Core77

John King at the SF Chron reviews a recent Rem Koolhaas presentation and considers the larger picture.

Overall, it's great that design novelty sells. I like the idea that decisionmakers see the value of challenging and innovative designs. Each time something dynamic appears on the landscape -- including the library OMA fashioned in downtown Seattle, with its top-floor reading room that feels like a glass tree house -- we see how architecture can reshape the world.

But today's craze for gargantuan novelty has a dangerous side. No matter how seductive images might be as images, or as models on display, buildings aren't sculptures in a gallery. Nor are they rhetorical flourishes in a cultural debate.

Buildings are real life -- that's their beauty and threat.