The seer of sizzling city architecture now says the countryside is where the future is being built – and it’s a ‘toxic mix’. Ahead of a major Guggenheim show, he explains his epiphany.

It was while visiting a brothel on the outskirts of Reno, Nevada, that Rem Koolhaas had his latest epiphany. The Dutch architect was there to meet Lance Gilman, the cowboy hat-wearing proprietor of the Mustang Ranch bordello who is the unlikely visionary behind some of the planet’s largest yet least known buildings. What Koolhaas saw that day would radically alter his thinking on the future of architecture.

A short drive from the heart-shaped swimming pools and red faux crocodile-skin furniture of Gilman’s office in the adult resort, a strange apparition of enormous white rectangles appeared in the desert. “It is a fantastically beautiful landscape,” says Koolhaas, “with rolling hills and wild horses. And in the middle of it all were these colossal structures, placed in a way that didn’t seem to suggest any coherence or sign of human inhabitation.”... [+]