A Clothing Factory That’s Anything but Run-of-the-Mill

In designing the new Ho Chi Minh factory of streetwear manufacturer UnAvailable, multidisciplinary studio The Lab Saigon drew inspiration from the process of stitching. We speak with creative director Tuan Le to find out how this translates into the various spaces and functions

Design Anthology: How did you first meet the client?

Tuan Le: We met the owner of UnAvailable through a mutual friend and frequent collaborator, but we’ve been fans of the brands his factory manufactures — Saturdays NYC, Palace, Stüssy — for a long time. He’s also behind one of the most popular cafe brands in Vietnam. We’d never done a factory before, much less one of this scale. But he liked our work and we came recommended, so we hit it off.

What was his brief to you for the project?

He and his partners (one of whom happens to be the mutual friend who introduced us) asked us to design the facade, the reception, the showroom and the back offices, in total about a third of the 9,000-square-metre factory (the other 70% is reserved for production lines). They wanted it to rival the office spaces of the famous streetwear brands that are his customers. They imagined a nondescript entrance that opens into an atrium, with big windows and bold design statements like a central staircase and a cafe-bar. Aesthetically, they’re drawn to clean lines and functional designs.

What was your initial inspiration for the design?

The stitching process was our inspiration. The concept was literally one slide: a gif of a sewing machine. The idea was to alternate between support structures and finished volumes, rough and polished materials, between wood, metal and terrazzo.

Storage concepts were another big inspiration. If you’ve ever been in a garment factory, you know that there are clothes, fabric and samples everywhere. Early on we knew we had to incorporate racks and cabinets into all the big walls that line the exterior of each room.

What was the inspiration behind the colour palette?

Streetwear brands tend to have bold colour palettes, so we kept the office relatively neutral to balance and highlight the clothes.

Can you tell us about the materiality and design detailing?

We used three main materials: grey terrazzo with brass inlay, black steel and black HDF.

Was sustainability a consideration and if so, how was that incorporated into the construction and design?

The separate office volume inside the factory allows us to cool the office more efficiently. A light well running through the length of the office volume also maximises sunlight and reduces the need for artificial lighting.

Images / Thuy Truc and Co Nguyen