Editing Rem Koolhaas (section)

===Project on the city===
Koolhaas' next publications were a by-product of his position as professor at [[Harvard University]], in the [[Harvard Graduate School of Design|Design school]]'s "Project on the City"; firstly the 720-page ''Mutations'',<ref>Koolhaas, Rem ''et al.'' (2001) ''Mutations'', Arc en rêve centre d’architecture, Bordeaux, {{ISBN|978-84-95273-51-2}}.</ref> followed by ''The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping'' (2002)<ref>Koolhaas, Rem; Chung, Chuihua Judy; Inaba, Jeffrey and Leong, Sze Tsung (2002) ''The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping. Harvard Design School Project on the City 2'', Taschen, New York, {{ISBN|978-3-8228-6047-2}}</ref> and ''The Great Leap Forward'' (2002).<ref>Koolhaas, Rem ''et al.'' (2002) ''The Great Leap Forward. Harvard Design School Project on the City'', Taschen, New York, {{ISBN|978-3-8228-6048-9}}</ref>

All three books published student work analysing what others would regard as "non-cities", sprawling conglomerates such as [[Lagos]] in Nigeria, west Africa, which the authors argue are highly functional despite a lack of infrastructure. The authors also examine the influence of shopping habits and the recent rapid growth of cities in China. Critics of the books have criticised Koolhaas for being cynical,<ref>La Cecla, Franco (2020) "Against Urbanism", PM Press, {{ISBN|978-1-62963-235-3}}</ref> – as if Western [[capitalism]] and [[globalization]] demolish all cultural identity – highlighted in the notion expounded in the books that "In the end, there will be little else for us to do but shop". Perhaps such caustic cynicism can be read as a "realism" about the transformation of cultural life, where airports and even museums (due to finance problems) rely just as much on operating gift shops. It does, however, demonstrate one of the architect's characteristic devices for deflecting criticism: attack the client or subject of study after completing the work.

When it comes to transforming these observations into practice, Koolhaas mobilizes what he regards as the omnipotent forces of urbanism into unique design forms and connections organised along the lines of present-day society. Koolhaas continuously incorporates his observations of the contemporary city within his design activities: calling such a condition the ‘culture of congestion’. Again, shopping is examined for "intellectual comfort", whilst the unregulated taste and densification of Chinese cities is analysed according to "performance", a criterion involving variables with debatable credibility: density, newness, shape, size, money etc.

In 2003, ''Content'', a 544-page magazine-style book designed by &&& Creative and published by Koolhaas, gives an overview of the last decade of [[Office for Metropolitan Architecture|OMA]] projects<ref>Koolhaas, Rem (2003) ''Content'', Taschen, New York, {{ISBN|978-3-8228-3070-3}}</ref> including his designs for the [[Prada]] shops,<ref name="Luxury" /> the [[Seattle Public Library]], a plan to save [[Cambridge, Massachusetts|Cambridge]] from Harvard by rechanneling the [[Charles River]], Lagos' future as Earth's third-biggest city, as well as interviews with [[Martha Stewart]] and [[Robert Venturi]] and [[Denise Scott Brown]].