Twisted documents and explores an eleven-story garment factory building in Shantou, China, for the fashion label Lafayette 148. The book presents the building as an artifact of architecture, with detailed documentation of images and drawings. The book also presents essays that offer a series of distinct but interrelated responses to the many questions that arise when building a garment factory facility in contemporary China. Issues addressed range from the architectural import of the building typology, to the ecological footprint of a factory, to social and architectural concerns regarding labor as well as construction practices, to the ethics and aesthetics of factory building.
Clear tensions exist between the global and the local, with respect to issues such as material economies, labor relations, working conditions, and company branding. The book investigates the role of design in all of this. For what can the architect be held responsible in contemporary praxis. Is it ultimately possible to address the social inequalities produced by global garment manufacturing through design?
This book is not a monograph, but includes extensive documentation of the design process, the development of working drawings, construction technologies, as well as the completed building and a post-occupancy review of the building.
