All of the Factories in LuZhou

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RESEARCH BACKGROUND: 'All of the factories in LuZhou' documents and records the 3000+ industrial buildings slated for demolition in LuZhou, a district in Taiwan's capital city, Taipei. This project is a homage to Ed Ruscha's 'Every Building on the Sunset Strip' (1966), and investigates the collection, a technique borrowed from art practice, as an architectural design method. The work is positioned in the research areas of 'the everyday', 'bottom-up urbanism', and more importantly in the emerging research into the impact that (light) industry has on the economic and social sustainability of our cities. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTION: The work is a survey of the threatened buildings and the associated job and trade losses in LuZhou. At minimum, it will be a significant archive of Taipei's industrial past, if and when the warehouses are demolished. It puts factories into the mainstream urban design debate. In the installation, the A5 survey documents highlight and personalise the individual jobs and industry that will be lost. From a distance, the wall of images depicts the scale of the imminent destruction. RESEARCH SIGNIFICANCE: This work was the result of a research fellowship at Tamkang University. It was seen by 500+ visitors in this government-sponsored design gallery: industry, academic and government representatives (including the Director of Taipei City Planning). URS 127 Design Gallery is a public space managed by Tamkang University's Department of Architecture; "URS" stands for Urban Regeneration Station. In the opening speech, the Director of Urban Regeneration noted the importance of the work both as a social and political response.