
Concrete Stories
- Publisher
- AsiaOne Books
- Year
- 2018
- Specifications
- Extreme vertical format, colour photographs
Concrete Stories is a collection of genuine instants from the daily life of Hong Kong's inhabitants, more particularly of people from the older districts of Kowloon. This peninsula has a population of over 2 million people and a density of 43,000/km2, which might make it the densest urban area in the world. The vernacular culture of people living in such an extremely urbanized environment can be discovered through all these small stories that are forming a bigger one, a record of how people make use of available rooftops in a cramped city where each square foot can be sold at stratospheric prices. It is a testimony of the lifestyle of people living inside the oldest buildings of the city, featuring an easy access to the rooftop that is often used by inhabitants from the whole building, like a courtyard in the air. Nowadays, these buildings are disappearing at a fast pace given the scarcity of land, which forces the authorities to pull down all the low-rise buildings in order to leave space for taller and more modern residential ones.