy November 1, 1992, Rotterdam’s new temporary art exhibition hall, the Kunsthal, officially opened its doors to
the public. Architectural journals were quickly ablaze with images
of colorful chairs on the dynamic incline of its auditorium, views of
its diagonal columns perpendicular to that incline, leaning precariously against the horizon line, followed immediately by moody,
worm-eye shots of silhouettes captured from below the metal mesh
floors they were populating. Though diminutive in size when
measured against the later oeuvre of the Office for Metropolitan
Architecture (OMA), the Kunsthal was a major commission for the
firm at the time. OMA had just completed a series of important
competition entries that had not become buildings despite their
very public life as proposals: projects for ZKM, the Très Grande
Bibliothèque, the Zeebruge Terminal, and the Netherlands Architecture
Institute in Rotterdam. In the wake of this series, the Kunsthal received
lavish attention as an eagerly awaited demonstration building. It was
OMA’s second scheme for the Kunsthal, a result of their long-term
investment in the Museum Park in Rotterdam, and it seemed to finally
materialize OMA’s reinvention of an architectural device with a long
architectural history: the winding ramp as a device for both circulation and social condensing.
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Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1162/grey_a_00357
