By Luis Fernández-Galiano

This collection of articles on the work and person of Rem Koolhaas introduces the Rotterdam-based architect with a simultaneous reference to his surrealist impulses and the disjointed nature of a career, in which books and exhibitions mark intellectual and formal turning points. Commentaries on these seminal moments are interspersed with critiques on the major buildings and projects. In the end, it is difficult to pinpoint which are more important in defining the architect's conceptual and aesthetic trajectory. The book concludes with a detailed analysis of Koolhaas's curatorship of the Venice Biennale, yet another swerve in a dazzling, provocative, and paradoxical itinerary.