Rem Koolhaas's 'Countryside, A Report' Challenges Urban-Centric Future

Architect Rem Koolhaas, at 75, continues to defy architectural conventions with his latest book 'Countryside, A Report' (Taschen, €20), which argues that the most radical societal transformations are occurring in rural areas, not cities. The book is the result of a four-year investigation by AMO (OMA's research arm) with Harvard Graduate School of Design and five academic institutions in Eindhoven, Nairobi, Beijing, Tokyo, and Wageningen. It accompanies the exhibition 'Countryside, The Future' at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which opened on the day the pandemic reached Italy (February 21, 2020) and whose new dates remain unannounced. The volume features essays and interviews by 18 architects, scientists, and journalists covering phenomena like depopulation, climate change, automation, and migration. It highlights examples such as a Syrian village in the Rhineland, robot-maintained highways in Japan, and the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center in Nevada—a vast data storage facility for Google, Apple, and Amazon with no human workers. Koolhaas, known for his earlier works 'Delirious New York' and studies of Lagos slums, asserts that the future lies not in urban living but in understanding rural contexts for sustainable development. The book's design by Irma Boom combines cheap materials with refined graphics, featuring a silver cover with Soviet shepherdesses. Koolhaas closes his preamble with the hope that countryside can be 'a base from which to make the world a better place.'