Over the next few weeks, you'll likely hear a lot about an aggressively sculptural public library opening in downtown Seattle on May 23. The $165.5 million library was designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and his Rotterdam-based firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture. If the early buzz is any indication, it may prove to be a breakthrough of sorts for Koolhaas, giving him public celebrity to go with the outsized reputation he's long had within his profession. While Frank Gehry remains the most famous architect in the world, for more than a decade Koolhaas, who is 59, has been the most influential. A few architects have a sharper theoretical edge than Koolhaas, and a few create more exciting spaces. But nobody—not even Gehry—produces buildings that are simultaneously so intellectually ambitious and so shamelessly populist. In addition to running OMA, Koolhaas has spun off a consulting practice with clients like Wired magazine and Prada; teaches at Harvard; and is the author of enough polemical books and essays, including the now-cultish Delirious New York, to fill a small bookcase.