The Architect of a Different Kind of Organization

At Harvard, he was introduced to Koolhaas. He soon learned to love the firm's hypercollaborative nature. OMA might well be one of the flattest organizations in all of architecture -- good ideas from both naive students and veteran partners are considered equally. One of Koolhaas's founding principles is that youth wins out over experience.

Despite the many upsides, Prince-Ramus quickly learned that the cult of Koolhaas has its downsides, too. It can be a bottleneck ("There still is the belief [in Rotterdam] that Rem needs to piss on it for it to be real," he says) and can obscure the visibility of talented young staffers. While Prince-Ramus admits that he has been given lots of credit for Seattle, he notes cryptically that Koolhaas "doesn't always actively direct attention elsewhere."

Prince-Ramus, however, is trying to make his mark without leaving any fingerprints. He repeatedly underlines the point that the Seattle library is the result of a collaborative effort. His face contorts in disgust when he recalls how he and Koolhaas were given all-star billing in a brochure for the Dallas theater. (He called Dallas and demanded an alphabetical list of the participating architects, giving equal treatment to all.)

OMA's New York office, in SoHo, reflects a collegial culture. On a late Saturday in March, two days before the Dallas presentation, several young architects are gluing, sanding, and making last-minute adjustments to models of the new theater. When a late lunch is ordered in, everyone stops to eat together. After Prince-Ramus's description of his work hours in Rotterdam -- his first day on the job extended into three as he worked 65 straight hours before collapsing -- it's surprising to find that Erez Ella, one of the architects for the Dallas theater, is missing in action. "He's with his 1-year-old son," says Prince-Ramus. "Where he should be."

To See Into the Future

Aside from building a sustainable team, Prince-Ramus is stretching OMA's blueprint for the design process. Koolhaas does not have a signature aesthetic; there is no immediately recognizable flourish in his work. Rather than focusing on shape or style, Koolhaas organizes a building by its functions, uses, and content.

The Seattle library is one of the best examples of this approach. The building's individual spaces are clearly defined and clearly visible, both outside and inside. "Each element -- the book stacks, the staff offices, the meeting spaces -- is given its own volume," says MoMA's di Carlo, "then connected and shrink-wrapped." The exterior, a skin of diamond-patterned glass, seems almost draped, like a net, over the interior spaces.

OMA took a collaborative approach that can be used in any industry. The process began with a three-month journey to brainstorm how to build the first 21st-century library. OMA, LMN, and library representatives traveled to 20 other libraries in North America and Europe and met with technology executives and futurists to talk about what's next for books. They held seminars with librarians to understand how architecture could help them work better. They didn't begin to think about design until the research phase was completed.

On the tours, they noticed how many libraries had been designed with what Prince-Ramus calls a "shotgun" approach, creating universal spaces that could be used for anything. That flexibility made the rooms generic. Librarians also told the architects about the difficulties that came with interdisciplinary research. The result of that conversation: the "mixing chamber." Resembling a trading floor, it merges the library's research spaces into one central area.

When Prince-Ramus talks about anything, but especially architecture, he sketches messily on plain white paper, which he carries with him everywhere. Asked about the role that aesthetics plays in his approach to design, he looks down at his hand, as if it's separate from his body.

"Everyone wants to talk about authorship," he says. "It's really kind of irrelevant. Its only relevance is who makes the space for something to happen." Koolhaas made that space for a then 29-year-old architect to lead what is already being hailed as one of the great masterpieces of contemporary architecture. Prince-Ramus wants to make that space, too, for another generation of the Koolhaas kids.

Jena McGregor is Fast Company's associate editor.