The future of rural spaces. An exhibition in New York
Today, 50 percent of the world’s population lives in cities. Accordingly, urban planners, architects, mobility researchers, designers, sociologists and many other key people have been focusing their attention on the development and design of the urban living environment. But given the fact that rural areas make up 98 percent of the Earth’s surface, it is notable that rural spaces are often neglected. How can we manage this enormous area, and how should it be developed? In response to an invitation by the New York Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and Samir Bantal, director of AMO, the think-tank for the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), have been working on a project focused on the radical transformation of rural spaces. New York will host an exhibition of their research into topics including large-scale projects that are politically motivated, leisure habits, climate change and migration – conducted with the assistance of students from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, the Wageningen University and the University of Nairobi. The work process and its results will be presented in New York in an exhibition entitled Countryside, The Future from 20 February to 14 August 2020.
