The City to Come. Lines of Flight from Deleuze to Koolhaas

Abstract

The definition of “generic city” , formulated by Rem Koolhaas as a key for the interpretation of the current transformations of the contemporary city, and thus contemporary living, is now at the center of international architectural and urban debate. Here we intend to check the accuracy and the scope of this interpretation by comparing it with one of its explicit sources: the work of Gilles Deleuze on space, territory and deterritorialization. In particular, we will refer to A Thousand Plateaus of 1987. As we shall see, it is Koolhaas himself who refers to Deleuze, which justifies the use of the Deleuzian conceptual grid; however, it is our intention to show, on the one hand, the forcing that that grid undergoes in Koolhaas’s discourse, and on the other hand the critical effectiveness that this grid preserves, first of all towards Koolhaas’s discourse itself, but especially in view of an alternative interpretation of the city and living to come.

The proximity of Koolhaas to Deleuze’s thought is known: see Thinking big. John Rajchman intervista Rem Koolhaas, «Artforum», December 1994: “When I came across Deleuze for the first time—six or seven years ago, in conversation with Hubert Damish—I started reading his books and to then close them immediately because of their amazing similarities. I was afraid of becoming a Deleuzian, together with the feeling that it was already too late. Now I read them in small doses. This is the concern about influence.”