Review: Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect by Markus Heidingsfelder and Min Tesch

During the past decade, it became clear that the postmodern belief in the death of the author as a narrative construct was greatly exaggerated. As architects realized the marketing value of the authorial persona—labeled the “starchitect” by the media culture of a boom economy—the critical and historiographical tools of recent disciplinary accounts of architectural practice after World War II have become increasingly divorced from the public representation of architects and their practice.¹ Still, the same architects who have marketed themselves as brands and their work as singular objects for public consumption have proven willing, within the profession, to acknowledge the team effort required to produce such brands and objects.² In retrospect, the death of the author failed to predict the brand value of what Michel Foucault has called the “author-function” in a globalized market for architectural products.³

Rem Koolhaas: A Kind of Architect, a film by...