SIN TAI KA™
Taking the "SIN TAI KA" garment printing shop I designed as an example, its predecessor was the "SIN TAI KA Clothing Store," which had operated for 40 years since 1980. During the era of Taiwan's economic takeoff, the store was located in Chiayi's "Thief Market," once a prime spot for purchasing various lifestyle goods.
With the rise of fast fashion impacting the garment industry, the third-generation owners, Yi-da Chen and Nai-wen Zheng, faced the pressure to transform. Together, we brainstormed various possibilities for this shop, keeping "clothing" as the central theme.
We reviewed reusable furniture within the store and decided to retain the existing oak-colored furniture and panels. We paired these with the main colors of the printing machines restored by the owners—blue, silver, and light gray—to create a composite space that is slightly cool and experimental.
Two custom-made scaffolds welded from galvanized flat tubes stand at the entrance. Functioning as "objects" that act like scaffolds without being literal scaffolds, they imply the main spirit SIN TAI KA wishes to convey: beauty exists within the tools and objects we take for granted. In Taiwan, "beauty" can be refined culture or formal aesthetics, but it can also be the aesthetic shaped by the cultural, functional, and regional nature of the "object" itself—a kind of beauty closer to "goodness."
These daily elements are extended into the transformed SIN TAI KA shop. The SIN TAI KA team fully expressed this beauty by shooting a street-style catalog for the closing sale, wearing old clothes sold by the second-generation owners within the old market. In the future, the third-generation owners will connect local history and allied teams through "custom garment printing" and "curation," bringing more high-quality texts and creative projects to Taiwan.
Taking the "SIN TAI KA" garment printing shop I designed as an example, its predecessor was the "SIN TAI KA Clothing Store," which had operated for 40 years since 1980. During the era of Taiwan's economic takeoff, the store was located in Chiayi's "Thief Market," once a prime spot for purchasing various lifestyle goods.
With the rise of fast fashion impacting the garment industry, the third-generation owners, Yi-da Chen and Nai-wen Zheng, faced the pressure to transform. Together, we brainstormed various possibilities for this shop, keeping "clothing" as the central theme.
We reviewed reusable furniture within the store and decided to retain the existing oak-colored furniture and panels. We paired these with the main colors of the printing machines restored by the owners—blue, silver, and light gray—to create a composite space that is slightly cool and experimental.
Two custom-made scaffolds welded from galvanized flat tubes stand at the entrance. Functioning as "objects" that act like scaffolds without being literal scaffolds, they imply the main spirit SIN TAI KA wishes to convey: beauty exists within the tools and objects we take for granted. In Taiwan, "beauty" can be refined culture or formal aesthetics, but it can also be the aesthetic shaped by the cultural, functional, and regional nature of the "object" itself—a kind of beauty closer to "goodness."
These daily elements are extended into the transformed SIN TAI KA shop. The SIN TAI KA team fully expressed this beauty by shooting a street-style catalog for the closing sale, wearing old clothes sold by the second-generation owners within the old market. In the future, the third-generation owners will connect local history and allied teams through "custom garment printing" and "curation," bringing more high-quality texts and creative projects to Taiwan.