Strange Peripheries

As urban developments in cities across the globe grow at a rate never seen before throughout history, our discipline seems to have failed to produce any underlying theory which could grapple with that which is decidedly not urban. Known as “the rural” or countryside, these areas are characterized for low density, low population and small settlements. Rem Koolhaas argues that it is precisely in the countryside where some of the most progressive and innovative aspects of our culture are being developed.

The studio focused on the idyllic French countryside, long a site of experimentation for architects, as a way to conceive new ideas about authenticity and autonomy while embedding a strong historical, cultural and typological context. The proposed paradigms for development and growth in peripheries incorporate architecture, landscape and countryside territory as a form of “second nature”, a man-made ecology able to be at the same time integrated with its larger geography yet relatively autonomous and self-sufficient from it. Along those lines, the studio investigated the potential of creating a proto-urban condition, one that articulates a new sense of hierarchy (albeit a loose one), concentrated low density and a countryside interiority.