The dissertation explores the possibility of confronting the work of Dutch architect and leader of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), Rem Koolhaas (1944 -), with one of the monuments of universal literature: Faust (1808and 1832), by Goethe (1749-1832). Given the specificities of each analytical framework, Koolhaas is positioned as the protagonist in this encounter and is seen under the influence of the literary field in three dimensions: (a) Goethe s metabolism with reality as a writer-investigator; (b) Faust, as a character and Mephistopheles s pact-maker, the devil s personification; and (c) Faust, as a tragedy and autonomous work. The articulation of this triple and final tragic act,where the work opens itself to modernity, conceived by Goethe, unfolds inconstructing a city. This brings Faust closer to the condition of an architect and urban planner, establishing a connection with the way Koolhaas, as a screenwriter and journalist, envisions a place for modernity in his journey between Europe and the United States, considering the particularities of capitalism in each context. To achieve this, the analysis operates in three investigative dimensions: (I) the act of fictionalizing the historical context as a reading strategy and a way to capture the here and now; (II) practical action as an exposure to – and of – the contradictions absorbed in the act of materialization; and (III) the dispute over the linguistic remodeling of the respective disciplines as a contemporary operation. The idea of contemporary, drawn by the perspective of philosopher Giorgio Agamben,deviates from the immediate enunciations of Koolhaas s critics, to find him in the Faustian shadow: the instability between good and evil, which Goethe dissimulates through the exploration of the contradictions of modern life, becomesa reason for Koolhaas to express the metropolitan dichotomous suspensions.