AA alumna Jingru Cyan Cheng has been shortlisted for the RIBA President's Award for Research in the History and Theory category for her project 'Alternative modernism: the architecture of China's people's commune'.

Cyan commented that: “This multi-year work on China’s people’s commune really started from my encountering of this 1958 poster that renders so lively a vision of the future in the 50/60s at the rising tide of China’s national collectivisation. The people’s commune is an explicit model of alternative modernism, a largely overlooked paradigm essential to the non-canonical architectural histories outside the Western traditions and epistemologies. Spanning across my doctoral study at the AA and later on time on the Collective Forms project at the RCA research lab, the work has greatly benefited from insightful discussions with my doctoral supervisors, colleagues and members from the then Shigushan Brigade, Fenghuang People’s Commune."

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Image: Poster of the Hongqi People’s Commune, 1958, entitled 'People's Communes are Good.' Designer: Guangting Rui, Publisher: Shanghai Educational Publishing House