Background

 

Rem Koolhaas will open an exhibition about the future of the countryside in New York’s Guggenheim Museum, working-titled Countryside: Future of the World. In modern day China, the rural and urban have a peculiar relationship. 

 

The mountain village is a peculiar place for the increasingly urbanised population of China.  For the last two decades, it has been marginalised while policymakers concentrated on urbanisation. However, as the tensions and paradoxes of modern urban life – pollution, stress, house prices, and so on – become more explicitly contentious, once again the countryside is being heralded as a place of virtuous national values. For centuries the Chinese people have relied on rural lands for resources such as agriculture, wood, water, biodiversity etc.,although 60% of the population live in cities. The last 40 years of rapid economic surge rendered rural-urban migration the dominant trend, and only very recently has cultural elites have tested the grounds of going the other way around - developing the rural, the peripheries of Chinese centers. It began with the tourism industry that comes of traditional crafts, food vending and hospitality services that saved many villages from the verge of disappearance. Despite some social factors that encourage villagers to abandon rural life for opportunities in cities, for many people from the city rural livelihood is an emblem of desirable seclusion and sometimes a utopian fantasy such that in ancient Chinese literature (Taoyuan). The contradiction shapes the way ruralities are perceived in Some individuals see this as a chance of escape from civilization and the idealisms of idyllic rural living has been adopted in rural rehabilitations, possibly with reference to European retreats, rest houses, sanatoriums. Although it is still common to find one’s needs in the more resourceful urbanities, the open space, immersion into secluded tranquility, sceneries and self-awareness is only possible in the countryside.

 

The shift from urban to rural is the new, big idea. It is what China commentator, Wu Fulong, calls a ‘conceptual shift from urban-orientated development’. Shanghai-based design critic Aric Chen, currently researching a book about modern rural architecture in China. “The last decade has seen a huge number of projects focused on eco-tourism and agri-tourism. It used to be about building boutique hotels, but the strategies have become much more sophisticated.”

 

The project is not only concerned with indigeneous cultural roots of ruralities, but more so a fundamental basis which has been largely neglected in the politically driven contexts of China - the ecosystem of these untampered regions. The mountain and river is something dear to the local inhabitants and much of their daily lives revolve around it.

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