MECANOO Creative and innovative
Mecanoo,
named
after
the British erector set invented in 1898, itself was born out of innovation in the form of a winning design competition in 1984 to create a flexible social housing project in the centre of Rotterdam. The projects of Mecanoo range from houses, complete neighbourhoods and skyscrapers, cities and polders, schools, theatres and libraries, hotels, museums and even a chapel. Discovering unexpected solutions for the specifics of programme and context is the challenge in all of our assignments. Each design is considered in terms of its cultural setting, place and time. As such Mecanoo treats each project as a unique design statement. Within Mecanoo are knowledge centres, which enable us to stay current on technological and design innovations in sustainability, eco engineering, technology, education and learning, high-rise and mobility.
// Warm and tangible Mecanoo’s work balances pragmatism with design. The three words in the title of Francine Houben’s book: composition, contrast and complexity, sum up the basis of Mecanoo’s architecture. Francine Houben: “Architecture must appeal to all the senses and is never a purely intellectual, conceptual or visual game alone. Architecture is about combining all of the individual elements in a single concept. What counts in the last resort is the arrangement of form and emotion.” Francine Houben, founding architect, Mecanoo
With Mecanoo the sensory aspect is not only determined by form and space, but by the lavish use of materials. Mecanoo excels in subtle combinations of the most diverse materials, including wood, concrete, copper, bamboo, brick, pebbles, zinc, stone, vegetation, glass and planes of saturated colour.
OMA HQ Rotterdam Heer Bokelweg 149 3032 AD Rotterdam Netherlands
C O N TA C T
OMA Beijing B2702 Office Tower B Jianwai SOHO 39 Dongsanhuan Zhonglu Chaoyang District Beijing 100022 People’s Republic of China OMA Hong Kong 3/F Man Cheung Building 15 - 17 Wyndham Street Central, Hong Kong
OMA is a leading international partnership practicing architecture, urbanism, and cultural analysis. OMA’s buildings and masterplans around the world insist on intelligent forms while inventing new possibilities for content and everyday use. OMA is led by seven partners - Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon, Reinier de Graaf, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, David Gianotten and Managing Partner, Victor van der Chijs - and sustains an international practice with offices in Rotterdam, New York, Beijing, Hong Kong, and soon Doha. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction include the Taipei Performing Arts Centre; the Television Cultural Centre in Beijing; Shenzhen Stock Exchange - China’s equivalent of the NASDAQ exchange for hi-tech industries; three buildings in Doha, Qatar; and De Rotterdam, the largest building in the Netherlands. OMA’s recently completed projects include the headquarters for China Central Television - a tower reinvented as a loop; New Court, the headquarters for Rothschild bank in London; Milstein Hall, an extension to the Architecture, Art, and Planning school at Cornell; Maggie’s Centre, a cancer care centre in Glasgow (all 2011); Wyly Theatre in Dallas (with REX, 2009); and Prada Transformer, a rotating multi-use pavilion in Seoul (2009). Other acclaimed buildings include the Casa da Música in Porto (2005); the Seattle Central Library (2004); the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin (2003); the IIT Campus Center in Chicago (2003); and the Prada Epicenter in New York (2001). See a Google Map of OMA’s completed buildings. The work of Rem Koolhaas and OMA has won several international awards including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2000, the Praemium Imperiale (Japan) in 2003, the RIBA Gold Medal (UK) in 2004, the Mies van der Rohe European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture (2005) and the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the 2010 Venice Biennale.
The counterpart to OMA’s architectural practice is AMO, a research
to study its visual communication, and designed a coloured “barcode”
studio based in Rotterdam. While OMA remains dedicated to the reali-
flag - combining the flags of all member states - that was used during
zation of buildings and masterplans, AMO operates in areas beyond the
the Austrian presidency of the EU.
traditional boundaries of architecture, including media, politics, sociology, renewable energy, technology, fashion, curating, publishing, and
AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport,
graphic design.
Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast and Harvard University, produced exhibitions at the Venice Biennale (on the Hermitage museum in St. Peters-
AMO often works in parallel with OMA’s clients to fertilize architecture
burg) and Venice Architecture Biennale (on preservation, and on the
with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with
development of the Gulf), and guest-edited issues of the magazines
Prada: AMO’s research into identity, in-store technology, and new pos-
Wired and Domus. Recent projects include a plan for a Europe-wide re-
sibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA’s ar-
newable energy grid, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture
chitectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and
movement (Project Japan, Taschen, 2010) and the educational program
Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union
of Strelka, a new postgraduate school in Moscow.
Selection of current OMA and AMO projects:
ROTTERDAM office Netherlands: Coolsingel, Rotterdam De Rotterdam Stadskantoor, Rotterdam
Europe: Bibliothèque Municipales à Vocation Régionale, Caen Parc des Expositions, Toulouse Il Fondaco dei Tedeschi, Venice Commonwealth Institute, London Cordoba Congress Centre, Cordoba Fondazione Prada, Milan Bryghus Projektet, Copenhagen
Middle East: Education City Central Library and headquarters, Doha HIA Airport City, Doha
AMO: Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design, Moscow Project Japan: Metabolism Talks... Prada catwalk shows, Milan and Paris
Gehry Partners, LLP is a full service firm with broad international experience in academic, commercial, museum, performance, and residential projects. Frank Gehry established his practice in Los Angeles, California in 1962. The Gehry partnership, Gehry Partners, LLP, was formed in 2001 and currently supports a staff of over 120 people. Gehry Partners employs a large number of senior architects who have extensive experience in the technical development of building systems and construction documents, and who are highly qualified in the management of complex projects. Every project undertaken by Gehry Partners is designed personally and directly by Frank Gehry. All of the resources of the firm and the extensive experience of the firm’s partners are available to assist in the design effort and to carry this effort forward through technical development and construction administration. The firm relies on the use of Digital Project, a sophisticated 3D computer modeling program originally created for use by the aerospace industry, to thoroughly document designs and to rationalize the bidding, fabrication, and construction processes. The partners in Gehry Partners, LLP are: Frank Gehry, Brian Aamoth, John Bowers, Anand Devarajan, Jennifer Ehrman, Berta Gehry, Meaghan Lloyd, David Nam, Tensho Takemori, Laurence Tighe & Craig Webb.
Gehry Partners, LLP has one office located at: 12541 Beatrice Street Los Angeles, CA 90066 United States of America tel: + 1 310 482 3000 fax: + 1 310 482 3006 Public Relations Inquiries: info@foga.com