Business
& Labor
New York Office of OMA Breaks Away
(archrecord.construction.com - 06/30/2006)
By Alan
G. Brake
In an amicable split, Office for Metropolitan
Architecture (OMA)’s New York office, led by principal
Joshua Prince-Ramus, has spun off into a new firm. Unlike
OMA’s other offices, which are owned collaboratively
by six other partners, the New York office was owned by Ramus
and firm founder Rem Koolhaas.
In May, Ramus, with former OMA colleague
Erez Ella, bought out Koolhaas and retained the 35-member
staff to form REX, which stands for Ramus Ella Architecture.
Ramus also keeps high-profile projects like Museum Plaza in
Louisville, Kentucky, and the Annenberg Center for information
Science and Technology in Pasadena, California. OMA and REX
will collaborate, and OMA is planning to open a new office
in the U.S.
“It’s really been unremarkable,
no revolution, no crisis,” says Ramus. “The biggest
challenge now is going to be building our own identity.”
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