Countryside: Soil, Energy, Kommunen, Production

The need to readjust theoretical principles to look at rural space, to identify conditions necessary to architectural design, characterises contemporary theoretical research. The interest in extra-urban territories has placed certain urgent considerations under the magnifying glass, including the crisis of the urban model as inhabited space, the need for individual autonomy and collective interdependence of the project, and the project as an integrated expedient for autonomous production. These needs redefine the parameters necessary for answering the following questions: “Can the countryside be a productive, ecological and safe infrastructure? How to respond in terms of design?”. Four reflections compose the probable causes of the project of the future, outlining a possible answer to these questions. Traversing the updated relationship with the soil, the possibilities in terms of energy, the settlement relations as both collective and productive dynamics, new hierarchies and necessities of the project and of its theory are determined.