You should read this, now:
Your lungs are full of foam fumes, your eyes are bloodshot from exhaustion, you’ve slept at your desk. But you stick with it, because you enjoy a pleasing degree of freedom to pursue design ideas that challenge accepted reason, so long as the lead designer sees something they like. Sound familiar?
If so, it’s likely that you work in one of the many global architecture offices who practice in the style of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Your work may look different but that’s not the focus of this discussion. The operations follows a similar logic.
Amongst the most critically acclaimed offices of the last two decades, OMA has consistently produced innovate architectural ideas, methods, and as we will see below, organizational models. This much is undeniable. The question at hand is whether the almost contagious ability of OMA to replicate itself in the habits of other offices is the result of duplication by admiration, a legitimate response to the challenges of globalized architecture practice which OMA may have pioneered, or the charismatic quirk of OMA’s success overshadowing other possibilities.
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If the OMA style of working has become a popular drug, this is an attempt to figure out what we’re all taking, why, and what other options may exist. It’s a story that begins in the British countryside 39 years before the founding of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture.