We often associate Rem Koolhaas with his bold designs, yet unlike other starchitects his firm isn’t associated with his name, but rather has a more boring name: The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Yet, don’t let the boring title deceive you, its practice has consistently pushed the boundaries of architecture. Founded in 1975 by Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis, Madelon Vriesndorp and Zoe Zenghelis, OMA , to many architects, has been an intellectual powerhouse, using architecture as a tool to redefine and shape the built environment and design ideologies. OMA’s architecture is not about beauty in the traditional sense — it is about revealing the forces that shape form: capital, bureaucracy, politics, media, and desire.

1. Historical Roots for Koolhaas From Critical Theory to Urban Reality

OMA was born in the postmodern movement, where architects began to tread their own path from legendary predecessors of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe. Koolhaas, a journalist and screenwriter, approached architecture from a different perspective from other architects, one that was more fascinated by its cultural impact rather than specific design philosophy and methodologies.

When Koolhaas was studying at the Architectural Association in London( AA, funfact: Zaha Hadid also studied here!), he was influenced by the philosophy that approached architecture as speculation and critique. Being able to see works by Archigram, Cedric Price and Bernard Tschumi formed Koolhaas’s perception on architecture not just as a static building, but a script of sorts, similar to his journalistic training.

At the same time, Koolhaas was fascinated with New York. In 1978, he published Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan, becoming one of the most influential books in architecture and urban planning. He argued that the Manhattan skyline was an ‘expression of an unconscious collective imagination, a culture of congestion’. Rather than critique the buildings and grid like layout, he lauded the density, desire and coexistence. This approach and philosophy towards architecture shaped OMA’s design philosophy later on.

On a personal note, having read this book it deeply resonated with me and my own philosophy, embracing imperfections within each city that modern architecture may attempt to resolve, and embracing the subtle nuances that make each city distinct, a reflection of character, culture and history.

2. The OMA “Doctrine”: Embracing Conflict

Each practice has their own design DNA, a doctrine perhaps. If I were to sum up OMA’s it would be : Embracing Conflict. Koolhaas and others in the practice believe that cities and buildings are inherently messy, and rather than seeking to resolve it, they frame it and make it even more legible. Oftentimes, their design starts off with analysis, such as in Singapore when they built the Marina Bay Sands, they analyzed the economic, political and social aspects that defined Singapore and the project. Koolhaas called the first phase of analysis as the “culture of the diagram”, a tool of reduction, to distill complex intangible aspects into physical design.

As Koolhaas once said,

“Architecture is a hazardous mixture of omnipotence and impotence. We can influence things, but never control them.”

3. Pragmatic Idealism: Power, Capital, and the Real

Another one of OMA’s beliefs is this idea of “Pragmatic Idealism”; while the firm may remain intellectually curious in a variety of fields, it also operates from a ‘pragmatist approach’. This can be best seen through a series of their most distinctive projects.

CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012).

Designed by OMA (Koolhaas and Scheeren), the headquarters can perhaps be a symbol of state media power. Yet diving deeper we can see this reflected firstly, in floorplan layouts. Not only are all the departments connected with a continuous band, but those with higher positions naturally are place above. Looking at the facade, the building's geometry folds 'bureaucracy’ into itself with its deconstructivist architecture, deconstructing a cube in this case, yet on the other hand it can be seen as a critique on state power with this theme of deconstruction. The jarring edges and sleek windows present an imposing view, an icon, and a symbol of the pragmatist approach, reflecting society, history and culture into design.

Seattle Central Library ( 2004, shown below)

Similarly , the central library embodies a reflection upon the digital age. Rather than impose order, OMA designed it so that it reflects chaos, a spatial system (as Koolhaas puts it) that organizes reading experiences and public open spaces jarringly. It’s both a civic symbol and a commentary on knowledge in the 21st century.

4. The Practice as Network: From OMA to AMO

In 1999, OMA established their “think tank” counterpart AMO. AMO can be considered OMA but without design or buildings, rather, it explores media, identity, fashion, politics, and data. This expansion blurred the line between architecture as a product and architecture as a form of interdisciplinary intelligence. AMO has collaborated with PRada, Harvard and even the European Union creating the famous Barcode flag in 2002.

This duality — OMA building form, AMO building meaning — exemplifies their belief that architecture is inseparable from the cultural systems that surround it.
As Koolhaas often puts it:

“Our office is not about making buildings; it’s about organizing information and giving it form.”

This interdisciplinary approach allows OMA to stay intellectually agile — operating as both a design firm and a cultural observatory.

5. Method and Representation: The Diagram as Philosophy

From an architecture student's point of view, one of the best ways we can dissect design thinking is through drawings. Yet the most distinctive feature of OMA’s diagrammatic thinking isn’t simple rationalism, it's more of a provocation –visual arguments that make complex forces visible. In the Euralille Masterplan (1994), rather than create section drawings, they used abstract diagrams to convey transportation, commerce, and life into a single drawing. In Casa da Música (2005), the form emerges from the collision of internal programs rather than an imposed exterior geometry.

This internal logic — the belief that form should emerge from programmatic tension — produces a language of disjunction: slanted planes, stacked volumes, exposed circulation, and structural honesty.

OMA’s models and axonometric drawings (often colorful, abstract, and heavily annotated) reveal both their obsession with aesthetics of representation, but a commitment to their interdisciplinary, distinctive approach, showing the project as a narrative, a script, an echo to Koolhaas’s training before becoming an architect.

6. The Office as Ecosystem: Multiplicity and Evolution

Today, OMA operates as a collective of partners, each leading their own branch of experimentation.

Ellen van Loon has expanded OMA’s expertise in cultural and infrastructural projects (e.g., the Factory International in Manchester).
Shohei Shigematsu, heading OMA New York, brings an acute sensitivity to urban and civic space in projects like the National Pulse Memorial and Prada Epicenter NY.
Reinier de Graaf, often described as OMA’s political conscience, uses writing (Four Walls and a Roof) to critique capitalism and bureaucracy in architecture.

Conclusion:

In a time when architecture is often shaped too much by sustainability and marketability, focusing on efficiency over narratives, OMA’s genius lies in its defiantness to embrace their own identity, treating architecture as a way of cultural analysis and an art form of framing contingency. Their work thrives on this intersection between pragmatism, imposing designs and societal critique, diagnosing conditions of modernity by editing the world’s chaos into legible forms without simplifying it. They construct frameworks where modern contradictions can coexist, creating buildings that are not monuments to certainty but to thinking—unfinished events in motion, shaped by time, use, and society. In this sense, OMA is less a firm than a state of mind, one that continues to question, provoke, and reinvent what it means to design for a world that refuses to stand still.

OMA: Architecture as a System of Thinking