Guest Lecture: Dr Jingru Cheng, “Home: A Project of Rural China”, Thursday, March 7, 18:00, Robin Evans Room (M416)

When: Thursday, 7th of March at 18:00

Where: Robin Evans Room (M416), 35 Marylebone Rd, Marylebone, London NW1 5LS

China’s 245 million floating population has resulted in a missing middle generation in contemporary rural families. Through fieldwork and case studies of self-built rural family houses, the research identifies a fundamental change in the idea of family and domesticity, and terms this phenomenon the ‘dissolved household’. The elastic relationship in household managements manifests a flexible, spatially stretched form of labour division and collaboration between genders, generations and households. The idea of domestic space is thus an elastic form of association.

Dr Jingru Cheng’s research project, Care and Rebellion: The Dissolved Household in Contemporary Rural China, recently received a commendation in the RIBA President’s Awards for Research.

Her work traces the fundamental changes taking place in the nature of domestic space in China.

Featured image: The Yard in Liu Brothers’ Family House, Shigushan Village, Wuhan, China, 2016 (Photo & Collage by Jingru Cyan Cheng).