FIELD STUDY
Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas hosts a marathon talk session on China’s rural development as part of the 2018 Wuzhen International Architecture Forum. Deng Zhangyu reports.
After focusing on cities and skyscrapers for the past 40 years, Rem Koolhaas, the Pritzker Prize winner and one of the most important architects of his generation, has shifted his attention toward “the rural”, a field he has repeatedly described as holding the key to the world’s future.
To explore the subject more deeply, the 74-year-old held a six-hour talk on Thursday with 17 Chinese experts on rural issues. The Dutch architect says China highlights its countryside more than others in the world. The dialogue titled Countryside Marathon, part of the Wuzhen International Architecture Forum 2018, saw Koolhaas hold discussions from his apartment in Amsterdam via the internet with scholars, officials, architects, artists, writers and independent musicians who actively take part in China’s rural reconstruction, in Wuzhen, a water town in East China’s Zhejiang province. The architect was unable to attend the forum in person due to health reasons.
Koolhaas says that he believes the impact of urbanization on rural areas is an issue that affects the entire world, not only China. But the architect also says he finds China’s situation interesting, especially since the country’s planners are putting it firmly at the top of their agenda.
The architect, who has designed many iconic buildings in major cities around the world, is perhaps best known in China for his design of the CCTV headquarters in Beijing, a landmark in the capital. When he visited China ahead of Spring Festival in February, he says he was impressed by how quick people were able to move from the cities to the countryside to celebrate Chinese New Year, leaving some cities almost empty.
In fact, Koolhaas began his engagement with China’s rural regeneration last year by joining forces with the Central Academy of Fine Arts to set up a one-year course for 13 students working in areas related to rural development, including several architects and a city mayor.
Lyu Pinjing, the director of the academy’s architecture school and a speaker at the
Countryside Marathon forum, introduced the one-year course he developed with the help of several foreign experts including Koolhaas, explaining that its aim was not to teach students specific skills but instead to enlighten them with a global perspective.
“China is in great need of people who excel at rural development. But it’s not as simple as just building or transforming houses in the countryside. It’s about how to revitalize an entire village,” says Lyu, who has devoted much of his time in rural development in Guizhou province, which is home to many ethnic groups.
Lyu has been involved in the rural reconstruction of at least three villages in Guizhou province, like many other architects who have worked in rural China to help design or redevelop rural areas.
In 2016, he repaired traditional houses, rebuilt village schools, set up weaving workshop and porcelain-making studio by transforming ruined houses in Banwan, a remote village surrounded by mountains that is inhabited by the ethnic Buyi people.
Lyu will showcase his architectural works at the village at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in May.
“It’s more than just a job for an architect. I had to use all the resources I have to help them revitalize the village,” Lyu says.
Last year, Lyu helped find college teachers to train more than 400 female village artisans who make their living from weaving and embroidery to adapt their homemade products to suit a wider market. He will return to another village in Guizhou later this month to help promote a healthier lifestyle through better hygiene and keeping their houses clean and tidy.
“As an architect, I spend my time more on communication rather than design. It’s more important to change people’s way of thinking and create sustainable development,” he adds.
Every month, Lyu brings students and teachers from the CAFA’s rural development course he co-founded with Koolhaas to tour the countryside and offer practical solutions to their problems, joining the new wave of urban intellectuals who are engaging in rural development in China.
Karl Ellefsen, a professor at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, who is also a teacher in Lyu’s team, says: “Few people in Europe have noticed that China is experiencing huge changes in terms of rural development and how it is investing heavily in its countryside.”
The Norwegian professor stays in China for a week every month and has traveled to several villages in remote rural areas. With these trips, he looks to draw comparisons between China’s rural issues with those in Europe, where the problem of food security arising from the agricultural industrialization process is being faced by many.
Like Ellefsen, Koolhaas wants to undertake a comparative study, but expand its scope to cover the entire globe. Next year, he will present an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York titled Countryside: Future of the World, which will include videos and documents from the Wuzhen forum that saw Koolhaas discuss China’s rural issues from cultural, architectural and economical perspectives with Chinese academics and practitioners.
The Wuzhen International Architecture Forum 2018 will hold another two forums later this year, discussing the concepts of home, and the countryside.