About this Event
From Accra to Valencia, devastating floods have exposed the vulnerability of shoreline towns, raising questions about urban development, failing water infrastructure, climate change, and the consequences of building in flood-prone areas.
Shorelines also carry difficult histories of migration, displacement and exclusion. For centuries, coastal towns have been sites of departure and arrival, while migrants and other vulnerable communities can face disproportionate consequences when floods destroy homes and livelihoods.
This panel convenes experts from Cooking Sections, Field-0 and Yaa Projects, whose work engages with water infrastructures and the complex histories of the places they shape. Together, they will consider how design might support more inclusive forms of resilience for communities across shorelines.
Chaired by Matthew Butcher (Bartlett).
This event is part of the at the Bartlett School of Architecture.
Registration is essential
Please note this event has limited capacity and operates on a first-come, first-served basis based on registrations. Doors close at 18:40.
Speaker biographries
Cooking Sections was founded in London in 2013 by Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe. Their work investigates the systems that shape the world through food, tracing the spatial, ecological, and political legacies of extractivism. Cooking Sections uses food as both a lens and a tool to trace the metabolic relations behind industrialised systems. Since 2015, they have run CLIMAVORE, a long-term, site-responsive project, exploring how to eat as humans change climates and how to metabolise climate breakdown. Alon and Daniel are Readers in Architecture and Spatial Practice at the Royal College of Art, London, and Fellows at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
Their work has been exhibited internationally, including at Tate Britain, Serpentine Galleries, SALT, Centro Botín, Bonniers Konsthall, Carnegie Museum of Art, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Museo delle Civiltà, among others. They have created site-specific performances and installations for the Taipei Biennial, 58th Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennial, Performa17, Manifesta12, Los Angeles Public Art Triennial, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Folkestone Triennial, and New Orleans Triennial among others. Residencies include the Headlands Center for the Arts, Prospect Cottage, Fogo Island Arts and Delfina Foundation. They have authored four books: The Empire Remains Shop (2018), Salmon: A Red Herring (2020), Offsetted (2022), and Waves Lost at Sea (2026).
Field-0, co-founded by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan, is a relation-oriented practice working across architecture, anthropology, art and film.
Cyan was awarded the Harvard GSD’s 2023 Wheelwright Prize for Tracing Sand and received two commendations from the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) President’s Awards for Research in 2020 and 2018. Her work has been exhibited as part of Critical Zones at ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany (2020–22), Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (2019) and Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), among others. Cyan holds a PhD by Design from the Architectural Association and currently teaches part-time at the Royal College of Art in London.
Chen is an artist, independent filmmaker, anthropologist and UK-registered architect. She previously worked at Heatherwick Studio in London on high-profile international projects, including the Changi Airport Terminal 5 in Singapore, Google Gradient Canopy Headquarters in California, the Bund Finance Centre in Shanghai, and Maggie’s Cancer Care Centre in Leeds, UK.
Yaa Projects, founded by Ghanaian-British architect Nana Biamah-Ofosu, is an architecture practice exploring counter-histories, material cultures and diasporic experience through making, speaking, and writing architecture.
In addition to practice, Nana is an experienced educator and academic. She is a unit tutor at the Architectural Association and a lecturer at Kingston School of Art. She has also lectured widely in the UK and internationally, including at the inaugural Venice Biennale College Architettura at the 18th International Architecture Biennale in Venice. Nana has served on the juries of several awards, including the RIBA Silver Medal, and is a member of the RIBA Awards Working Group and the Soane Medal Committee.
As a writer, she explores the social, political and cultural impact of design and architecture, engaging with contemporary practitioners to define new paths towards a more critical, expansive and inclusive discourse on the built environment.
Event venue & nearby stays
Christopher Ingold Auditorium (XLG2), 22 Gordon Street, London, United Kingdom
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