In Rem Koolhaas' 2004 follow-up to S,M,L,XL, Context, Rem declares (as Rem often does), "maybe architecture doesn't have to be stupid after all. Liberated from the obligation to construct, it can become a way of thinking about anything - a discipline that represents relationships, proportions, connections, effects, the diagram of everything."
Already liberated from the obligation to construct, urban design is already not stupid after all. But with this preexisting freedom and reputation for representing relationships through diagrams and maps, what exactly is urban design liberated to do? Is urban design thus an exclusively speculative practice or does it in fact have latent obligations to construction?
This course mines Koolhaas' words for meaning and tangible calls to action. Through microscopically close readings of Koolhaas' writings and esoteric representations of sundry relationships, students will distill their labors into manifestos of their own for future audiences to divine.