This decision was made yesterday by the Council of the Venice Biennale, headed by Paolo Baratta, on the proposal of Kazuyo Sejima, curator of the XII Architecture Biennale. Motivating her choice, the curator emphasized the correspondence of Koolhaas's merits to the exhibition motto - “People meet in architecture”: “Rem Koolhaas expanded the possibilities of architecture. His work focuses on the interaction of people in space, he creates buildings that bring people together. Koolhaas's influence went far beyond the framework of architecture: people of different professions, thanks to his work, received a grandiose sense of freedom."
Rem Koolhaas is one of the most famous architects of our time. In 2000 he received the Pritzker Prize, in 2008 he was among the 100 most influential people in the world according to Time magazine. Now he has received the Golden Lion for his life's contribution - in fact, the main award of the most authoritative architectural exhibition in the world. Koolhaas is not only a practicing architect and urban planner, but also a theorist, researcher, author of books and essays on architecture, and an outstanding teacher. It should be noted that he began his career as a journalist and screenwriter, and only later received his architectural education at the school of the London Architectural Association. His bureau OMA was founded by him jointly with Elia and Zoe Zengelis and Madelon Vriesendrop in 1975, and now operates the AMO research center, which this year has become a partner of the new Moscow Institute of Media and Design Strelka - currently the most actively developing center architectural education in Russia.
By coincidence, yesterday, July 16, the day when the organizing committee of the Biennale announced the name of the winner of this year's Golden Lion, Rem Koolhaas was in Moscow, where, together with his AMO colleagues Reinier de Graaf and Michael Schindhelm, presented the educational program to the public Strelka Institute. Koolhaas has worked in Russia before: he was involved in a project for the reconstruction of the General Staff building for the State Hermitage, planning the residential areas of Velton Park in Moscow and the Baltic Pearl in St. Petersburg, in 2006 he participated in a competition for the design of the odious tower of Gazprom.
Simultaneously with the announcement of the Koolhaas award, the organizing committee of the Venice Biennale announced the award of a special commemorative award to the Japanese architect Kazuo Shinohara, who died in 2006. Shinohara had a significant influence on modern Japanese architecture, especially Toyo Ito, Kazunari Sakamoto and Itsuko Hasegawa, creating the so-called "Shinohara school".
The organizing committee did not announce the time of the presentation of the awards, but, most likely, the ceremony will take place as usual - during the opening day of the Biennale.
