Koolhaas. Countryside. A Report

This is an interesting book, but the key is in subtitle: 'a report'. It is actually a series of short reports (from 3-14 pages) on a range of topics. They don't aim to be academic research papers or historical or technological summaries. The intention is to flag up a range of diverse uses of the countryside.The reports cluster around the topic of the use of technology in the countryside - greenhousing, crop farming, data farming, and the like. Some are mini-essays, some are more like diary entries, some are lyrical and speculative, and others take the form of interviews. They are diverse - Chinese greenhouses, Soviet land management megaprojects (though without mention of the American precursors), the restorative effect of immigration on European villages, and the potential of pixel farming (pixel farming is actually a good metaphor for the book itself).This book is unlike previous AMO projects (The Project on the City) in several ways. It is pocket-sized; it lacks a strong research project idea to focus the diverse projects; the texts are shorter and lighter (it is for a public exhibition at the Guggenheim); it doesn't cost an arm-and-a-leg; the images are mainly used as illustrations rather than using the infographic/photo-essay style, and the relation to any practical project by OMA (the architect practice linked to AMO) is more tenuous and speculative.I enjoyed it and will recommend it, but it is not the intellectual mind-trip that I had expected.