For AA’s special week dedicated to the countryside, here is a selection of books exploring several takes on the question, such as the transformation of the countryside, artistic exploration on rural territories, the current reality of agriculture activities, and more.

Rurality Re-Imagined, Village, Farmers, Wanderers, wild things

‘In the shadows of the white heat of urbanization, the countryside is undergoing great social and environmental changes. What cultural and philosophical values are being lost and gained as a consequence of these transformations? Familiar tropes of tradition, nostalgia and certitude are strangely out of place in such contested and uncertain contemporary rural terrains. Inside Rurality Re-imagined, 24 artists, designers and academics engage with particular rural places, processes and experiences. At the same time, they question the conceptual apparatus through which the rural is represented. In so doing they reveal a countryside that is multifaceted, anxious, and replete with possibilities. ‘Rurality Re-imagined’ should be of interest to anyone concerned with how rural space and society is portrayed in our urban-centric times.’

Ben Stringer 
Applied Research and Design Publishing, San Francisco, 2018, 284 pages 
www.appliedresearchanddesign.com

Countryside, A Report

‘The rural, remote, and wild territories we call “countryside”, or the 98% of the earth’s surface not occupied by cities, make up the front line where today’s most powerful forces— climate and ecological devastation, migration, tech, demographic lurches —are playing out. Increasingly under a ‘Cartesian’ regime—gridded, mechanized, and optimized for maximal production—these sites are changing beyond recognition. In his latest publication, Rem Koolhaas explores the rapid and often hidden transformations underway across the Earth’s vast non-urban areas.’

The book brings together collaborative research by AMO, Koolhaas, and students at the Harvard Graduate School of Design; the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing; Wageningen University in the Netherlands; and the University of Nairobi. 
TASCHEN, Cologne, 2020, 352 pages 
www.taschen.com

Seasonal Matters Rural Relations 

“What if traditional relationships, between humans and non-humans, plants, the weather and the rhythm of the seasons, are being lost in the race for profit and for increasingly intensive methods of production? In sixteen contributions, interdisciplinary collective Seasonal Neighbours attempts to observe, record and archive narratives for the existing, disappearing and newly emerging relationships in the countryside. Both theoretical and artistic contributions serve as a guide for perceiving the agricultural landscape. As a collage-style field-guide, Seasonal Matters Rural Relations addresses the role that artistic practices and fieldwork can play in the complexity of rural relations. The collective reflects on storytelling and the variety of themes from the evolution of metabolisms in horticulture, the changing rural landscape, stories of European labor migration to questions of robotisation and upscaling, domesticity, public space, new forms of citizenship, etc. Seasonal Matters Rural Relations, (Field)notes on rhythms, rituals and cohabitation gathers different nuances of the agricultural realities experienced by the collective members in their neighbouring processes, working side by side with farmers, seasonal workers, plants and crops. These fieldwork experiences helped shape a variety of contributions moving from visual essays to graphic collages, poems, maps, short stories, picking songs and musical scores to intercultural recipes with wild plants.”

Collective Seasonal Neighbours Onomatopee, Netherlands, 2024, 303 pages 
www.onomatopee.net

The texts are from press releases issued by the publishing houses.