Da cidade genérica ao junkspace: o pensamento de Rem Koolhaas sobre a cidade contemporânea

Abstract

The aim of this work is to do an analysis of the contemporary city, based on Rem Koolhaas’s thought and focusing the relation between city and building, by questioning that thought, making particular use of concepts and considerations pointed by David Harvey and Henri Lefebvre as a support. Two other particularities are pointed out on the present research: the existing dialectics between capitalism and city development; and the relation between theory and practice of architecture on the context at hand. It is a theoretical-conceptual analysis that makes use of the dialectical approach method, precisely due to the dialectical nature: of the study object; of the way Koolhaas sees this object, in which the contradictory is a fundamental (and dialectal) aspect; of the relation between city and capitalism; and of Harvey and Lefebvre’s conceptualizations utilized. In that way, this research is divided into two parts, the first of which being dedicated to understand Koolhaas’s thought about the contemporary city as a whole, extracting a basis from it, on which the discussion is promoted at the second part of this study. Thereby, the contradictory is approached as a fundamental aspect in Koolhaas’s thought formation and, therefore, as a reading key to the present analysis; in order to analyze the construction of his understanding about the contemporary city. As a result, it is pointed out the culture of congestion and the consumption activity as the fundamental aspects to the discussion realized at the second part, by presenting them questions and making use of Harvey and Lefebvre’s support. Thus, the relation between Koolhaas’s understanding of the culture of congestion and Lefebvre’s vision on the formation of urban and urban society is approached, in order to question the role of architecture in this context and which consequences it brings out, to cities and to society. This question embraces Lefebvre’s everyday life too, with it’s dialectical production of the space, together with society. Finally, making use of Harvey’s considerations about the dialectic between capitalism and the urban process, the contemporary city is discussed related to the consumption activity, also pointing the impact of the changes on the space-time dynamics in the postmodern condition presented by Harvey; and Lefebvre’s everyday life yet again, represented by the bureaucratic society of controlled consumption. Throughout all this analysis, it is identified a transformation of the city and the society (represented on Koolhaas’s thought by the transition from the generic city to the junkspace), from which it is questioned the role of architecture and its consequences.