Delirious New York, A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan

Delirious New York sent Koolhaas to the front lines of world fame and made him one of the key figures of contemporary architecture. When the book was first published in the 70’s, nobody was concerned about the existence of expressible relations between architecture and society. Koolhaas perceives metropolitan lifestyle in the 20th century as a fluctuating and chaotic “culture of congestion”. City is a site of infinite variations of human activities and events – both real and imagined. The chapters deal with urban city planning, the skyscraper phenomenon, the first dreamland at Coney Island, Rockefeller Centre construction and the European (Le Corbusier’s and Dalí’s) attitude to the city. Koolhaas has naturally cosmopolitan views and draws his inspiration from the works of contemporary philosophers, in particular the works of Jacques Derrida. This book is an essential, initiatory work of world architectural thought.