North Zone Silk Factory / OLI Architecture PLLC

The town of Wuzhen is famous for its traditional architectural heritage. However, before the advent of tourism, it was a quaint country town with some light industry, most notably a silk factory bordering the canal. Chen Xianghong, the developer of Wuzhen, fought the urban planning laws that mandated the removal of the buildings and secured the preservation of the factory as well as the underappreciated memory of its recent past. Built before the modernisation of China, the factory used construction techniques that saved on materials: elaborate concrete trusses carrying a traditional wooden roof frame. Each hall was built successively with its own structural system.