Madelon Vriesendorp’s Manhattan Project

Madelon Vriesendorp, 1975

Together with her husband Rem Koolhaas, Vriesendorp began working on a series of illustrations depicting New York City’s defining structures in the early 1970s. Vriesendorp described her creations as an “in-depth analysis of the possibilities provided by architecture, and accordingly mark the moment when the rigid corset of modernism seemed to be entirely exhausted.”

“Flagrant Delit“, arguably the most iconic of these ones, is a representation of post-coital Empire State and Chrysler Buildings caught in bed by the Rockefeller Building, representing “one of the most beguiling attempts to depict the unconscious double-life of modern architecture.”

Flagrant Delit (Caught in the Act), Madelon Vriesendorp, 1975.

Her work was vastly used for book and magazine covers, notably on the cover of Delirious New York in 1978 by Rem Koolhaas. "The World of Madelon Vriesendorp: Paintings/Postcards/Objects/Games" a 40-year retrospective of the artist's career first premiered in London in 2008. Madelon Vriesendorp founded Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) with Koolhaas in the early 70s.