Koolhaas was born in Rotterdam in 1944, in city flattened and emptied
by the war. His father, Anton Koolhaas, was a celebrated Dutch novelist
and journalist. When Rem was eight his parents moved to Jakarta for four
years. His father, in his writing, had strongly supported the Indonesian
cause for autonomy from the colonial Dutch, and when the war of
independence was won he had been invited over to run a cultural
programme for three years. 'It was a very important age for me,'
Koolhaas recalls. 'And I really lived as an Asian.'
In this sense, I suggest, he must have been a doubly 'postwar' child.
===================
Cecil Balmond is the man who brings Rem Koolhaas's designs to earth. He
is the deputy chairman of Arup, the world's most innovative design
engineers. Before I go to see Koolhaas I meet Balmond, a wonderfully
precise man, in his office in London. As with Koolhaas, the Serpentine
is one project among maybe a dozen on which Balmond was currently
engaged. It is like a little annual holiday for him, or a least a
three-dimensional sudoku for his lunch breaks. He was brought in by
Daniel Libeskind to engineer the first pavilion in the millennial year.
He has subsequently worked with Julia Peyton-Jones, director of the
Serpentine, on all the other designs.
Balmond, who has been with Arup for 'five lifetimes' after coming to
London from Sri Lanka, shares with Koolhaas a taste for working at the
boundaries of the possible.
cont'd....
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,1803741,00.html