Koolhaas Lagos Quotes & Sayings

Lagos was the ultimate dysfunctional city - but actually, in terms of all the initiatives and ingenuity, it mobilised an incredibly beautiful, almost utopian landscape of independence and agency. — Rem Koolhaas

We must learn to live in this world, because we have no other choice. What we do have a choice in is how we choose to live. We can remain gray and immobile in the wake of our losses or we can open ourselves up to the world, let the sunshine in, fill our surroundings with heaps of flowers, and know that we loved someone truly and deeply. — Claire Bidwell Smith

In the nine heavens are eight Paradises; Where is the ninth one? In the human breast. Only the blessed dwell in th' Paradises, But blessedness dwells in the human breast. — William Rounseville Alger

Let's face it. I'm the romantic equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle. Men date me then disappear , never to be heard from again."

Jaymes, Olivia (2013-12-18). Justice Healed (Cowboy Justice Association Book 2) (Kindle Locations 981-982). Blonde Ambition Press. Kindle Edition. — Olivia Jaymes

What I loved about bike racing was that it was not a mainstream sport. My heroes were self-made. There were no coaches, no training centers, and only a handful of sponsors. Training rides were not totally devoted to bike talk. I got to know a lot of riders this way, not just as good sprinters or good climbers, but as people who had ideas different from mine, jobs different from mine, and dreams different from mine. — Steve Tesich

We discovered a person in Lagos who had a fish stall, and within a single square metre she carried two children all the way to Harvard. She supported an unbelievable escape of her children into education. In that sense it was a city completed pixillated, and every pixel contained amazing stories. — Rem Koolhaas

In Lagos there's a really strong case to resurrect strong parts. Embedded in all of it are some amazing pieces of planning, amazing pieces of engineering and interaction. For instance, the campus of Lagos University is stunningly beautiful, efficient and generous, and that needs to be recognised and preserved. — Rem Koolhaas

That has been another interesting discovery: that basically a city [Lagos] could recover from a really deep, deep, deep pit. — Rem Koolhaas

Lagos was not very inviting even to Lagosians. It was considered a no-go zone, almost in its entirety. — Rem Koolhaas

Lagos was a city that had been turned against itself. There was a bridge that became the perfect trap for crimes, which began with nails being scattered to cause flat tyres. If the driver stopped, the car would be dismantled in 20 minutes and the parts thrown overboard [to people waiting below]. The system had turned into a kind of destructive device that could be used against people. That was the narrative. — Rem Koolhaas

After years studying informality in Nigeria, Dutch architect and planner Rem Koolhaas reach the same conclusion. In the West, he writes, "there's a sense of infinite choice, but a very conventional set of options from which to choose." By contrast, "in Lagos, there is no choice, but there are countless ways to articulate the condition of no choice. — Dayo Olopade

Love is the eternal quest: almost everyone wants to love and be loved. — Jay McInerney

Lagos has also had a particular effect on my career. I was there early, and although it was a courageous step to go there and invest on this scale - I went there maybe 20 times - it's also been also super-controversial. There's an old school of thought that somebody like me has no place to go there.Because of colonialism and so on. — Rem Koolhaas

I try to treat people the way I would like to be treated, but I can't worry about what everyone's going to think. — Victoria Principal

The real thing we tried to look at is what happens to a society when the state is absent. At that point, the state had really withdrawn from Lagos; the city was left to its own devices, both in terms of money and services. That, by definition, created an unbelievable proliferation of independent agency: each citizen needed to take, in any day, maybe 400 or 500 independent decisions on how to survive that extremely complex system. — Rem Koolhaas

From darkness; take me unto Light.
O God! Help me today, make my maiden flight.
From sorrow; give me the strength to break. And help me to love and to care.
From darkness take me unto Light.
O God! Hear my prayers and let in the sunlight.
(excerpts of my poem from my book 'From the Silence Within') — Madhavi Sood

My joy grows with every soul that seeks the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Remember, you have one life. That's all. You were made for
God. Don't waste it. — John Piper

Confronted by menace or what is perceived as menace, governments will usually attempt to smash it, rarely to examine it, understand it, and drefine it. — Barbara W. Tuchman

At that time [90th in Lagos], if you drove through the city, you drove through a foreground that always seemed to be incredibly dramatic and incredibly agonised - smoking, burning, incredible compression. In the first year we stayed on the ground and went everywhere. But then in order to discover whether this was the whole story, we rented a helicopter. And we began to understand that this is not chaos but a highly modern system that had been abandoned, then at some point went into reversal, then slowly came out of it. — Rem Koolhaas

Jace. This can't happen." I closed my eyes, thinking it would be easier to say without him looking back at me. But it wasn't. "This isn't about us. I can't leave Marc. — Rachel Vincent

Everyone is talking about sustainability and resilience, yet all that knowledge is thrown in the bin. [Lagos is] a unique case, but also a test case. It's unbelievably unique, but also it's now considered with a number of really generic opinions, generic solution, generic expectations. — Rem Koolhaas