I am just back from Berlin. Rem's exhibition is good. The way in which the monumental self-referential space of Mies is broken by the exhibition is a true revisiting of the National Gallery. Or better put, Koolhaas understands Mies potential better than Mies ever could.

Content fits into the exhibition tradition of El Lissistky, Alvar Aalto, Kiesler, the Independence Group, the Situationist and shows by Jan van Toorn. This exhibition is honest about the process of making architecture, allowing the visitor to participate in the experiment of how to produce, within late capitalism, an architecture that is not against the system but that explores the potential for liberating forces to emerge out of our commodified world. Visitors to the Content exhibition can dig deep or stay on the surface, touch models or be challenged to think a concept through. It is an exhibition like a Situationist happening: a look into the kitchen of experimentation; architecture in the making. This exhibition is not for “architects only”. The low walls bearing information allow a glimpse of people wandering through the space as Berlin is being rebuilt in the background. The models – raised on pedestals or floating above the walls – become part of the Berlin Skyline: the city, the world, to which the architect must relate. The entire exhibition is informal; the world the koolhaas show creates is the opposite of Mies’s religious crypt in the basement. [More ... see PDF]

Content - Rem Koolhaas/OMA/AMO
Exhibition at the NAtionaal Gallery, Berlin, Germany