ITHACA, N.Y. -- Rem Koolhaas, considered one of the most innovative architects in the world today, will speak at Cornell University April 25 about his recent work. His talk, which is free and open to the public, will be at 6 p.m. in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium, Kennedy Hall. It is sponsored by the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, which Koolhaas attended briefly before completing his studies at the Architectural Association in London.

Koolhaas was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2000, considered architecture's equivalent to the Nobel Prize. "He has long been celebrated as one of architecture's most audacious thinkers," wrote Nicolai Ouroussoff about the architect in The New York Times April 10. Koolhaas' just-completed Casa da Musica concert hall in Porto, Portugal, was pictured in the Times story and described as a building "whose intellectual ardor is matched by its sensual beauty" as well as "one of the most important concert halls built in the last 100 years."

In Beijing, work has begun on Koolhaas' largest building ever, the China Central Television Building, expected to be completed in time for the Olympic Games in that city in 2008. Other prominent Koolhaas projects are: the Seattle Public Library; the master plan and design for the Grand Palais in Lille, France; and the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Koolhaas is a professor at Harvard University, where he conducts the Project on the City, a research program investigating changing urban conditions around the world. Its projects include a study on China's Pearl River Delta (published as Great Leap Forward ), an analysis of the role of retail and consumption in the contemporary society (The Harvard Guide to Shopping ) and studies on Rome, Lagos, Moscow and Beijing.

He was a co-founder and is currently head of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), an international design firm with offices in Rotterdam, New York and Beijing. In addition, he heads OMA's conceptual branch, AMO, a think tank focused on social, economic and technological issues. Recent AMO projects include image restructuring for Condé Nast magazines Lucky and Wired and a study on the future of the automobile for Volkswagen.

In 1978 Koolhaas garnered attention among architects and architectural critics when he published Delirious New York, a Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan . In 1995 his book S,M,L,XL summarized the work of OMA and established connections between contemporary society and architecture. He was the subject of an exhibition, "Content," at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 2003 and at the Kunsthal in 2004. He worked as a journalist and script writer before becoming an architect.