Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan remains, nearly five decades after its original publication, the definitive attempt to decode Manhattan as a cultural and architectural phenomenon — a city that invented itself faster than it could be understood.
About This Book
First published in 1978, Rem Koolhaas's landmark text argues that Manhattan is not merely a city but a laboratory — a place where population density, technological acceleration, and unbounded ambition produced an entirely new architectural logic he calls the culture of congestion. Koolhaas reads the Manhattan grid, the rise of the skyscraper, the spectacle of Coney Island, and the utopian ambitions of Rockefeller Center as episodes in a single, unfolding argument about what architecture becomes when a metropolis refuses all restraint. Reissued in a newly designed edition by Sternberg Press, this is essential reading for anyone serious about urbanism, architectural theory, or the history of the twentieth-century city.
Key Features
- 320 pages of architectural and cultural history, illustrated with watercolours, archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps
- Written and edited by Rem Koolhaas
- Notable episodes include the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, the development of the skyscraper, Rockefeller Center, and Radio City Music Hall
- Published by Sternberg Press
What You'll Discover
- Koolhaas's central thesis that Manhattan functions as the twentieth century's Rosetta Stone — a key to reading how architecture and metropolitan culture co-produce one another
- How the culture of congestion shaped specific building typologies, from the skyscraper to the entertainment complex, as responses to extremes of density and desire
- A reinterpretation of familiar New York landmarks — Central Park, the United Nations Building, Radio City Music Hall — as symptoms of deeper urban and ideological forces
- The theoretical and rhetorical method that made this book a model for architectural writing: part manifesto, part history, part speculative fiction
About the Author
Rem Koolhaas is one of the most influential architects and architectural thinkers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Delirious New York was his first major publication and established the intellectual framework that would underpin his subsequent practice and writing. [Details available upon request]
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 320
- Dimensions: 183 x 239 mm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9781885254009
- Publisher: Sternberg Press
- Publication Date: [Details available upon request]
Perfect For: Architects, urbanists, and architectural historians with an interest in twentieth-century New York, metropolitan theory, or the relationship between density, culture, and built form.