Q&A: Architect Rem Koolhaas Turns Our Attention to the Countryside

Forty or so years ago, before he was a "starchitect"—before anyone called them starchitects—Rem Koolhaas made his mark as a theorist of the city. His 1978 book, Delirious New York, pointed out a fundamental irony of Manhattan: that its rational, officially imposed grid of streets and stacked cubes of apartments allowed, enabled, and even generated the teeming, unruly chaos of urban life that takes place inside its orderly framework.