Field study

"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.