The founding of OMA coincided with the firm's entry in the architectural design competition for a new Dutch parliament building in The Hague in 1978, with Zaha Hadid.

[3] Several studies were made during the late 1970s and 1980s: Study for the renovation of a panopticon prison in Arnhem in 1979, Boompjes tower slab in Rotterdam (1979), Housing for Berlin IBA (1980, not realised, and the reason OMA would not design anything in Berlin anymore in the 20th century, the Dutch Embassy Building being the comeback),[citation needed] master plan for a world exhibition in Paris (1983).

In the 1990s OMA gained renown through a series of groundbreaking entries in major competitions: e.g., Tres Grande Bibliothèque and Two Libraries for Jussieu University, Paris, France (1993).

During these years OMA also realized ambitious projects, ranging from private residences to large scale urban plans: Villa dall’Ava, Paris, France (1991), Nexus Housing, Fukuoka, Japan (1991), Kunsthal, Rotterdam (1992).

OMA's recently completed projects include Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Exhibition and Convention Centre in Toulouse (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), Brighton College (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020), nhow Amsterdam RAI Hotel (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip in Perth (2019), BLOX ?

Former partner and Seattle resident Joshua Prince-Ramus, heard from his mother about the meeting for interested firms at the last minute and flew in from the Netherlands.

[5] In October 2011, the Barbican Art Gallery launched their exhibition "OMA/Progress", the first major presentation of OMA's work in the UK, curated by Belgium-based creative collective Rotor.

In 1998, Rem Koolhaas and Reinier de Graaf founded AMO, a think tank within OMA dedicated to producing non-architectural work including exhibitions, branding campaigns, publishing, and energy planning.

[9] In 2008 AMO curated the exhibition "Dubai Next" at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, and was one of the editors on the book Al Manakh, which details the rapid transformation of the Gulf region.

With a distinct faceted form, New York Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff called it "a building whose intellectual ardor is matched by its sensual beauty".

[13] Inside, the elevated 1,300-seat Grand Auditorium, in the shape of a shoebox, has corrugated glass façades at either end that open the hall to the city and offer Porto itself as a dramatic backdrop for performances.

As well as the Grand Auditorium, conceived as a simple mass hollowed out end-to-end from the solid form of the building, the Casa da Música also contains a smaller, more flexible performance space with no fixed seating.

Winner of the 2005 Mies van der Rohe Award (the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture), OMA's Netherlands Embassy in Berlin is an isolated cube surrounded on two sides by a perimeter wall.