Delirium and its Discontents

Delirium and its Discontents:

Notes of a Phase 1 Eurolille Traveler

1.
We were seeing the future and we knew it for sure. I saw people walking around in it without
knowing it, because they were still thinking in the past, in references to the past. But all you had to
do was know you were in the future and that's what put you there.... The mystery was gone, the
amazement was just starting.
--Rem Koolhaas, "Future 1,"

Eurolille was built on the geo-political and economic wager that it would be capable of attracting
international business and impacting regional growth; the time of judgment has not yet come.

--Frank Vermandel, Lille School of Architecture ¹

I reached the station by evening, stepping off the TGV just early enough to catch the dimming
remains of a placid Flemish sky. Well framed by the station's light trussing and a gauzy metal roof, it
appeared subtle and painterly. Bright clouds coursed beneath the remote blue shell as the last vestiges
of sunlight traced a crisp horizon line. A small crush of fellow rail travelers kept my reflections brief
though, keeping me in pace as it ascended to the main level. As the crowd lurched and dissolved
before a series of exits, I was soon left amid empty magazine racks and bored glassed-in clerks. I was
free to wander the station alone.

I had arrived in Eurolille, outpost of a "New Europe" that may or may not happen. Shorn of their
initial "EU '92" euphorias, many Europeans were now experiencing the sobering facts of realization.
EU law is suddenly conflicting with national legislation and judicial procedures. Last June a
Copenhagen judge had ruled several EU laws unconstitutional and impinging upon Danish
sovereignty. And in a high-profile suit later that summer, Saxony sued the European Union over its
prohibition of Volkswagen plants promised to that region by the German federal government during
unification talks.

More significantly, there is now a growing debate over the ultimate merits of a single European
currency. Bundesbank executives pepper on about Italian debt, deploring Germany's exchange of
the sturdy mark for an unproven currency. Austerity budgets in Germany and France have left their
economies stagnant and afflicted with the kind of grinding double-digit unemployment not seen in
Europe in sixty years, something which seems to be sending their population left of center politically
at perhaps the most inopportune moment. The astounding loss by the Gaullist Right in the recent
elections signals not only the end of the Fifth Republic but also France's admission to the EU
according to Maastricht specifications. The Euro may float but as a much weaker currency, easy prey
for currency speculators in London and far less a challenge to the US Treasury market than Germans
had originally envisioned.

Unification still seems inevitable, but no longer painless. In fact, it is looking quite haggard. A steep
recession in France, brought about by Jospin's fanciful promises,
could throw it off for another two years. A genuine Depression--something not entirely impossible
during a deflationary period of overvalued stockmarkets, weak consumer demand, and sharp
government spending cuts worldwide--could stall unification for a decade.

Given such a future, one far more difficult than early optimisms might have predicted, it becomes interesting
to speculate on Eurolille. Bereft of additional Phase 2 investment and forced to endure for years its
presently weak commercial occupancies, "Lille Europe" -- its towers and "Grand Palais"
something of a business-class annex in a blue collar town--may appear rather strange in the landscape.
It would remain a sort of cipher or sphinx evoking a lost time when the EU meant to its citizens heady
promise and ascendancy. Not just belt-tightening, austerity budgets and open wage competition with
the Portuguese.

Portzamparc's Credit Lyonnais building would make an especially good ruin, if only the materials were
more durable. After exiting the TGV station, I immediately swung my head for a glimpse of it. The
green cladding held well against the early evening sky and the approachable "modernoid" funkiness I
so enjoy of the OMA sensibility was there in spades.

One critic has said, good-humoredly, that it looks like a large ski boot. But from my own view- fed as
I have been on early design sketches and 'Any' enthusiasms- I see it more as a saddle: a high
western saddle with a tall roping pull that cowboys use to take down unruly calves. Harnessed
above the TGV bustle, the tower and its bankers ecstatically ride out that European bronco and its
new-found economy of scale. Credit Lyonnais up there, high in the saddle, rustling up poor
North Cumberland woolies without medical insurance: the "new pastoralism."

Of course, the saddle allusion comes from looking up at the building obliquely or from the side. As I
walked out towards old town, from a greater distance and in silhouette, the tower takes on a
different impression. It appears as a huge exclamation point, looming above the city in a fragile
uneasy way, ensconced in the cool impregnable sheen that only mineral cladding can give.

2. PM: French Gambit

It will become the center of gravity for the virtual community of 50 million Western Europeans who
will live within a 1 1/2 hour traveling distance. . ..
--Rem Koolhaas

By the magic of an isochronic representation, Lille has been catapulted in spite of itself to the rank of
capital city . . . Eurolille is undoubtedly the first urban construction which is self-consciously
"eurocompatible...."
--Pierre Rouault, chief editor, Archimade

Before it became a "virtual community of 50 million inhabitants," Lille was a relatively small city with a
declining industrial base and an image problem. Municipal ambitions to become a "Metropolis du
Nord" span back to the twenties. It was a Lille mayor's unrealized hopes for the first Medical School
in Europe that brought the young architect Paul Nelson his first large-scale commission -
shelved in 1930 due to the Depression.

As aggressive as its mayors may have been about development, Lille never quite pulled off true
metropolitan clout. However that may have changed, for there has never been a Lille mayor
quite like today's Pierre Mauroy. France's Prime Minister from 1981 to 1984, with strong ties to
European high finance, he is by far Lille's most powerful advocate and it has been precisely his "old
skool" ties to banking and national politics that have made all the difference for this "New European"
city.

During the 1980's, Mauroy was deeply involved in the region's two most important infrastructural
events: the "Chunnel" and the Northern European TGV. He directly oversaw the initial steps of the
trans-channel project and later, returning to local politics in 1985 as Lille's deputy mayor, became the
region's chief spokesman on the issue. On January 20, 1986, the Franco-British Chunnel agreement
was formally signed in Lille's town hall.

Also in 1986, negotiations began on the creation of a TGV network which would cover not only
France but also Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Again, there much was at stake for the Lille
region and again Mauroy led the charge. France's nationalized rail company, the all-powerful SNCF,
planned on a station not in Lille but on the outskirts of Seclin. Mauroy quickly organized "TGV: the
Lille Station," an aggressive campaign to rally corporate and political forces in the area. A particularly
fierce political battle ensued. According to SNCF estimates, the cost of a station in the heart of Lille,
not on the outskirts of Seclin as they would have preferred, would be an additional 1.9 billion francs.
But nevertheless, despite this heavy additional cost, in October 1987 the SNFC for some reason
caved on the issue of expense and the French government under Prime Minister Chirac decreed the
station would be routed through the Lille. The wide road to a Metropolis du Nord was now open.

Apparently Mauroy had been preparing for success and earlier that year had created a private
management firm, later called "Eurolille Metropole," to implement a two-prong course of
development. Jean Peyrelevade, a close associate for many years, handled the financial end, quietly
contacting five pre-eminent French banks to form the private firm's core shareholders. The regional
office of the SNCF and the Regional chamber of Commerce, two governmental groups, were also
brought in to create a "shared risk" approach involving private and public moneys. The objective was
nothing less than the creation of a "European business center" based on the three strengths that Lille
would offer: "its strategic position at the crossroads of Northern Europe, the implementation of an
efficient transportation network, and significant amount of available land in the center of the city." In
February 1988, Mauroy appointed Jean-Paul Baietto its CEO and Jean Deflassieux, a long-time
Mauroy associate and now President of the International Exchange Bank, its Chairman to work out
the logistics. In the following six months, a rather traditional "framework plan" outlining the district
was developed, emphasizing continuities with the existing city fabric in regards to height restrictions
and zoning.

The second phase of project definition and the search for an urban master plan began in September
1988 and in a rather unconventional manner. Eight designers were pre-selected: four Frenchmen
(Claude Vasconi, Jean-Paul Viguier, Yves Lyon, and Michel Macary) and four foreigners (Norman
Foster, Vittorio Gregotti, O.M. Ungers, and Rem Koolhaas). The selection process occurred
through an "extensive oral" in which each participant spoke for an hour-and a half without models,
plans, drawings, or other documents. Koolhaas--for a decade the urban polemicist and urbane
pamphleteer, perhaps the most articulate architect of his generation--was certainly in his element. It's
with a tinge of irony that we hear Vermandel's account of the proceedings: "Everything was verbal in
this struggle session, with the result that the seductive power of the image could not come into play,
and Rem Koolhaas emerged the unanimous victor. ."

Mauroy's Eurolille had found both its master planner and its moral urgency.

3. RK: Dutch Gambit

Modernization puts forth its own declaration. This declaration is never mild and meek. It declares
the previous condition or regime as unfeasible. It proclaims transformation, death, rebirth. Eurolille's
ambition is to modernize Lille.
--Rem Koolhaas, "No Grounds Against a Non-place"

Yes, the mountain came to Mohammed. Who would have known. Koolhaas undertook his
"delirious" analysis of American architecture and modernization in the mid 70s, perhaps the darkest
hour for the kind of capitalism that had made it happen. Communist containment strategies were
failing massively in both Indochina and Africa. The "First World" had faltered deeper into a no-
growth period of oil embargoes and stagflation. Once proud U.S. cities were "hollowing out," losing
whole swaths of their populations and industries, and New York, the very topic of analysis itself, was
collapsing into bankruptcy and rampant street crime. It was all hardly looking like an appropriate role
model. But, it was in this context, despite it or perhaps because of it, that the kernel of Rem
Koolhaas's urbanist vision - its ecstatic, dispossessing embrace of metropolitan congestion - arrived.

Ten years after the 1978 publication of Delirious New York , we see Europe
finally "catching up," apparently ready for his discussions of density.

More than any other architect of his generation, Koolhaas has addressed the issue of urban
modernization. Delirious New York offered up a seamless discussion of economic and aesthetic
issues and created one of the most exhilarating explanations ever made of Manhattan, that crown
jewel of the American Machine Age. Perhaps due to his earlier experience as a journalist,
Koolhaas has carried this broad socio-historical scope with which to situate urbanism and architecture
into his own design work. In defending EuroLille, Koolhaas has this to say:

'In Europe, the most ambitious attempt to realize a modern mass culture can be seen in the
rise of constructivism, but this was seriously obstructed by its own elitism. Only in America has a
mass culture been seriously promoted as the explicit subject of modernity, and modernization
itself has been conceived as more a popular than an authoritarian adventure.'

It is a scope more akin to social historians like Weber or Toynbee and it has given the OMA
sensibility a level of framed relevance and apparent legitimacy. Other architects and their explications
appear fragile, adrift, or just plain poetical in comparison.

By developing his own version of modernity, Koolhaas has avoided wayward trends.
It led him to dismiss the postmodern debates of the mid-eighties and even describe Derridean
deconstruction in architecture as "corny" at best. (Apparently the "creative destruction" of
Schumpeter remained more insightful. ) A quick survey of his written work shows a mind more
concerned with history, urban development (Atlanta, Singapore) and future trends than with the
nuances of aesthetic theory and formal discussion.

Koolhaas's architectural strategies, whether in form or programming, are genuinely informed by his
wider positions. What are the architectural ramifications of the new global economy, that
"accelerated society" of brand name/business class manner which has metastasized across the globe
and appears to build up and tear down communities with equal vigor? Koolhaas may in fact be the
only architect to voice a recognition of the real transience of built culture within contemporary
consumer societies. And his appraisal of the implicitly turbulent and ever-evolving nature of capitalist
urban systems seeps into every level of OMA process. It can be found in the nature of OMA's
presentation style (the hydraulic-like rendition of the Eurolille overplan), its conceptual thinking (the
"Dogon egg" pun), its programming( the permeable borders between Congrexpo programs) and
ultimately even its choices of detailing and material (the " tire track moderne" cladding that rides
the highway side of the Grand Palais).

As each OMA project is a manifestation of a steadily arriving social order (a new social flux actually), it
appears thus as a theater of prophecy. Koolhaas shares the Marxist experience of the "inexorable"
nature of modernization but none of its nostalgias for community or authentic experience. Unlike
theorists like Eisenstadt ², he appears disinterested in the most subtle variability and differing patterns
of development truly shaping the non-West. Rather, he finds inspiration in the terrifyingly generic
nature of this modern industrial culture, as well as its impending pressures of urban overpopulation
and per capita thresholds. His architectural sensibility is agitated by it, inflected by the broader
experience of a saturating hyper-modernity. This aspect is of course most apparent in his two
manifestos: his retroactive, interpretive Manhattanism and his more recent, prescriptive Bigness.

Manhattanism chronicles a mutant artificiality that emerges from an overcrowded nature resort
(Coney Island) and eventually spawns back upon its host city (NY). Bigness asserts the collapse of
traditional architectural notions of procession in the face of today's technology and daunting
economies of scale. Both assert that technology and overpopulation have reconfigured our society
in an irrevocable way.

As Koolhaas himself aptly said in one article :

'We somehow cannot imagine that anything contemporary--made by us--can contribute to
identity. But the fact that human growth is exponential implies that the past will at some
point become too small to inhabit and be shared by those who are alive. ' ³

Flung out irrevocably beyond our past and its protocols, what then is this future we must inevitably
inhabit? What is urbanity for Rem Koolhaas? It is glib and Pop, emptied of so-called elegance (a
dishonest residue) and in a way defiantly "cheap." At its best, it is heroic in its concern and wry in its
impermanence, operating as benignly dumb and furtively avante gardist at the same time. At its
worst, it portends a shrill modernity for Europe, one that is incapable of filling the shoes of the
continent's grand but outworn cultural legacies.

* * *

Koolhaas himself has spoken on several occasions of how, with the development of the European
Union, his earlier analyses of American architecture appear to suddenly have relevance in the
European context. An economy of continental scope, an aggressive consumer culture, a unified
currency were all features of American modernization and thus point to parallels with the new
European circumstance.

But although there is something quite convincing about Koolhaas's argument, it may not be correct.
The TGV infrastructure is not the American interstate system, and the US has not dealt with the kind
of Federal and State jurisdictional problems now present in Europe since Calhoun's Nullification uproar
in the 1830s. American's (mass) cultural unity occurred over a period of unique prosperity, roughly
1870 to 1959, harnessed by the resources of a free continent and shepherded by the kind of forceful
Federal government the EU may never be. The American population at the time of this "unification"
was very young and uneducated. Its regionality, though several centuries old, was never as ethnic
or linguistically distinct as Europe's.

* * *

To envision itself on a continental scale and to aggressively modernize to that end, Lille makes for an
interesting comparison to Paris, a metropolis that arguably began on a four century path of
self-conscious modernization in the early 1540s. From at least 1607 to 1902, through a
mixture of building codes and intervention, a particular form of urban modernity was pursued,
creating an imperial capital that literally spanned the era of the nation state. ⁴ The "aesthetic proof" of
this modernity was in its codified building lines and the highly tempered relationship between street,
square and block.

Lille's modernization is obviously very different. While Paris attempted to simply structure and
curtail its unprecedented growth as an urban formation, Lille is attempting to siphon energies it sees
passing through. Whereas Parisian magnificence aided the diplomatic purposes of the Bourbon Kings,
Lille is a child of economy and must exploit its geographic positioning as a possible "business center,"
i.e. a magnet of upper income financial sector jobs and tax revenues. So what is Lille's (and thus
Koolhaas's) "aesthetic proof" of modernity? I believe it appears most prominently in the early
sketches, in the towers, each highly individualized and sculptural, only to be then compressed into
bumptious array. Their formal incongruities thus remain intentionally unresolved and suspended in
the thick soup of some apparent metropolitan humidity. They take on a totemic opacity, high above
the fevered circulations they harness. The townscape with its regionality and naturalness is
interrupted. In its place, Vertical City: a plenum of energy, a plume of aberrant artificiality. The
New Europe. A la OMA.

Mo' Bigga:
Shotgun Parlance for the New Millennium

Is this Bigness?

Surveying Phase 1 Eurolille with a knowledge of OMA rhetoric seems to beg the question. Several
articles previously published, particularly the scathing "Bigness Put to the Test of Construction" by Jean-
Louis Cohen ⁵ , take the bait and make literal comparisons. This is wrong-headed and perhaps even
counter-productive, hammering at an active architectural practitioner as only an academic could and
naively hinging the most recent work with the most recent essay. A close reading of the essay and
the urban plan makes it clear: is this Bigness? No.

Koolhaas, in a rough-shod, contrarian "manifesto" that will probably dog him for years, states the
qualities of Bigness thus:

1. With a building beyond a certain size, the scale becomes so enormous and the distance
between the center and perimeter becomes so vast that the exterior can no longer hope to
make any precise disclosure about the interior.

2. An autonomy of spatial elements within the building become autonomous.

3. At a certain scale the building is impressive simply through its mass, through its appearance
and through the dumb fact of its own existence. It appears impressive, if not beautiful, whether
the architect influences it or not.

4. Bigness generates a new kind of city, as a "generator of potential" it competes with the city.

5. It is the one architecture that can survive, even exploit, the condition of the tableau rasa.

When looked at carefully, there is very little truly radical about the first three "aesthetic" ramifications
of this manifesto. They appear as yet another debunking of those humanist notions of unity,
consistency, proportionality and articulated approach, with an emphasis on the disassociated nature of
elements at this new scale. Architects as diverse as Hilbersheimer, Charles Portman and the
Metabolists would all attest to the new, ever expanding scales of modern society and its architecture.
Perhaps only #3 could be considered "radical" in that it posits some form of implicit sublime and
would allegedly give license to "bad architecture."

Points 4 and 5 appear promising, relating "Bigness" to the economies of scale and societal forces that
are presently reconstituting the urban environment. But so often a successful spokesman of the
inevitable, Koolhaas doesn't nuance his position here. Whereas in his essay 'The Generic City,' the
"general" nature of Koolhaas's discussions--its blunt omission of specificity--actually seemed to
strengthen his argument, that is not the case here.

Perhaps what is most troubling of the "Bigness" essay is the missed opportunity it represents. In the
third paragraph Koolhaas states that "only bigness instigates the full regime of complexity that
mobilizes the full intelligence of architecture and its related fields." The italics are Koolhaas's and the
statement itself is forceful and intriguing. But what exactly is a "full regime of complexity"? What
economic and/or experiential thresholds must be reached to precipitate it? Is Bigness a retail,
housing, civic phenomena in equal measure? What are its urban and civic dimensions?

An elaborated argument is in order here, but it does not come. Koolhaas doesn't address the fact
that there are measurable forces that are eroding "scale" in the late-modern landscape. The
outsourcing strategies of the new Lean Production business regimes, the emergence of "virtual"
corporations, asynchronous transfer, and telecommuting are certainly all emblematic of a new regime
of complexity. They all indicate some new threshold in the subtlety, sophistication and timing inherent
to commerce. But they also imply a physical presence that is dispersed and downsized . Likewise the
retraction of civic institutions from their Progressive-Era scale and the Third Wave dispersal of mid-
century "big business" practices (big factories, tall towers, and Sloan-inspired corporate management)
appear to run in the opposite direction of Koolhaas's manifesto.

In fact, it is more or less in the retail and entertainment industries that a physical or "aesthetic bigness"
appears to be steadily emerging, while it seems to be atrophying in other sectors of society. One
sees "bigness" in the confluence of retail and entertainment; one sees it in the scale of new hotel or
casino developments --due typically to inter-city competition for tourist dollars. But this "Retail
Bigness," with its privately-owned, multiprogrammed megastructures, fails miserably in expanding any
novel social or even economic potentialities--the "programmatic alchemy" Koolhaas mentions. Theme
parks and shopping malls offer highly programmed, overly structured patterns of conduct and
experience.

Despite his sharp mind and keen grasp of societal trends, the iconoclast in Koolhaas can't resist
reaching for a big, blunt tool to horrify the parishioners. A stylistic preference for a hip-hop tone
seems to doggedly interfere with the full pursuit of his most important argument.

Herein appears the inappropriate confluence of two issues: what I would call "aesthetic bigness" as
building size and "quantum bigness" as a particular threshold of programmatic interaction and
complexity. Ultimately, the most provocative aspects of "quantum Bigness" are left unexplored, to
be dealt with by other writers, most notably Sanford Kwinter (editor and co founder of ZONE books,
and professor at Rice), perhaps OMA's most effective apologist.

Fly the Bullet:
Kwinter's redefinition of Bigness

The urban cannot be made, but it can happen anywhere, provided the proper conditions of Bigness.
Bigness is urbanism's Second Law, its discovery of the dissipative system (a system driven to a diversity
of different states and behaviors by energy, and information loss and gain). The "new urbanism" is the
urban ecology of liquefaction, of flock/swarm behaviors, pressures and breaches, stability and instability
thresholds, of hunting algorithms and productive catastrophes, in sum, of what I have elsewhere
called soft systems.

--Sanford Kwinter, "The Building, the Book, and The New Pastoralism"

In "The Building, the Book, and The New Pastoralism," Kwinter quickly pushes "bigness" towards his
own specific definition. According to Kwinter, bigness summarizes "the vast chain of linked
processes that are unleashed once a certain threshold in the development of an architectural object
is crossed, a threshold that bears at best a rough relationship to size alone, and indeed a more precise,
direct one to the object's complexity." A more lowly causal, programmatic regime--with its
"reductive, action-reaction bureaucracy of design"--transforms into another more dense, ecological
regime. The "Building as Ecology": full of an ever-shifting unprecedented plenum of potentialities
for program and thus equivocating "the wet and chaos of wonderful life." As with "Life," bigness
inevitably transcends its initial designations.

Like Koolhaas, Kwinter depends highly on the metaphors of both alchemy and evolutionary biology,
verging at some cases to mere appliqué. His weakness is in conveying this in specific societal terms.
The one example in "Pastoralism" of existing Bigness--the Tour de Montparnass in finished Paris--is
disappointing and insipid. Why? Because although Kwinter rejects the aesthetics of OMA Bigness--"I am
not certain that the hyper scale of surrender (to existing forces) that Koolhaas often advocates is the
most prudent , or beautiful," he still ties his best thinking to the single Building concept of Koolhaas's
earlier article. Even his genuinely profound "soft system" discussion is shoehorned into the Single
Building to detrimental effect.

Ultimately, in both Koolhaas and Kwinter the complexity metaphor is not fully insinuated into its
urban testbed. Koolhaas discusses "enabling fields"; Kwinter uses the term "soft system." Both
describe a "non-linear space of highly concentrated interactions of parts" which resolves every
encounter of forces with an integrating "flow shape." But beyond terminology, there are no
discussions of real estate ownership, the commercial or non-commercial nature of these Single
Buildings, or the particular economic and social regime that foster or inhibit these "enabling fields." An
interesting theory is left illustrated with weak, inappropriate examples.

Arguably, the most convincing examples of the "quantum bigness/programmatic alchemy regime" are
to be found in urban or industry clusters, not single buildings. One could argue that the ecological
metaphor appears more genuine in such a context. The regime of complexity that appears so
inspiring to Kwinter, the palpable heterogeneity and richness of social contacts that Crary
recommends of congestions6 , emerges in places not of a specific singular size, but rather where
differentiated strands of private, semi-public, and public space seem to compress and be critically
triggered by other social factors. This is perhaps the only thing that can lend an urban system the truly
dissipative, open system qualities Kwinter himself eulogizes.

Silicon Valley offers a wonderful example of a soft system--its fevered risk-taking, tech-
entrepreneurial values and "flexible recycling" making it the most vigorous enabling field and most
successful business milieu of the late twentieth century. But, relating it to architecture, its impact in
terms of novel "built culture" has been minimal. The old Time Square was certainly an unintended
soft system. Its compression of a cross-roads infrastructure, competitive entertainment industry, and
Manhattan's general commercial ethos lead to an unprecedented built/perceptual regime. Similarly
early 20th century Wall Street with its compression of New York's white collar industries into
limited property plots precipitated a cluster of increasingly flamboyant and ever self-conscious
"skyscrapers." Coney Island, Vegas, or 16th century Rome are perhaps the most obvious examples
of places lurching to an unpredicted "flow shape." All appear self-organizing and self-reflective. All
share a necessary semiotic component which is invariably connected to the disposable income and
leisure rituals of the tourist, pilgrim, or weekend traveler.

Kwinter's sensitivity to the "emergent" capacities of the urban realm makes his work some of the
most relevant to be found in contemporary theory. When it avoids the Single Building concept and
targets the right level of scale, it points the way to a profound new method of understanding cities.

Koolhaas's Urban Metallurgy

It is only when they are all tied to the site by each other's demands, chained together by an overall
vision never entirely revealed, when the dynamic from hell makes the entire situation irrevocable and
the project is like quicksand from which no one can escape, that you can get away with such an
enterprise in Europe.
--Jean-Paul Baietto

Ultimately nothing in Eurolille is even close to the aesthetic "Bigness" precept, something which
probably finds its finest expressions in OMA's earlier Bibliotheque Nationale, Karlesruhe, and Seagate
projects. But even these projects remain impressive through well-developed compositional strategies
and not "simple mass." Their architectural success emerges from criteria of sensibility left undisclosed by
Koolhaas.7 While the Grand Palais certainly approaches the "programmatic alchemy" of Bigness, its
playfully sectored facade--brimming with stadium allusions and circulation paths--certainly diminishes
the impression of singularity from the outside. Eurolille's most intriguing measure lies elsewhere.

In Eurolille, it is not Bigness that is put to the test, but rather a planning methodology that is
metaphorically touched on but never actually stated. It emerged--I imagine-- through direct insights
Koolhaas had while working with Baietto as well as notions of urbanity and infrastructure he had
developed over the years. They are not rules by any stretch, but rather are indicative of an ethos, a
sensitivity to the urban realm's "self-organizing" tendencies on one level as well as its sublime
voyeuristic charms on another. The three strategies of this planning method: Exacerbate, Harness,
Expose.

I. Exacerbate

We had to come down on one side or the other, to undo the Gordian Knot of these proliferating
infrastructures: a river of railroad tracks, a ring road which obliterates the site, a hook-up to be made
between the urban infrastructure and the ring road. In the midst of this chaos: the TGV tunnel. If
one reasons according to the logic of anticipating failure, then the only way to reach the magic point
where problems are transformed into pure potential is to exacerbate the complexity.

--Rem Koolhaas

Finding here the "magic point," that "sweet spot" which offers a total transformation of "problems" into
"potential" : the word "singularity" comes most obviously to mind, and ones sees in Eurolille
perhaps the strongest allusion in urban planning to date of developments in the new physical sciences,
particularly complexity theory and immunology. The evenly dispersed, sectored planning of earlier
modernisms is superseded by a spasm of nodal densities. Circulatory systems are retracted of all
architecture and condensed together; programmed spaces are bundled, fused and enveloped in
distinctly totemic forms. Superimposition of program is favored on all fronts. Open system, market-
driven trajectories (and a wry Schizo-paranoid sensitivity) drive form; static Collage City cut-outs
need not apply. Witness those things OMA initially favored or fought for: the tight "triangle of
stations" idea; the Grand Palais as "bridge building" physically linked to the station triangle; the fusion of
all circulation nexi into one (Piranesian) space. Though these various proposals operate on different
levels, they share the same belief in condensing circulatory elements for their greater Second
Theorem success.

II. Harness

We also tackled the issue of the towers straddling the station, and got involved in a passionate group
discussion about how the towers would be the symbol of Lille's fertilization by the TGV. . .

--Jean-Marie Duthilleul, Head Architect, SNCF

Exacerbate the complexity, "node" the infrastructure, and the site and its functions will be given
unanticipated added value. With the hydraulic model of converging circulatory flows comes the
implicit basin of saturation. Harnessing this saturation becomes the second operation, something
best considered the economical prong of this urban method. All office towers are imposed above
the station, sprouting like plants in a river valley. Koolhaas's life-long Vertical City obsession is finally
given rationale. The Credit Lyonnais Tower entrance is a mere fifteen meters from the train terminal
and metro station exits. The Hotel, if built, would have been equally close. These high densities lead
to heightened foot traffic that in turn feeds back in a positive, though unpredictable fashion on the
station's secondary shops and services. Ideally, this tight triangle of stations likewise affects Nouvel's
mall and the Grand Palais, each filling up like a soup tureen, each reaching unprecedented levels of
congestion and commercial success because of it.

This harnessing impacts on the formal properties of the buildings in specified ways. The
compositional strategies of abstract volumes and repetition one finds in the urbanism of the
International Style is replaced by a style of deformation (to apparent forces) or totemic form
(indigestible, mutant, instantiating). The urban energies are made palpable, each building a temporary,
lurching manifestation of their profound atmospheric pressures.

III. Expose

Eurolille is an ideal location for a cultural depiction of European congestion.

--Rem Koolhaas

The third operative is the more aesthetic in practice, working a form of experiential sublime that
shows up in much of OMA's projects. It is the psychological component of Koolhaas's urbanism. It
is also in some ways an inversion of mature Manhattan dicta (carried out in Nouvel's shopping mall
and to a lesser extent with the Grand Palais) which, according to Koolhaas's own Delirious New
York, is to encase an ever-increasing chaos within a static architectural covering: the seething brood
in a silent hive. Instead, in Eurolille, we see the seething brood revealed.

At the end of 1988, the first engineering plans furnished by the SNCF envisioned a closed
arrangement to the station: a weather-proof, below ground box in which the railway tracks were
enclosed. This was unacceptable to Koolhaas and in perhaps one of his first creative acts as planner
he developed the "TGV Window," pulling the rail line out of the ground (at great expense) and
creating a strong visual link between the train and the city. Of course, by raising up the station
Koolhaas breaks one of the few expressed tenets of the Eurolille project which was to blend the
suburbs back into the town. The raised station reduces that connection to a pinched raised
road/pedestrian bridge, weakening any continuum that may have occurred across old town, Eurolille,
and the inner suburbs. Here we see how the aesthetics of exposure often overrode serious
financial and planning issues, often to wonderful effect. The viaduct, called by its architect Francois
Deslaugiers an "airborne street," does indeed succeed with a beautifully attenuated design. Suspended
of low slender arches of fixed load below, the road appears retracted of all mass, registering as pure
vector of vehicular quanta.

Perhaps the truest embodiment of OMA's exhibitionist metropolis though is the "Piranesian Space,"
a brilliant concept of making the metro station of convergence a transparent viewing box. This
ingenious move, developed during intense dialogues between Koolhaas and Baetto, is perhaps most
indicative of the "Expose the complexity" precept. According to Koolhaas:

The space was designed to make one of the most important statements in the form of a void. In
other words, a place not constructed, but which in fact constitutes a purely empty space containing
all the links --a window on the train, a window on the highway, a window on the train , window on
the parking lot. In short the importance of the architectural statement consists of the pure and
simple suppression of mass. And thereby all the forces in play are made most explicit.

Asking us to contemplate a theater retracted of all architecture and traversed by pure European
motion, Koolhaas has elsewhere called this an example of "density without architecture." Negating all
notions of architectural monumentalism, Koolhaas offers up an aesthetic disenchanted with mass that
seeks its visual and erotic fulfillment in the frenzied traffic and commingling of cars, trains, and
pedestrians.

As Lars Lerup suggested in a different context: "In a city predominantly constituted of motion and
temporalities, space itself is about deformation and velocity." For Koolhaas, all that is solid may melt
into air. . . but at least it can be gaseously rerouted through a delightful series of Duchampian delays. . .

1 Espace Croise (ed), Eurolille: The Making of a New City Center, Birkhauser, 1996
2 Eisenstadt, Beyond the West, Columbia University Press 1988
3 Rem Koolhaas, "The Generic City: Singapore or Bladerunner" NPQ, volume 13
4This caput imperium would be to a lesser extent continued by de Gaulle's intention of a strong
"industrial Paris" and the Grand Projets of "Mitteramses."
5 Jean-Louis Cohen, "Bigness Put to the Test of Construction," Eurolille: The Making of a New City
Center, Birkhauser, 1996
6 Crary, "Notes on Koolhaas & Modernization," Any , 9
7 Two interesting discussions on these unspoken compositional strategies can be found in Anthony
Vidler's OMA essay in The Architectural Uncanny and Somol's Camp of the New (Any 9).