Rem Koolhaas will explore the radical change of the countryside in an exhibition coming to New York's Guggenheim museum next year.
Opening February 2020, Countryside, The Future will showcase findings from an ongoing investigation led by Koolhaas and AMO, the research arm of the architect's firm OMA.
The aim of the project is to take the focus away from cities to instead investigate rural areas, which Koolhaas says have "changed almost beyond recognition".
"In the past decades, I have noticed that while much of our energies and intelligence have been focused on the urban areas of the world ? under the influence of global warming, the market economy, American tech companies, African and European initiatives, Chinese politics, and other forces ? the countryside has changed almost beyond recognition," said the architect. "The story of this transformation is largely untold, and it is particularly meaningful for AMO to present it in one of the world's great museums in one of the world's densest cities."
Among the featured projects is a glass-house farming concept
Koolhaas and AMO are developing the research project with students at Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the University of Nairobi, to showcase change through case studies.
"Countryside, The Future will mark a shift from a focus on the urban to the rural, remote, deserted, and wild territories col...