The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is a Rotterdam and New York based firm practicing contemporary architecture, urbanism and cultural analysis.

21st
OMA Rotterdam—led by partners Rem Koolhaas, Ellen van Loon and Ole Scheeren—focuses attention on Europe and Asia. Currently, the Rotterdam office is engaged in the design of OMA’s largest project ever: the massive, six million square foot Headquarters and Cultural Center for Chinese Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing. In addition, the new Dutch Embassy in Berlin, the 1,850 seat Porto Concert Hall and the New City Center for Almere, Netherlands are all soon to be opened.
OMA New York—led by partner Joshua Ramus—is the center of the firm’s American operations. In addition to the Illinois Institute of Technology Campus Center, the New York studio has two other substantial projects whose opening is expected within the next year, including the new Seattle Central Library and the Prada Beverly Hills “Epicenter” Store. The New York office is also engaged in the design of the Dallas Multiform Theater and the Dallas Center for the Performing Arts Master Plan.
OMA’s most recent realizations include the Prada New York “Epicenter” Store, the Lehman Maupin Gallery in New York, and the Guggenheim and Guggenheim-Hermitage Museums in Las Vegas.

20th
Founded in 1975, the office gained renown through a series of groundbreaking entries into major competitions: Parc de La Villette (1982), La Très Grande Bibliothèque de France (1989), and Two Libraries for Jussieu University (1993). During these formative years, OMA also realized several ambitious projects, ranging from private residences to large scale urban plans: Villa dall’Ava (1991) overlooking the Eiffel Tower; Nexus World Housing (1991), two apartment blocks in Fukuoka, Japan; and the Kunsthal and its Museum Park in Rotterdam (1992). In 1994, OMA completed Euralille, a 70 hectare, $865 million business and civic center in northern France hosting the European hub for high-speed trains. Implementation of the master plan in under five years, including individual buildings by architects such as Nouvel, de Portzamparc, Shinohara and OMA (the Grand Palais Congress and Expo Center), gave the office’s urban theories—and its ability to provide contemporary solutions within complex, historic situations—practical credibility.

Team
OMA employs a staff of 83 architects, industrial designers, graphic designers and administrators of multinational origin who work in a highly collaborative environment. Expert consultants on relevant issues are intimately involved within the office’s process, starting with the creation of first concepts. Most notably, OMA weaves the input of structural and mechanical engineers into the design effort at the earliest possible moment. In this manner, designs are not only tested on their feasibility, but also provide enough challenge to and integration with the other disciplines so as to provide the client with maximum (built) quality. As projects move into construction, OMA creates locally based teams, combining OMA staff and local expertise, to work on site.

AMO
In the late nineties, while working on the design for a new headquarters for Universal Studios, Inc., OMA was first exposed to the fast pace of change that engulfs the world of media, and with it, the increasing importance of the virtual domain. This exposure led OMA to create AMO, a research arm that applies ‘architectural thinking’ in its pure form to questions of organization, identity, culture, program and technology. With a core staff based in Rotterdam, AMO has consolidated OMA’s existing professional collaborations and created new cross-disciplinary partnerships which it brings to bear on efforts parallel to OMA’s building design work. For example, as OMA developed shops for the fashion house Prada in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, AMO advanced Prada’s in-store information technology, website, media content and advertisement campaigns.
AMO also works on commissions independently from OMA. AMO has been a partner in the multidisciplinary team that supported relocation of the Netherlands’ main airport—Schiphol—to an island in the North Sea. Most recently, AMO has been hired by the European Commission to brainstorm on the visual communication of Europe as a political, social and economic entity. The colored ‘barcode’—one of the results of this brainstorm—has received full attention of the media, touting it as the new flag of Europe, replacing the ‘twelve gold stars.’