The Absence of the Interior

The Absence of the Interior

‘’ In 1990 French Institute of Architecture published a limited edition catalogue called ‘6 Projets’ on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Fin de Siecle- OMA Rem Koolhaas’ in Paris. A year after the First Decade exhibition, this publication showed four public buildings and two master plans, all being competition entries. They were chosen focusing on the theme of congestion. Each project was explained with clear texts and drawings. Contrary to the later publications of the practice by its sister AMO, in 6 Projets the layout was calm with a lot of white space. Every page showed only one information whether a black-and-white drawing or simple text and was followed by a blank page. One of the six projects, Très Grande Bibliothèque, a national library of France in Paris, was documented with a long text and 53 drawings. Not a single drawing showed a perspective of an interior, neither was the interior mentioned specifically in the text. Today it is almost unimaginable that a competition entry for a library would not show an image, a perspective, an atmosphere, a ‘picture’ of what the project promises to the client and the user. It might have been also peculiar twenty five years ago and I don’t know if the original competition entry had some interior simulations. But it is remarkable enough that the firm preferred not to include any within 53 drawings in the catalogue. ‘’