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.
