Samir Bantal

Samir Bantal is an architect based in Rotterdam and partner at OMA. From 2016 he was director of AMO, the firm’s think tank and design studio, working at the intersection of architecture, design, media, fashion, and technology. There he reframed how institutions and brands engage with contemporary culture, redefining how cars are sold worldwide through Genesis, and sustaining a multi-year collaboration with Virgil Abloh. His work spans regions and scales, from museum galleries and offices to retail and residential towers.

He first joined OMA in 2005, left in 2007, and rejoined in 2015. His early contributions included The Image of Europe and Al Manakh, projects from a period when OMA’s context was expanding into new geographies across Asia and the Middle East, and when the boundaries of architectural practice were being redrawn.

His most critical project is Countryside, The Future, co-curated with Rem Koolhaas and presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York (2020) and in Doha (2025). Its subject marks the terrain ahead: as pressures of food, energy, data, and climate reorganize the planet, the decisive questions increasingly lie outside the city, in the vast non-built territories that architecture has long ignored.

Bantal’s work positions OMA to engage both the built and non-built surfaces of the earth, marking the focus of a new period for the discipline, and for the office.