Architecture is a compelling blend of continuity and change. Within its fixed forms, space and time collide, merging influences that may be separated by thousands of years — elements that have existed for more than 5,000 years alongside others reinvented only yesterday.

Elements of Architecture turns its attention to the individual components that make up architecture’s vast and complex collage. Windows, façades, balconies, corridors, fireplaces, stairs, escalators, elevators — the book investigates the hidden histories behind these essential architectural details. The result is not a single continuous narrative, but rather a richly interconnected architectural history woven from origins, adaptations, similarities, and contrasts, shaped by technological innovation, political realities, economic forces, legal regulations, and emerging digital possibilities.

Based on Rem Koolhaas’s acclaimed exhibition for the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, the project became an expansive work of foundational research that surprised even Koolhaas himself. “I was shocked by how little I knew, for example, about the history of the door, even as a relatively cultured architect interested in history,” he remarked. “We discovered the complexity of both the present and the past.”

Designed by Irma Boom, this monumental 2,600-page volume draws on research conducted at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and includes essays by Rem Koolhaas, Stephan Trüby, Manfredo di Robilant, and Jeffrey Inaba, interviews with Werner Sobek and Tony Fadell of Nest Labs, and an exclusive photographic essay by Wolfgang Tillmans.

Alongside substantially updated texts and new imagery, the monograph features a completely redesigned physical format intended to reflect the extraordinary breadth of its subject matter:

• a custom binding with a split spine, requiring the printer to modify its binding machinery to accommodate the flexible eight-centimeter-thick structure

• a new introductory section containing prefaces, contents, and an index positioned at the center of the book, where the spine naturally opens

• printing on 50g/m² opaque paper chosen for the ideal translucency required by Irma Boom’s palimpsest-like design

• translucent overlays and personal annotations by Koolhaas and Boom woven throughout the chapters, creating an alternative and more intuitive path through the volume

• printed at its originally intended size for improved readability