Koolhaas

Internationally renowned architect Rem Koolhaas will visit campus to deliver a free public lecture, "Stress Test," April 13 at 5:15 p.m. in Kennedy Hall's Call Auditorium. Doors open at 4:45 p.m.

Koolhaas is the designer of Paul Milstein Hall, a facilities expansion for the College of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP) that is now under construction and scheduled to open in August 2011.

Koolhaas graduated from the Architectural Association in London in 1972 and later studied at Cornell. He co-founded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in 1975, a Manhattan- and Rotterdam-based firm that has designed seminal buildings including the Rotterdam Kunsthal, the Netherlands Embassy in Berlin, the Seattle Central Library and the China Central Television Headquarters in Beijing.

While on campus, Koolhaas will tour the Milstein Hall construction site, visit with Provost Kent Fuchs and meet with students who are assisting on the next issue of the Cornell Journal of Architecture.

Among the expected topics of discussion with architecture students and faculty are Koolhaas' thoughts on O.M. Ungers, an influential architect and educator whom Koolhaas studied with at Cornell. Ungers brought international recognition to the university's architecture program in the 1970s; he chaired the Department of Architecture from 1969 to 1975 and died in 2007.

In conjunction with the visit, Cornell Cinema will host a free screening of "Koolhaas Houselife," April 10 at 7:30 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. The 2008 film, part of a series on "Living Architectures," intimately explores, through the eyes of its caretakers, the daily life of Maison á Bordeaux in France, designed by Koolhaas and OMA and built in 1998. The screening is co-sponsored by AAP.

Koolhaas and OMA have received numerous international honors including the Pritzker Prize, Japan's Praemium Imperiale, the United Kingdom's RIBA Gold Medal and the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture (the Mies van der Rohe Prize).