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        • Return from the Future
          The Concept of Retroactivity

        Abstract
        Koolhaas called his 1978 book Delirious
        New York a ‘retroactive manifesto for
        Manhattan’. In her essay Angelika Schnell
        describes how the concept of retroactivity
        is used in the architecture of OMA. Especially
        the high-rise project for Boompjes in
        Rotterdam, made between 1979 and 1981,
        is a design that ‘has become effective at a
        time in the past’. A careful reading of the
        accompanying text, but also the features
        of the design itself, reveal the circular logic
        of the hermeneutical model used by Koolhaas:
        designs are the stories that provoked
        the causes in the past.

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        Citation
        Schnell, A. (2015). Return from the Future. The Concept of Retroactivity. OMA. The First Decade, OASE, (94), 30–34. Retrieved from https://www.oasejournal.nl/en/Issues/94/ReturnFromTheFuture

        Download PDF (233 KB)

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