Rem Koolhaas, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 1984-1988
OfHouses presents “Pritzkers’ First Houses”: The first single family house designed by Rem Koolhaas (Pritzker 2000) was the Spear House (1975) in Miami, a teamwork effort with his student Laurinda Spear. The project was praised by the critics and even won a Progressive Architecture award, but it was not realized. While Koolhaas left the States to establish OMA, a second design for the Spear House (the now worldwide famous ‘Pink House’, already published by OfHouses) was created in 1977 by Laurinda Spear with her newly established firm Arquitectonica. Almost ten years later, Koolhaas was asked to design a house for the then
Rotterdam alderman Joop Linthorst and his partner Dick van Buren. The house was supposed to be the first in a row of three, with the other two conceived as real estate investments. The number of units was then reduced
to two: a patio house for Linthorst and the adjacent one, with a more traditional interior layout (and a skylight instead of a patio), for an undisclosed family. (Photos: Hans Werlemann. Source: OMA Archive; El Croquis 53.)
