Mingxin Li (MA Environmental Architecture, 2020) on architecture at the intersection of politics, culture and society

Li’s animation of stromatolites (layered sedimentary formations created mainly by photosynthetic microorganisms), made with Anabel Garcia-Kurland, was included in the exhibition The Ends of the World, curated by Godofredo Pereira at Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Read on to find out how studying at the RCA sparked Li’s interest in the microscopic and using animation as a way to explore environmental issues.

What are you working on at the moment, and how did studying at the RCA help to set you up on this path?

I'm now a first-year research student on the PhD programme in the School of Architecture at the RCA. My project focuses on multi-scale representation of the Zoige plateau in China to investigate alpine grassland and wetland degradation and social relations, affected by national politics and discourse.

Studying MA Environmental Architecture at the RCA gave me a new perspective on architecture, the environment and the world we are living in, which significantly expanded my vision and pushed me to figure out my future career.

What motivated you to carry on your research at the RCA?

I am interested in the research carried out in the School of Architecture such as the Climate Justice research group. Also I would like to continue developing my approach to environmental architecture under supervision from Godofredo Pereira and other teaching staff who are really inspiring and working at the frontier of environmental conflicts.

Before coming to the RCA you studied BA Environmental Design at Jiangnan University School of Design, China. What drew you to the Environmental Architecture programme at the RCA?

I still remember how excited I felt when I saw some key words like “climate change” and “resource extraction” in the programme brief and introduction video on the RCA website. The most attractive thing for me was that I couldn’t predict what my final my project would be because the programme is quite different from others such as landscape architecture.

What do you think is the most unique thing about the course, and about studying at the RCA?

The most unique thing for me is that the course thinks about architecture in a real situation, putting architecture at the intersection of politics, culture and society. This confronts a dilemma that conventional architectural courses do not directly face.

Studying at the RCA also gave me the opportunity to speak about architecture in a more open way, from writing to media studies, exploring the ability of art and design to explore frontline issues.

In addition, I also built excellent relationships with my peers and tutors. For example, now I can still discuss current environmental architecture research with Christina Geros and Antonio Giudice.

You took part in the Lithium Triangle Research Studio – what was this experience like? How did it influence your own independent research?

The Lithium Triangle Research Studio discussed lithium in the context of energy transition (replacing fossil fuels with low carbon energy sources), the Green New Deal and climate change. We had a field trip to the Atacama Desert in Chile with one of our partners the Atacama Desert Foundation. We camped in the desert and interviewed indigenous people. This experience made me feel the real environmental conflicts between lithium extraction, local indigenous communities and more-than human beings.

After the field trip, I chose one of our study sites to develop my independent research project, which is the symbiosis of microorganisms living in the Puquio (waterhole), trying to see lithium extraction from a symbiotic view.

As part of your work you created maps and drawings but also animations and science fiction. Were these methods you were familiar with, or did the programme introduce you to new ways of thinking about environmental architecture?

As for the final forms of my project, I was not familiar with science fiction and animation, my graduation project was my first time to write and animate from the bacteria’s view. This was suggested by the Environmental Architecture teaching staff in tutorials and reviews and was a great challenge for me. This process made me rethink the role of different representations and also inspired me to produce relatively unconventional ways of thinking. I am continuing this form of representation in my current PhD research.

Why is animation a useful tool to use to explore environmental issues?

In my view, animation is a way, like other methods of representation, to show and assert your focus – and it is helpful to represent environmentally, dynamically and spatially, crossing scales and shifting views. Environmental issues cannot be captured only by scientific figures, drawings or models that potentially separate dynamic and systematic environmental relations. So I tested how those relations could be grasped by animation, and also how animation could represent alternative relations that may otherwise be missed.

Did you have the opportunity to collaborate with experts outside of your field? How did this impact your practice?

Environmental Architecture brings together people from different backgrounds, such as architecture, archeology, landscape architecture, city design, biology, indigenous law, and chemistry. Some partners are outside of academia, for example, the indigenous people and local NGOs. This team ensures we spoke about environmental architecture in an interdisciplinary way and offered the opportunity to collaborate with them in both group and individual work.