Since its original publication in 1978, Delirious New York has
attained mythic status. Back in print in a newly designed edition, this
influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is
even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem
Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a
metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior.
At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and
technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and
testing of a metropolitan lifestyle - "the culture of congestion" - and
its architecture. "Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta
Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the
Skyscraper), utopian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building),
and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets
and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and
culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including
the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and
the development of the skyscraper.
Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and
illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings,
photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary
investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.
