"China Constructs" explores the relation of design to labor by focusing on migrant lives and livelihoods in construction. It traces the circulations of bodies, capital, discourses, and materials through the global building system. Based on two years of dissertation fieldwork research spent on Chinese construction sites and architecture offices, the project probes global architecture's encounter with China to elucidate the relationship of manual labor to disciplinary knowledge in architecture, aesthetics, and design studies. As a highly gendered site of work, the project complements a large literature that focuses on Chinese migrant women's work in the manufacturing sector.The project looks at the construction site as a location where diverse actors come into contact across divisions culture, nationality, and class. A new project currently underway explores the “China Dream” for millions who see urban opportunities as the only chance to remake rural destinies. It will focus on three distinct locations where migrants are creating new forms of urban space and modes of inhabitation at the urban periphery: small hair salons, mobile cart-based street restaurants, and "hui-shou" recycling centers. The project further looks at the relationship between a new sector of services for urban accommodations and the migrant labor that makes urban convenience possible.