Koolhaas, Rem << KOHL hahs, rem >> (1944-…), is an influential Dutch architect and writer. Koolhaas has designed a wide variety of buildings in Europe and the United States, including retail stores, private residences, public housing, college buildings, and cultural centers. He often combines a variety of low-cost materials in inventive ways. His most notable works are known for their blend of architectural design and urban planning.
Koolhaas first gained fame for his book Delirious New York (1978), an examination of the relationship between modern architecture and society. Koolhaas’s earliest commissions included an addition to the Parliament complex in The Hague in 1978 and a structure for the Netherlands Dance Theatre in The Hague, completed in 1987. He has designed several highly praised private homes. The Villa dall’Ava (1991) near Paris is a glass and concrete house with a swimming pool on top. The Maison a Bordeaux (1998) in Bordeaux, France, is designed to meet the needs of a person using a wheelchair.
Koolhaas’s later projects include, in the United States, a campus center (1998) for the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, two branches of the Guggenheim art museum (2002) in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, a public library (2004) in Seattle, and designs for the Prada retail stores in New York City in 2003 and Los Angeles in 2004. Koolhaas also designed an embassy (2002) for the Netherlands in Berlin, Germany; a concert hall (2004) in Porto, Portugal; a 24-story apartment tower (2008) in New York City; a bank headquarters in London called New Court (2011), with Ellen Van Loon; the China Central Television headquarters (2012) in Beijing; and the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (2015) in Moscow, Russia. 
Remment Koolhaas was born on Nov. 17, 1944, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. In 1975, he cofounded the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) in London. This and another OMA in Rotterdam serve as headquarters for his design activity. He composed a record of his architectural projects in an elaborate book called S, M, L, XL (1995). Koolhaas has taught architecture at Harvard University since 1990. He won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2000.
