Interview with Floris Alkemade
Eduardo Aquino
It was only through Karen Shanski, an architect collaborator at the OMA – Office for Metropolitan Architecture –, that their work and process came to me in greater depth and detail during the summer months of 2000, when I spent a research period in that city. Rotterdam has always attracted me by its geographic positioning in relation to the European continent, by representing the center of architectural culture in the Netherlands, and especially by the Maas River and the harbor architecture, which inspired the film I am presently editing. My long time concern in the work of Rem Koolhaas led me to interview one of his longtime collaborators, Floris Alkemade.
Floris has been collaborating with Rem Koolhaas at OMA since he graduated from the Technical University of Delft, Faculty of Architecture, together with Winy Maas, who went on to form MVRDV. Floris is the project leader of the Master Plan for the new town of Almere, a new community to accommodate three hundred thousand people in the outskirts of Amsterdam.