The text in the text

The text in the text or "Where do you go from here?"

A Wall as a Building, a Study Trip and a Presentation, inside a Memory, inside a Retroactive Manifesto, next to a Dictionary, together with Essays, Architecture Projects and Buildings, including Diaries and Fairy Tales, ALL inside a 2.7 kg Book.

The author writes in 1993 about his memories from a study trip to Berlin in 1972.

The text is divided in two: 1 - a memoir, Koolhaas’s recollections of his years as a student at the AA (1968 – 1972) – including gossips 2 - a series of 5 points, principles or retroactive concepts; future core ideas in OMA – again a memoir?

These Reverse Epiphanies, are a combination between the 1972 discoveries on the wall – in italics – and comments from the same author made almost 20 years later, confirming his reading of the wall.

From Wikipedia: A memoir (from French: mémoire, memory or reminiscence) is a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events, both public or private that took place in the subject's life. The assertions made in the work are understood to be factual. A biography or autobiography tells the story of a life, while a memoir often tells a story from a life, such as touchstone events and turning points from the author's life. The author of a memoir may be referred to as a memoirist. In ancient Greece and Rome, memoirs were like "memos", or pieces of unfinished and unpublished writing, which a writer might use as a memory aid to make a more finished document later on. In the early 1990s, memoirs written by ordinary people experienced a sudden upsurge, as an increasing number of people realized that their ancestors’ and their own stories were about to disappear, in part as a result of the opportunities and distractions of technological advances.

According to the International Organization for Migration, since January 2015, 1,121,662 migrants including asylum seekers are reported to have arrived to Europe by land and sea routes. 3,770 migrants are reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean.

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and was completely demolished in 1992.

Koolhaas built his wall in paper in 1993. Let us not forget.

This text is also a memory. After I left the AA, my computer was stolen and the file was lost with it.

On the way back home, I had to remember it and I wrote it down on my iPhone. Federico Ortiz.

"Memory and specificity as characteristics enable recognition of the self and of what is foreign to it seem to me the clearest conditions and explanations of reality. Specificity cannot exist without memory, nor can memory that does not emanate from a specific moment: only the union of the two permits the awareness of one's own individuality and its opposite (of self and non-self)." Rossi, A. (1981) A Scientific Autobiography. London: MIT Press. p.62 Like Alberti, who wrote on buildings that did not exist anymore except as ruins or in texts, Koolhaas's script is based on a building that doesn't exist except in his memories or in the collective imaginary.

Like Le Corbusier, who used images from mass media and popular culture vis- Ă -vis his texts, Koolhaas uses postcards and media photographs to illustrate his words.

It is one of the simplest and most personal document in the whole book.

El Croquis (1998) 1987 – 1998 oma / rem koolhaas. Madrid: el croquis editorial. p. 11

This text is inaccessible.

How can someone write about something that no one can have access to?

There is no evidence of the original document, there are only memories.

There is no building, there is only a ruin.

This text is about memory, both individual (or autobiographical) and collective.

In that sense it cannot avoid its ideological and social implications. Persisting (1971, 1972, 1977, 1993, 1995, 2004, 2013...) on portraying The Berlin Wall as Architecture is insisting on the power of architecture, or the acquiescence of architecture to Power.

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1 The

endnotes in this text are biographical comments on people that would at the end become numbers.

The images used in the text are part of the collective memory: postcards, news photographs, photojournalism and photographs by Koolhaas, the photographer.

This is the opening text of the section M In 2014 the archizine CLOG published a thorough monograph on Rem and identified The Berlin Wall as Architecture as his first project (1970) and his only personal non-collective production in terms of authorship. See CLOG Rem 2014 - Timeline Page 96.

As shown in the index, this text is a building, like the Kunsthal or the National Dance Theatre.

According to the Washington Post, based on a study by Elisabeth Vallet from the University of Quebec in Montreal, after the fall of the Berlin Wall more than 30 walls have been built and by 2016 the number rises to 65 walls all over the world (Daily Mail).

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the definite triumph of Liberal Democracy, the West and Capitalism. Architecture had now an exclusive boss and Koolhaas was not only aware of it – he clearly showed it to us in the 70s and 90s – but he would also go after him, under the mask of OMA and his evil twin AMO. Is this text any relevant today? Yes It was Koolhaas’s first important text. It established his interests.

In retrospective, it was the kickstart for the trajectory London, AA, Berlin, Exodus or the voluntary prisoners of architecture, Ungers, The City in the City, Cornell, New York, Rowe, IAUS, Delirious New York, Rotterdam, OMA to come to full circle to SMLXL. It defined the architect’s agenda (architecture starts with writing) and therefore influenced a whole generation.

Although not usually recognized, it is a very specific kind of writing generally disconnected to architecture (a memoir) that perfectly defines architectural principles abstracted from a building and made operative into future projects. It is a fundamental theoretical piece deeply rooted in autobiographical facts and collective memories. With more walls than ever, an apparently more to come, this text is a direct provocation to any architect today.

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