Koolhaas. Countryside, A Report

Description

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.

CONTENTS

Ignored Realm, RK
Director’s Foreword, Richard Armstrong
Along for the Ride, Troy Conrad Therrien
Eurodrive: Repopulation Utopia, Niklas Maak
Rif Revisited, Samir Bantal
Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature, Alexandra Kharitonova
Future Food, Louise Fresco interviewed by RK
Food Insecurity, Samir Bantal
Ocha: African Avant Garde, Dr. Linda Nkatha Gichuyia & Etta Madete
Botscape, Keigo Kobayashi
Sea Lovers, Ingo Niermann
Villages with Chinese Characteristics, Stephan Petermann
Thaw, Janna Bystrykh
Gorilla Politics, Johannes Refisch interviewed by NM & RK
Gorilla Theory, Niklas Maak
Off-(Jefferson’s) Grid, Anne M. Schneider
Industrial Farming Blues, Janna Bystrykh
Buying = Saving, Federico Martelli, Cookies
TRIC: Post-human Architecture, RK
Descartes Was Here, Clemens Driessen
Pixel Farming, Lenora Ditzler
?, RK