The Sweat-Shop anchors the pier of Brooklyn Navy Yard as an icon and factory of fair labor and recycling textiles. The Sweat-Shop consists of an automated system that replaces menial tasks in the recycling textile process, allowing workers to produce meaningful labor through research, design and collaboration. The factory integrates industrial and intellectual facets of textile manufacturing, providing a platform for entrepreneurial opportunities and healthy living conditions for the workers. 

This vertical factory seeks to create a new type of icon within the fabric of the textile industry. An icon that questions the cost of the t-shirt and challenges the values beyond the price tag visually from the shores of one of the biggest fashion icon cities in the world. It stands as a constant reminder of the potential to embed meaningful labor in an era of consumerism.

Course: Adv IV Studio, Spring 2017, Columbia GSAPP

Critic: David Benjamin, The Living