An obsession with cities has masked profound changes in rural America that helped Donald Trump sweep to victory in the US presidential election, according to architect Rem Koolhaas.
"I'm not saying that Trump was inevitable but the scale of upheaval in the centre of America made it very understandable for me that something else was going to happen," the founder of OMA told Dezeen.
"I was not completely surprised when Trump won."
The Dutch architect also attacked the "complacency" of Silicon Valley firms, who have for years preached the benefits of disruption.
"For me, one of the very good things about Trump [winning] is that it really discredits the whole Silicon Valley complacency, language and culture," he said, speaking exclusively to Dezeen in Miami last week. "Every single Silicon Valley company contributed to making 'disrupt' a fashionable word, and they are now moaning about the disruption of this election."
Radical transformation of the countryside has gone unnoticed
Google and Facebook have recently been blamed for helping the spread of "fake news" that some believe helped sway the result of the presidential election.
Koolhaas, who was in Florida for the opening of a trio of Miami Beach buildings designed by OMA's New York office, has spent the last two and a half years researching changing conditions in rural areas of both the US and Russia.
Koolhaas said that changes taking place in the countrys...