The world is the countryside

“Rem, could you show that picture of that cool drone?” and Koolhaas selects the desired image from the PowerPoint presentation. Fresco and Koolhaas have clearly sat down together many times before, speculating on developments in the countryside, jumping back and forth between different scales and continents. This dialogue was therefore a rare, relaxed conversation between an expert and an artist about pressing global issues.

Rem Koolhaas is the winner of the Grote Maaskant Prize in 1986. He began his career by founding OMA in 1975 and publishing 'Delirious New York' in 1978. In the year he won the Maaskant Prize, only one building had been completed: the Almere police station, which was designated a listed building this year. Koolhaas is now a widely acclaimed and practising architect aged 75, and is shifting his urban focus towards transformations in rural areas. Together with Harvard University, Koolhaas is surveying twelve ‘case studies’ in rural areas across all continents, asking: what conditions do we encounter, and how can these be interpreted to create a portrait of the world? In 2020, this resulted in an exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York.1 In this context, Koolhaas frequently engages in conversation with the leading expert on food and agriculture: Louise Fresco. This dialogue resembles one of their brainstorming sessions, but in the presence of a large audience.

Louise O. Fresco iis Chair of the Board of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and the author of popular science books such as ‘Hamburgers in Paradise’, novels such as ‘The Utopians’, columns in NRC and scientific reports.

The dialogue centres on the key question: what is currently happening in agriculture and where is it heading? This is a broad question which the speakers will address at every possible level. Koolhaas questions fascinating developments, whilst Fresco provides context from a historical, scientific and political perspective.