Concrete Stories

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 millions 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 feet 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 buildings, like a courtyard in the air.

Nowadays, these buildings are disappearing at a fast pace given the scarcity of lands which forces the authority to pull down all the low-rise buildings in order to leave space to taller and more modern residential ones. Most of these new buildings are made with luxury finishing making it totally unaffordable for humble people to live inside. This way, the once popular districts of the city are being emptied of its grass roots forced to go live in the outskirt of the city. All photographs are using an extreme vertical format in order to strengthen the feeling of cramped-ness that is felt in these places.