In the Hurricane, On the Land: Forms of Return

This event brings together two of the researchers, Jingrun (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan, and the project convenor, Rafico Ruiz, who were part of In the Hurricane, On the Land, a multi-year, collaborative research project undertaken by the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. Their joint talk will explore what practices of return and reciprocity come to the foreground when undertaking research with land-based communities. They will navigate guiding questions that are at the heart of the research group’s forthcoming book: how can we tangibly document material and social relations across lands and waters, moving from family ties that bind communities together to often invisible infrastructures that connect them to centres of political power? How can architectural and other researchers amplify and create spaces for trust and community building?

Cheng and Zhan will share their field-driven research process that incorporates film and moving images, and documents the flows of extraction of water and sand that move through the Mekong River Basin, from the Tibetan Plateau in China through Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, and outward – through these extractive networks – to Singapore.

Speakers:

Jingru (Cyan) Cheng (she/her), Principal, Field-0 and Royal College of Art

Chen Zhan (she/her), Principal, Field-0

Rafico Ruiz (he/him), Associate Director of Research, Canadian Centre for Architecture

Field-0 trials grounded, sensorial approaches to dissecting planetary interconnectedness towards alternative common sense. Through fieldwork, following drifting bodies—be they sand, water or migrant workers, the practice seeks to attune our senses to material flows, planetary scales, intergenerational time and all the life entangled in these processes.  

Initiated by Jingru (Cyan) Cheng and Chen Zhan, field-0 operates at the intersection of architecture, anthropology, art and filmmaking. Their recent solo exhibitions include HOW MUCH WATTAGE IS ONE HANDBREADTH OF WATER at Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York, 2025) and RIPPLE RIPPLE RIPPLING at the Architectural Association (London, 2024). Their film work received the Architecture Short Film Award at the Milano Design Film Festival (2024) and the Best Short Film at the Venice Architecture Film Festival (2023).  

Image caption: Robert Adams, Longmont, Colorado, 1973. Gelatin silver print, 15.1 x 19.2 cm. CCA Collection © Robert Adams, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

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Paul Mellon Centre, 16 Bedford Square, London, United Kingdom