Rem Koolhaas and
Elia Zenghelis started working together in the early 1970s at the
Architectural Association, the London-based architecture school, where Koolhaas was a student and Zenghelis an instructor. Their first major project was the
utopian/
dystopian project
Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture (1972). This project proposed a linear structure, cutting through London like a knife. Other projects included City of the Captive Globe (1974), Hotel Sphinx (1975), New Welfare Island/Welfare Palace Hotel (1975–76),
Roosevelt Island Redevelopment (1975) – all "paper" projects that were not (intended to be) built, and all located in
Manhattan, the subject of Koolhaas's book
Delirious New York, A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan (1975). The commission, however, was given to an architect who did not participate in the competition. The entry for the Dutch parliament competition was the first of a series of controversial and successful international competition entries by OMA in the 1980s that were not built by OMA.
OMA in the 1980s OMA's first major commissions were The Netherlands Dance Theatre (1981) in The Hague and IJ-Plein Urban planning (1981–1988) in
Amsterdam. Due to change of location a second design for the Dance Theater was made in 1984. Once completed in 1987, the building received international attention. Although full of "first mistakes", the Dance Theater is the first realized design in which the ideas of Rem Koolhaas were made apparent. IJ-plein is located at Amsterdam's
IJ, a river that serves as the city's waterfront, opposite the city center. The master plan consists of 1,300 dwellings and several facilities. OMA designed the school, the community center, and two blocks of housing. A few other designs were realized in the 1980s: a police station in
Almere (1982–1985), a bus station in
Rotterdam (1985–1987, demolished in 2005), Byzantium apartment block in Amsterdam (1985–1991) and
Checkpoint Charlie Housing in
Berlin (1984–1990). Two houses were built in this period; the first house was a duo of patio villas (1985–1988) in the style of
Mies van der Rohe, inserted in a
dike in Rotterdam. The second – arguably the most full-grown design of OMA until that date – was Villa Dall'Ava in Paris (1984–1991). The client, according to Koolhaas, asked for a "masterpiece". The
Euralille (1994), a 70-hectare business and civic center in
Lille, northern France comprising the European hub for
high-speed trains, transformed a once dormant center of more than 50 million inhabitants into a site offering connectivity, and a range of contemporary activities. In 1999 OMA completed the Maison à Bordeaux, a villa for a client in the hills outside
Bordeaux, France. In October 2011, the
Barbican Art Gallery launched their exhibition "OMA/Progress", the first major presentation of OMA's work in the UK, curated by Belgium-based creative collective Rotor. ==AMO==