independent school for the city

School’s Out! #24 with Samir Bantal

Samir Bantal was our speaker at the 24th edition School’s Out! Samir is the Director of AMO, the research and design studio of OMA. He has led design projects ranging from a new phone for Vodafone and a new retail concept for Korean car brand Genesis, to a high-rise mixed-use tower in Casablanca. Together with Rem Koolhaas, Samir led Countryside, The Future; a comprehensive research project that investigates the interaction between the city and the countryside that culminated in an exhibition in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, opened in 2020. In 2019, Samir worked on Making Doha; an exhibition that explores the role of modern architecture in the development of the city of Doha. In the same year, he collaborated with Virgil Abloh on the design of ‘Figures of Speech’, a retrospective of Virgil Abloh’s work at the MCA Chicago. Samir talked to us about AMO and his recent projects.

Programme

18:00 – 19:00 Doors open, drinks, bites and tunes
19:00 – 20:00 Lecture by Samir Bantal
20:00 – 20:30 Short film, selected by Jord den Hollander
20:30 – 22:00 Drinks, bites and tunes

About Samir Bantal
Samir Bantal is the director of AMO, the think- tank founded by Rem Koolhaas in 1998, which enables OMA to apply its architectural thinking beyond architecture, to the fields of design, technology, media and art. Samir Bantal rejoined OMA in 2015 after working at the office between 2003 and 2007 on a number of projects ranging from product design, research, architecture and master planning. He was involved in the Image of Europe, an exhibition on the history and meaning of the European Union, rebranding the European flag. He worked on a new proposal for the Shanghai Expo of 2010, a master plan for Riga Port City and several exhibitions for the Venice Biennale. He was the project architect of the Ras Al Khaimah master plan (2006) and Jebel Al Jais Resort (2006). Samir also contributed to a number of publications by AMO, such as Project Japan (2011) and Al Manakh I (2007). Before joining OMA, Samir worked for Toyo Ito, and with Wouter Vanstiphout at the chair of Design as Politics at Delft University of Technology. Between 2008-2012 he was editor of the Annual Architecture Yearbook of the Netherlands.

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