!VAR HAGENDOORN

OMA in The Hague

Over the past 25 years OMA has designed and proposed numerous projects in The Hague, some of which have been realized, including of course one of OMA/Rem Koolhaas' first major projects, the Netherlands Dance Theater. Until 20 August you can see models, drawings, photos and videos of all of these projects at Stroom (pronounced as "strome" as in "home"), a public gallery in The Hague. Although the exhibition looks a bit like Content-light it is an excellent survey.

Since the exhibition spans more than 25 years, from the design for the Dutch parliament building in 1981 to a recent design for an office block near The Hague Central Station, it gives a rare and interesting historical overview of OMA. Whereas the drawings for the Dutch parliament building still resonate with 20s and 30s Russian avant-garde, the design for the multi-purpose building at the Koningin Julianaplein reflects the recent sculptural trend of some of OMA's designs. In an act of self-parody there is a table with paper and scissors where you can design your own OMA building.

The exhibition is also a chance to see the model of one of OMA's best unrealized projects, the design for the The Hague City Hall from 1986. It had won the competition but a local official bypassed the jury in favour of his own preference for the entry by Richard Meier. So now The Hague has a dysfunctional monolithic blown-up version of a Californian beach house, with of course, a big atrium.

What was so interesting about the design by OMA, was that they approached the program, which called for 150.000 m2 of space not as a building, but as a city. By adding a building that is a skyline in itself, the design by OMA also enriched the skyline of The Hague. The MAB Tower in Rotterdam by the way looks like a pimped version of the design for the City Hall, but without the thinking: it is just "form".

If you like architecture and are travelling to Holland this summer I can highly recommend a visit to the China Contemporary exhibition at the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam and the OMA in The Hague exhibition at Stroom in The Hague. The Hague is only 20 minutes by train from Rotterdam.

My Top 5 Unrealized Projects by OMA/Rem Koolhaas:

1. Tres Grande Bibliotheque (Very Big Library), Paris, 1989
2. Two Libraries Jussieu, Paris, 1993
3. ZKM, Karlsruhe, 1989-92
4. Whitney Museum Extension, New York, 2002
5. City Hall, The Hague, 1986

It's a real shame that some of the groundbreaking and prize-winning designs by OMA/Koolhaas from the late 80s have not been realized. The ideas behind the two libraries for Jussieu later found their way into MVRDV's design of Villa VPRO.

Exhibition at Stroom, The Hague until 17 September 2006

Related

My review of OMA|Rem Koolhaas: Content (The exhibition)

Some photos of buildings by OMA|Rem Koolhaas