Since its original publication in 1978, Delirious New York has attained mythic status. Back in print in a newly designed edition, this influential cultural, architectural, and social history of New York is even more popular, selling out its first printing on publication. Rem Koolhaas's celebration and analysis of New York depicts the city as a metaphor for the incredible variety of human behavior. At the end of the nineteenth century, population, information, and technology explosions made Manhattan a laboratory for the invention and testing of a metropolitan lifestyle -- "the culture of congestion" -- and its architecture.
"Manhattan," he writes, "is the 20th century's Rosetta Stone . . . occupied by architectural mutations (Central Park, the Skyscraper), uian fragments (Rockefeller Center, the U.N. Building), and irrational phenomena (Radio City Music Hall)." Koolhaas interprets and reinterprets the dynamic relationship between architecture and culture in a number of telling episodes of New York's history, including the imposition of the Manhattan grid, the creation of Coney Island, and the development of the skyscraper. Delirious New York is also packed with intriguing and fun facts and illustrated with witty watercolors and quirky archival drawings, photographs, postcards, and maps. The spirit of this visionary investigation of Manhattan equals the energy of the city itself.
《癫狂的纽约》(Delirious New York)一书中,库哈斯认为“曼哈顿的建筑是一种拥塞的开拓之范型,曼哈顿已产生自己的大都会都市主义――拥塞文化”,并提出了拥塞文化的三个定理:格子(Grid)、脑前叶切开术(lobotomy)、分裂(schism)。 格子代表曼哈顿的都市规划,表现出一种不自由和自由间的辩证关系;脑前叶切开术代表摩天大楼内外关系的决裂;分裂则代表摩天大楼叠豆腐式的空间构成造成上下楼层关系分裂的状况。库哈斯认为拥塞文化“解决了形式(外)与机能(内)长久以来的冲突,使曼哈顿的的建筑物兼具建筑和高效能机械;现代的和永恒的。”