A diagram is many things—a tool, language, weapon, mirror. It may feign neutrality, with its neat vectors and clean geometries, but it is seldom innocent. Historically used to chart stars, plan cities, diagram battlefields or communicate medical data, the diagram is a vehicle for ideology as much as it is for information. “In my view, the diagram has been an almost permanent tool,” remarks Koolhaas. “It not only exists by default in any new medium but can also be applied to virtually any area of human life… its independence from language makes it one of the most effective forms of representation.”

Indeed, diagrams are both cross-cultural and interdisciplinary. From Mesoamerican codices and Islamic astronomical charts to Alexander von Humboldt’s ecological matrices and Emma Willard’s 19th-century “maps of time,” these graphic structures have been enlisted to distil complexity—and, at times, to oversimplify it. And it is this this tension between clarity and distortion that holds pace as one of the exhibition’s central concerns.

American sociologist, historian, author and activist W.E.B. Du Bois, one of the premier Black scholars of his time, provides the exhibition’s powerful starting point. His 1900 infographics for “The Exhibit of American Negroes” at the Exposition Universelle in Paris—dazzling for both their formal clarity and their radical content—asserted a data-driven case for African-American agency and dignity at a time when neither was a given. These diagrams weren’t just illustrations; they were acts of resistance.

From here, “Diagrams” sweeps across centuries and continents. Florence Nightingale’s rose charts on Crimean War mortality make an appearance, showcasing how clarity can affect policy. Charles Joseph Minard’s famed graphic of Napoleon’s Russian campaign—long admired by data nerds and designers alike—invites us to reconsider how the visual compression of horror becomes a modern form of storytelling.

Diagrams have long been an integral part of AMO/OMA’s research-driven design practice—Koolhaas and his team have been using them to illustrate the feasibility of complex ideas since the 1970s, transforming abstract concepts into tangible, persuasive forms. It’s no surprise, then, that despite the sheer abundance of infographics on display, the exhibition never overwhelms or numbs. Instead, it offers a counterpoint to the rapid, often superficial visual culture of our time. At a time when visual communication often races past us—too swift to register, too polished to provoke—“Diagrams” encourages us to pause, reflect, and perhaps re-draw our assumptions about the world around us.