Museum Plaza designers break away from firm
Move won't affect plans for high-rise
The Courier-Journal
5/14/2006

By Chris Poynter
cpoynter@courier-journal.com

When the radical design for Museum Plaza was unveiled in February, it caused a stir in architectural circles worldwide -- the celebrity architect and urban thinker Rem Koolhaas was proposing an unusual skyscraper for Louisville.

In reality, Koolhaas had no role in the design. A young team of architects running his New York City office, headed by Joshua Prince Ramus, did all the work.

Now, Ramus, 36, and his co-workers, including Erez Ella, 35, are breaking from Koolhaas and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) to form their own firm -- Ramus Ella Architects, or REX.

The split, being announced today, is effective immediately.

Though Museum Plaza will lose the star power of the Koolhaas name, the developers said it will not affect the proposed 61-story high-rise.

Groundbreaking is planned for early next year.

The developers recently announced they've hired Minneapolis-based Mortenson Co., which built the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, as construction manager.

"It's a nonissue to us," said Steve Poe, who is developing Museum Plaza with attorney Craig Greenberg and husband and wife Steve Wilson and Laura Lee Brown. "Our mission in the beginning was to find the new young, cutting-edge architect. … We hired Josh and his team. We didn't hire OMA, per se."

The split is amicable, said Ramus and a spokesman for OMA, headquartered in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Ramus said that, over time, there was little connection between the New York OMA office and the headquarters in Rotterdam, other than Ramus and Koolhaas' personal and business relationship.

"It's a natural development," said Victor Van Der Chijs, OMA's managing director. The New York office -- 50 percent owned by Ramus and 50 percent by Koolhaas -- has been purchased by Ramus. The details weren't disclosed.

Van Der Chijs said OMA still will maintain an office in New York and will co-operate with REX on some projects.

In an interview with Business Week this year, Ramus hinted that there was some tension between Koolhaas and the OMA New York office, saying Koolhaas is not "always that comfortable with the way we work. … Either he's changed or we've changed."

Ramus also has tried to downplay the cult of star architects, or "starchitects," which he said is created by the media's obsession with celebrity.

He often reiterates -- as he did in Louisville when Museum Plaza was unveiled -- that no design is the work of one architect, but the collaboration of many.

Asked last week if there was tension between himself and Koolhaas, Ramus quickly answered: "No, not at all." So, too, did Van Der Chijs, who said the split shouldn't be seen as a "break up."

Poe said that he does not believe Museum Plaza loses anything by not having the Koolhaas name attached.

Wilson and Brown -- who first proposed building a contemporary arts center, which morphed into Museum Plaza -- always wanted to find the up-and-coming world architect and asked David Mohney, dean of the University of Kentucky College of Design, to create a list of names.

Koolhaas wasn't on the short list, Poe said.

But when the development team met Ramus, who won acclaim for the design of the Seattle Central Library, they were sold, Poe said.

Ramus agreed that the split does not affect Museum Plaza. "The project is as good today as it was yesterday," he said.

All 35 employees of OMA's New York office will go to work tomorrow as employees of REX. OMA will maintain a presence in the U.S., Ramus said, although where and how have yet to be determined.

Museum Plaza -- a $380 million project expected to include a contemporary arts center, lofts, luxury condos, hotel and office space -- will be REX's first high-profile project.

REX will take with it two other projects -- The Wyly Theatre in Dallas, and a science and technology building at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

In a telephone interview, Ramus said he knows the architectural world will be closely monitoring Museum Plaza, since it's REX's first project on its own.

Ramus joined OMA in 1996, fresh out of Harvard University's graduate architecture program. He opened New York's OMA office in 2001 and became a partner in 2002.

Since Koolhaas had no role in Museum Plaza, Ramus and his co-workers realized they could pull off large projects on their own, without Koolhaas.

Museum Plaza, Ramus said, "was the most clear example of where we were working rather independently. … This is the first project where it has been entirely autonomous."

Ramus' business partner, Erez Ella, is a native of Israel and a key designer on Museum Plaza. Ella joined OMA in 1999.

Ramus is a Seattle native who made a splash with the Seattle Central Library, which rethought the role of a library in society and designed a zig-zag glass jewel box.

Stanley Collyer, editor and publisher of Competitions, an architectural magazine in Louisville, said Ramus striking out on his own is not unusual. It is a bit unusual, however, Collyer said, that the split is occurring in the midst of a major project.

Still, Collyer said: "I don't think it matters. In this town, nobody knew who Koolhaas was anyway."