Grid, schism and lobotomy: The Almere City Center as the “City of the Captive Globe” by Rem Koolhaas
Rem Koolhaas published Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan in 1978. He closes the book with a series of concise speculative projects to illustrate his point. The first of these, „The City of the Captive Globe”, is an ambiguous and constantly re-interpreted metaphor for metropolitanism and the lifestyle associated with it. Interpreted as a synthesis of the „retroactive manifesto”, Captive Globe allows us to grasp the ideological background of the urban design thought of Koolhaas and OMA, his design studio. Between 1995 and 2007 OMA carried out the project for the new City Center of Almere near Amsterdam. Through the three postulates of the City of the Captive Globe, the authors attempt an in-depth understanding of Almere master plan, going beyond the analysis of its formal features.
District Health Development: Department of Health, City of New York: Building Program as Related to the Master Plan for the City of New York