Rem before Koolhaas

Rem Before Koolhaas is the first book to uncover Rem Koolhaas’s early work as a journalist for Haagse Post between 1963 and 1967. Offering a fresh look at this period and including a new interview with Koolhaas, Antonio Cantero explores how Koolhaas’s interviews often became essayistic pieces that register power dynamics, social realities and cultural shifts within a specific media ecology. Featuring original Haagse Post layouts and first-time English translations, Cantero’s book reveals Koolhaas as both an observer of his time and an interviewer for whom writing became a space for learning. Rather than treating journalism as a biographical precursor to his architectural career, Rem Before Koolhaas presents it not as a professional identity but as a retrospective position from which this body of work can be read on its own terms.

Dr. Antonio Cantero is an architect and assistant professor of architecture at TU Delft.