Chaos and Koolhaas · Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Read on.. this may get better towards the end..

One of the things that caught me off guard after visiting Tehran was how it was changing and what was happening to it since I last visited. Having lived in the luxury of a lovely town for the past four years, I really wasn’t prepared or happy for that matter to sit through endless traffic, and watch so much construction, multiplicity or contradiction.

It’s a sad fact that a once ‘small town’, famous for its gardens and general clemency is being defaced by its pivotal role as a node in the global economy. (number 19 on that page) Its turned from a series of interconnected gardens into a polluted, overconstructed, delirious, unplanned mess and its getting worse.

As selfish as this may sound, disregarding the air/noise and visual pollution, the simple fact that in two or three years time, whenever I next visit Tehran, it would have changed again beyond recognition, is quite unsettling for me as someone who is now so used to quiet town life and slower more planned -sustainable rate of development and change.

I think its reason enough to want to reject some of the changes taking place in a metropolis like Tehran on a daily basis. However theres probably another way of looking at it. I decided to turn my eye to Rem Koolhaas , and his Delirious New York, which I picked up from the library today, its a book he wrote in 1978, basically his vision, a set of surreal reflections, manifesto-like. laced with illustrations by his wife.

According to a documentary I watched in the library and the words of a young Matthew Collings , ‘Koolhaas is looking at the city as a set of dreamlike relationships, rather than rejecting the chaos and claustrophobia of inner city life, he’s embracing it.’ which is possibly quite an interesting way of dealing with Tehran as well.

On that note maybe the very few exceptional people I met who werent twitching about Tehran and how bad everything was, were either in awe of the modern tendencies .. celebrating it like Koolhaas, or really just positive enough to see the negatives as positives?

Related: Koolhas on spaces

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