First edition, first printing of Rem Koolhaas’s foundational book and one of the defining works of late twentieth-century architectural theory. Published in 1978 by Oxford University Press. Large 4to (9.5” x 12”), publisher’s salmon pink cloth lettered in black, dust jacket, 263 pages, extensively illustrated in color and black and white.
Written before he had completed a major building, Koolhaas’s Delirious New York reconstructs Manhattan as an unacknowledged collective experiment—the grid, elevator, skyscraper, Coney Island, Rockefeller Center, and Radio City becoming episodes in the production of a “culture of congestion.” Its combination of manifesto, urban history, archival montage, and speculative architecture established the intellectual territory from which his OMA practice would emerge.
The original jacket reproduces Madelon Vriesendorp’s Flagrant Délit (1975), in which the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings are discovered in bed by the RCA Building. The now-iconic image condenses Koolhaas’s method into a surreal urban narrative and remains inseparable from the book’s identity. Light bumping and rubbing to extremities; chipping to first seven letters of the title. Binding somewhat shaken; mild rippling to textblock. Creasing to top and bottom edges of lightly rubbed dust jacket, with limited open tears to front cover, moderate open tears to rear cover, and 1.5” open tear to spine head. Contents pristine. Despite the damage, the jacket remains substantially complete, retains its original $35.00 price, and preserves Vriesendorp’s important first-edition design.
First edition, first printing of Rem Koolhaas’s foundational book and one of the defining works of late twentieth-century architectural theory. Published in 1978 by Oxford University Press. Large 4to (9.5” x 12”), publisher’s salmon pink cloth lettered in black, dust jacket, 263 pages, extensively illustrated in color and black and white.
Written before he had completed a major building, Koolhaas’s Delirious New York reconstructs Manhattan as an unacknowledged collective experiment—the grid, elevator, skyscraper, Coney Island, Rockefeller Center, and Radio City becoming episodes in the production of a “culture of congestion.” Its combination of manifesto, urban history, archival montage, and speculative architecture established the intellectual territory from which his OMA practice would emerge.
The original jacket reproduces Madelon Vriesendorp’s Flagrant Délit (1975), in which the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings are discovered in bed by the RCA Building. The now-iconic image condenses Koolhaas’s method into a surreal urban narrative and remains inseparable from the book’s identity. Light bumping and rubbing to extremities; chipping to first seven letters of the title. Binding somewhat shaken; mild rippling to textblock. Creasing to top and bottom edges of lightly rubbed dust jacket, with limited open tears to front cover, moderate open tears to rear cover, and 1.5” open tear to spine head. Contents pristine. Despite the damage, the jacket remains substantially complete, retains its original $35.00 price, and preserves Vriesendorp’s important first-edition design.
