Architectural Association's newest show uncovers the architectural legacies of rural China's lost generation

Fuelling China’s exponential urbanisation, as many as 295 million rural migrants of ‘working age’, known as the ‘floating population’, move between cities to find employment. As this mass movement leaves rural areas without a middle generation, a new multimedia and multisensory exhibition, 'Ripple Ripple Rippling', at the Architectural Association (AA) in London, brings into view the lives of those who are left behind amid the rise of China’s sprawling metropolises.

Spanning over ten years of research, architects, anthropologists, and choreographers Cyan Cheng, Chen Zhan, and Mengfan Wang embedded themselves in the rural village of Shigushan central China – uncovering changes through acts of adaptation and appropriation of the built environment during the gradual disappearance of rural life as it once was.

Explore the Architectural Association's show 'Ripple Ripple Rippling'

As the population left behind recalibrates, Cyan says: 'Family structures are formed outside of what is prescribed, with alterations to the built environment to match this lifestyle of communality.' On the broader anthropological research within the exhibition, she continues: 'Architecture is not enough to capture everything that's going on. So our practice expands into other disciplines.'

The exhibition features field notes, drawings and photography from Shigushan, as well as a film trilogy. This includes the trio's latest piece of moving image, ‘Till Ashes Turn Into Pines’, which explores how reincarnation manifests in the treatment of the natural environment.

Spilling out of the confines of the AA's gallery setting, a partial reconstruction of a typical state-funded rural house sits among the quintessentially Georgian houses of Bedford Square, making for a slightly surreal contrast. Drystone walling demarcates domestic spaces such as a garden, porch, and living room amid the public forum of the square. This installation's ‘unfinished’ status references the often incomplete or semi-ruined buildings that lay in waiting for funds from family members working in the cities.

What comes to the fore is a diminished sense of ownership in this world of residential structures, contrasting with the sometimes aggressive boundaries between public and private that we might find in ostensibly capitalist cities. Areas such as the living room become semi-public, while liminal spaces such as the yard are actively inhabited through domestic activity. Thresholds are not just crossed – they’re contently occupied.

Chen notes: 'We find there is this rippling image; all the domestic activities, they just ripple out and then they linger around the gates and then they leak to the streets.' The act of ‘Rippling’ references this improvised and reactive support system where the use of space becomes entangled in collective care. She adds: 'The protocols we understand around family and home [are defied] in a mundane sort of way.'

Moving away from 'traditional notions of architecture’, the show foregrounds an evolved sense of architecture that supports assemblage as opposed to reinforcing fracture. It brings attention to networks of care that are also relevant to cities in rethinking boundaries, thresholds, and symbols of ownership. In doing so, it takes a humanised view not of what is visually showstopping in architectural terms, but of what is quietly brilliant in its subversion of the status quo.

‘Ripple Ripple Rippling’, by Jingru Cyan Cheng, Chen Zhan and Mengfan Wang at the Architectural Association, London, includes an outdoor installation, until 6 November 2024, and a gallery exhibition, until 7 December 2024. More information at aaschool.ac.uk