The rural, remote, and wild territories we call "countryside", or the
98% of the earth's surface not occupied by cities, make up the front
line where today's most powerful forces--climate and ecological
devastation, migration, tech, demographic lurches--are playing out.
Increasingly under a 'Cartesian' regime--gridded, mechanized, and
optimized for maximal production--these sites are changing beyond
recognition. In his latest publication, Rem Koolhaas explores the rapid
and often hidden transformations underway across the Earth's vast
non-urban areas.
Countryside, A Report gathers travelogue essays exploring territories
marked by global forces and experimentation at the edge of our
consciousness: a test site near Fukushima, where the robots that will
maintain Japan's infrastructure and agriculture are tested; a greenhouse
city in the Netherlands that may be the origin for the cosmology of
today's countryside; the rapidly thawing permafrost of Central Siberia,
a region wrestling with the possibility of relocation; refugees
populating dying villages in the German countryside and intersecting
with climate change activists; habituated mountain gorillas confronting
humans on 'their' territory in Uganda; the American Midwest, where
industrial-scale farming operations are coming to grips with
regenerative agriculture; and Chinese villages transformed into
all-in-one factory, e-commerce stores, and fulfillment centers.
This book is the official companion to the Guggenheim Museum exhibition
Countryside, The Future. The exhibition and book mark a new area of
investigation for architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas, who launched his
career with two city-centric entities: The Office for Metropolitan
Architecture (1975) and Delirious New York (1978). It's designed by Irma
Boom, who drew inspiration for the book's pocket-sized concept, as well
as its innovative typography and layout, from her research in the
Vatican library.
The book brings together collaborative research by AMO, Koolhaas, and
students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; the Central Academy
of Fine Arts, Beijing; Wageningen University in the Netherlands; and the
University of Nairobi. Contributors also include Samir Bantal, Janna
Bystrykh, Troy Conrad Therrien, Lenora Ditzler, Clemens Driessen,
Alexandra Kharitonova, Keigo Kobayashi, Niklas Maak, Etta Madete,
Federico Martelli, Ingo Niermann, Dr. Linda Nkatha Gichuyia, Kayoko Ota,
Stephan Petermann, and Anne M. Schneider.
