Rem Koolhaas's Unbuilt Hyperbuilding for Bangkok Revisited

Twenty years after Rem Koolhaas developed Hyperbuilding, a theoretical self-sufficient city for 120,000 people in Bangkok, the project remains unbuilt. Conceived in 1996 by Koolhaas and his firm OMA, Hyperbuilding aimed to address Bangkok's reliance on commuting and housing inadequacy, both consequences of Thailand's rapid modernization. The structure was to be an autonomous entity on the western bank of the Chao Phraya River, metaphorically drawing from traditional city elements: towers as streets with varied-speed elevators, horizontal elements as parks, volumes as functional districts, and diagonal lines as cable car routes. In 2006, the concept was adapted into the Louisville Museum Plaza by Joshua Prince-Ramus, a megastructure intended to house a contemporary art museum, restaurants, a hotel, 85 luxury apartments, and 150 lofts, but that project was abandoned in 2011. Koolhaas, a Pritzker Prize winner, was also working on Maison à Bordeaux during the same period, a house designed for a wheelchair-bound member of the Lemoine publishing family, featuring a mobile platform across three floors.