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.Countryside, A Report gathers travelogue essays exploring territories marked by global forces and experimentation at the edge of our consciousness: a test site near Fukushima, where the robots that will maintain Japan’s infrastructure and agriculture are tested; a greenhouse city in the Netherlands that may be the origin for the cosmology of today’s countryside; the rapidly thawing permafrost of Central Siberia, a region wrestling with the possibility of relocation; refugees populating dying villages in the German countryside and intersecting with climate change activists; habituated mountain gorillas confronting humans on ‘their’ territory in Uganda; the American Midwest, where industrial-scale farming operations are coming to grips with regenerative agriculture; and Chinese villages transformed into all-in-one factory, e-commerce stores, and fulfillment centers.
This book is the official companion to the Guggenheim Museum exhibition Countryside, The Future. The exhibition and book mark a new area of investigation for architect and urbanist Rem Koolhaas, who launched his career with two city-centric entities: The Office for Metropolitan Architecture (1975) and Delirious New York (1978). It’s designed by Irma Boom, who drew inspiration for the book’s pocket-sized concept, as well as its innovative typography and layout, from her research in the Vatican library.
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. Contributors also include Samir Bantal, Janna Bystrykh, Troy Conrad Therrien, Lenora Ditzler, Clemens Driessen, Alexandra Kharitonova, Keigo Kobayashi, Niklas Maak, Etta Madete, Federico Martelli, Ingo Niermann, Dr. Linda Nkatha Gichuyia, Kayoko Ota, Stephan Petermann, and Anne M. Schneider.
Robert Bound, John Mitchinson and Ted Hodgkinson review the final – and rather hefty – instalment of Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell trilogy.
Screenwriter-cum-author Alex Michaelides’ influences range from Agatha Christie to Euripides. His most recent book, ‘The Silent Patient’, has garnered much acclaim: the thriller is being made into a film having gripped audiences worldwide and topped The New York Times bestseller list.
Writers & Lovers follows Casey―a smart and achingly vulnerable protagonist―in the last days of a long youth, a time when every element of her life comes to a crisis. Written with King’s trademark humor, heart, and intelligence, Writers & Lovers is a transfixing novel that explores the terrifying and exhilarating leap between the end of one phase of life and the beginning of another.
Lily King returns with another instant New York Times bestseller: an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.
Galway’s top chef, JP McMahon, on what the world doesn’t understand about Ireland’s food culture.
The Architizer A+Awards represent 2019’s best architecture and products, celebrated by a diverse group of influencers within and outside the architectural community. Entries are judged by more than 400 luminaries from fields as diverse as fashion, publishing, product design, real-estate development, and technology, and voted on by the public, culminating in a collection of the world’s finest buildings. 
An exceptional Burgundy is not only well crafted and well balanced, it also must have essential qualities reflecting its own terroir as well as those unique to the particular vintage, distilling the very essence of the vine itself and the earth from which it springs. 
Cooking in Marfa introduces an unusual small town in the West Texas desert and, within it, a fine-dining oasis in a most unlikely place. The Capri excels at serving the spectrum of guests that Marfa draws, from locals and ranchers to artists, museum-board members, and discerning tourists. 
Cézanne: The Rock and Quarry Paintings is the first major exhibition to examine an essential but understudied aspect of the revolutionary French painter’s work: his profound interest in rock and geological formations. 
Intellicurious 