Françoise Fromonot: The House of Doctor Koolhaas

Gumshoe is a new series of architectural books that introduces an original approach to the writing of architectural history. It returns the focus of architectural discourse back onto buildings in a style and form that is fresh and scholarly but also easy and enjoyable to read. It emulates the detective novel—a form of writing beloved by many, but also one that has enjoyed a parallel academic life in disciplines and by writers in fields as diverse as psychoanalysis (Sigmund Freud), film (Sigfried Kracauer), and art history (Carlo Ginzburg)—but, significantly, not yet by architecture. Each volume will investigate a singular building as if it were a mystery waiting to be solved.

Written by distinguished French architectural critic and historian Françoise Fromonot, the first case—The House of Doctor Koolhaas—is about the Villa dall’Ava, a private residence in Saint-Cloud, a suburb of Paris. Fromonot brilliantly unpicks, explains, and interprets this very first building completed by Rem Koolhaas, who is universally regarded as the world’s most celebrated architect, and his Rotterdam-based firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture. The house is resolutely part of a modern architectural canon, but until now has not been the focus of a dedicated book or analysis.