Star architect Rem Koolhaas is closing his New York office after several of his American projects were cancelled. “It’s been a tough year for the high-flying Mr. Koolhaas, who won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2000. Two weeks ago the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York scrapped his $200 million expansion, saying the project was too big for the cash-strapped institution to take on. A few months earlier, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art had iced his $400 million building, citing budget and fund-raising problems. The Prada superstore in San Francisco that Mr. Koolhaas designed has been axed, and his glitzy, casino-cushioned Guggenheim Las Vegas closed after 18 months. In a recent lecture at Columbia University, Mr. Koolhaas suggested that he was fed up with New York and America and was shifting his focus elsewhere – to Beijing, for example, where he is designing a $650 million broadcast center for the 2008 Olympics.”