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What Will the Countryside be for When We All Live in Cities?

由专筑网小R，吴静雅编译

2020年2月，Solomon R. Guggenheim博物馆举办了一场名为为“乡村，未来”的展览，该展览由雷姆·库哈斯所领导的团队和AMO共同策划，这也代表了库哈斯近年来的研究成果，即日益城市化的世界给“落后”的非城市地区所带来的影响，同时整个展览也基于一定的研究理论。

正如Carolyn Steel曾经所描述过“饥饿城市（Hungry City）”的概念，介于城市与乡村之间的共生关系已经发生了改变，在这里，主要的大城市只能在大范围乡村、工业景观的支持下产生作用。举例来说，在伦敦，整座城市则需要大约293倍的面积来生产种植足够的食物、能源等维持基本生活的原材料，到了2050年，世界上68%的人口都将生活在城市之中，城市的范围将会越来越大，来更好地满足人们的发展需求。

In February 2020, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will present an exhibition titled “Countryside, The Future.” The brainchild of a team led by Rem Koolhaas and AMO, the exhibition will mark the latest chapter in one of Koolhaas’ fields of study from recent years; the impact of an increasingly urbanized world on the non-urban areas “left behind.” This investigation is for good reason.
As described in Carolyn Steel’s “Hungry City,” the once-symbiotic relationship between urban and rural has morphed into a present-day where major cities can only function with the support of vast sways of rural, industrial landscapes. London, for example, requires a total amount of land approximately 293 times its own area to produce the necessary food, energy, water, and raw materials needed to sustain itself. With 68% of the world’s population expected to live in cities by 2050 (a figure currently at 55%), cities will devour ever-larger areas of land to support the ever-larger demands of their citizens.


Image © Fred Ernst, Courtesy of OMA

“在过去的几十年来，我已注意到，尽管我们的能量和智慧一直集中在城市地区，但是在诸如全球变暖、市场经济、美国科技公司、非洲与欧洲倡议、中国政治等因素的影响下，农村发生了翻天覆地的变化。”——雷姆·库哈斯

一提到“乡村”，也许人们都会想到沉寂的村庄、荒凉的山脉的浪漫想象，但是这些景观也能代表能源、食物、经济、政策、观点、任务的全球化反应。当城市逐步开始关注人们行为的发展时，这些景观在宏观尺度上就成为了超市里的食物、人们手里的手机，风电场给它们带来了能量，产生了激活它们的数据流。

“In the past decades, I have noticed that while much of our energies and intelligence have been focused on the urban areas of the world – under the influence of global warming, the market economy, American tech companies, African and European initiatives, Chinese politics, and other forces – the countryside has changed almost beyond recognition.”
-Rem Koolhaas
While immediate reflections of “countryside” may evoke romantic images of sleepy villages, desolate mountains, or uninterrupted silence, many of these landscapes are alive and responsive to global flows of energy, food, finance, policy, ideas, and people. While cities concern themselves with the human experience, these landscapes operate on a macro scale generating millions of tons of food for supermarket shelves, raw metals to manufacture iPhones, wind farms to power them or data streams to activate them.


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乡村未来的发展以荷兰为例。在荷兰，一系列温室环绕着当地的农舍，这里依赖于高科技创新型的食物生产。荷兰的国土面积较小，但确实全球第二大粮食出口国。如果使用传统的耕作方式，荷兰无法达到这样的名号，除了犁沟和绿色牧场，这里还应用了一些面积超过175英亩的大型温室空间，其中结合了能够控制气候的牧场设施。

One proposition for the future of the countryside can be found in the Netherlands. On the Hook of Holland, a vast sea of greenhouses surrounds vernacular Dutch farmhouses, alive with high-tech, innovative food production. Despite its small size, and dense population, the Netherlands is the world’s second-largest exporter of food. Such an accreditation would not be possible using conventional farming methods. But the Dutch countryside is far from conventional. In place of plowed furrows and green grazing fields, there are extraordinary greenhouse complexes with climate-controlled farms, some spanning over 175 acres.


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荷兰乡村地区的这些结构是全球化政策的必然结果，在21世纪初期，荷兰人就开始应用全新的可持续农业发展模式，自2009年以来，温室中得化学农药就已被淘汰，抗生素的使用更是减少了60%。推动这些发展举措的是Wageningen大学与研究机构（WUR），该机构被认为是是全球领先的农业研究场所之一。随着新技术的诞生，以及人们对于满足城市人口生活需求的认识的增加，荷兰的乡村地区也在不断地适应世界的发展，更加倾向于人工化、工业化，以及控制化。

The manifestation of these built structures across the Dutch countryside is the result of global flows of policy and ideas. In the early 2000s, the Dutch made a national commitment to a new form of sustainable agriculture, which has seen the elimination of chemical pesticides in greenhouses, and a reduction of antibiotics by 60% since 2009. Meanwhile, driving this innovation is the nearby Wageningen University & Research (WUR), an institution regarded as one of the world’s leading researchers in agriculture. As new techniques and understandings emerge of how to feed ever-increasing urban populations, countryside such as those in the Netherlands will continue to adapt and grow in response, moving further away from the idyllic and natural, and more towards artificial, industrial, and controlled.


Image © Pieternel van Velden

考虑到荷兰独特的乡村状况，库哈斯本人研究了当地的乡村景观的变化。在2014年为ICON撰写的一篇文章中，库哈斯认为，“土地的耕种对现代而言是数字化策略。举例来说，曾经在19世纪改变农业生产的拖拉机现在已经成为计算机化的工作站点。其中包含一系列的传感器和设备，这些设备能够在驾驶者与土地之间构成无缝的分离化数字联系。就工作方式而言，乡村与城市愈发地接近，农民们的思维也愈发灵活，可以在任何地方自如地操纵笔记本电脑，这并不是说一切都是坏事，但是讽刺的是，如此强烈的变革却对我们的教育和思考没有产生意义与内涵。”

Given the Netherlands’ unique countryside, it is unsurprising that Koolhaas himself has studied how the region encapsulates the changing nature of “rural” landscapes. In a 2014 essay for ICON, Koolhaas recalled that “husbandry of the land is now a digital practice. For example, the tractor, which revolutionized the farm in the 19th century, has become a computerized work station. It is a series of devices and sensors that create a seamless, yet detached digital interface between the driver and the earth. The countryside in terms of how we work is becoming similar to the city. The farmer is like us – a flex worker, operating on a laptop from any possible location. […] This is not to say that it is all bad. It is only ironic that such drastic transformations are barely on the radar in our education and thinking.”


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库哈斯的言论很有说服力，人们对于空间感知技能不断地发展，同时对于政治、经济、气候、物理环境的感知也在不断地发展，建筑师在未来进行空间的设计时必须要面对全新的现实状况。城市对于乡村环境的发展需求将会促使建筑师进行更加完善的温室空间的布局设计，以及更加高效的数据中心的组织，同时也包含寒冷、艰难、拥有自动化工业的乡村地区的娱乐休闲的新功能的布局。

Koolhaas’ last line is telling. With skills focused on not only on the human perception of space, but also on the ability to respond to political, economic, climatic, and physical contexts, architects of the future will be required to confront a new reality when designing outside cities. Increasingly, the demands of the city on its rural surroundings will see architects perfect new layouts and functions for greenhouses, more efficient organizations of data centers, and a new paradigm of what place there is for recreation and relaxation in a countryside geared towards cold, hard, automated industry.