The windows of my apartment blew out, and everything was covered with three feet of soot that basically turned into concrete through the humidity and the rain. “That day had a profound impact on all our lives, and certainly for anyone in the city who saw it. “I lived four blocks away from the World Trade Center on 9/11,” he tells me from his office in New York. Prince-Ramus admits it’s the most important building he’s worked on to date, both personally and professionally. The brief called for a building that “defies experiential expectations” by celebrating artistic endeavour and risk-taking. Perelman Performing Arts Center – named after the financier who is largely funding the project – has been conceived by developer Silverstein Properties as “a prime cultural and social destination to redefine Lower Manhattan.” The centre will host performances of theatre, dance, music, opera and film across three auditoria when it opens in 2020. Now they are preparing for construction to begin on their biggest project to date: a theatre for the World Trade Center campus in New York. Over the last decade the burgeoning studio have completed a couple of elegant buildings, including the Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre in Dallas and the Vakko Fashion Center in Istanbul. In 2006, he purchased Koolhaas’ stake in the office and renamed the company REX Architecture. Entrusted to establish OMA’s first New York branch at the start of the millennium, he led projects such as Seattle’s acclaimed Central Library and the Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum in Las Vegas. Whatever its roots, Prince-Ramus has had no shortage of successes. Architecture is made by a team of committed people who work together, and in fact, success usually has more to do with dumb determination than with genius.” “Architecture is not created by individuals”, he once told a room of journalists. The 30-strong practice he leads does not bear his name and he fiercely rejects the ‘starchitect’ label. Unlike them, though, he has kept a relatively low profile. The American architect Joshua Prince-Ramus is another member of this illustrious club, who, like the others on the list, also decided to step out from Koolhaas’ formidable shadow and go it alone. Has there ever been a more prolific and consistent architectural talent factory than Rem Koolhaas’ Office of Metropolitan Architecture? Over four decades, the studio has launched the careers of a whole generation of today’s most influential and skyline-shaping designers among them Zaha Hadid, Jeanne Gang, Ole Scheeren, Bjarke Ingels, Winy Maas, Jacob van Rijs and Fernando Romero.
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