Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture: The Allotments
Rem Koolhaas
Dutch, born 1944
Madelon Vriesendorp
Dutch, born 1945
Elia Zenghelis
British, born Greece 1937
Zoe Zenghelis
British, born Greece 1937
1972
Rem Koolhaas’s graphite-and-watercolor plan reduces a city to a regimented grid of identical green allotments with deliberate interventions, testing how architectural systems can shape collective behavior and voluntary confinement.
The right two-thirds of the sheet is a precise pencil grid peppered with tiny lime-green house glyphs, interrupted by a pale blue square, a penciled hatch and a band of energetic green slashes, while the left third remains an empty, silent field.
As part of Koolhaas’s 1972 Exodus project, this diagrammatic drawing helped make visible architecture as critical research—using repetition, omission and small disruptions to critique modernist planning and to seed ideas that would transform contemporary urban theory and practice.
Medium
Graphite and watercolor on paper
Dimensions
11 3/8 x 16 3/8" (28.9 x 41.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, Takeo Ohbayashi Purchase Fund, and Susan de Menil Purchase Fund
Accession
377.1996
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
