Well known and extensively portrayed, Hong Kong has undeniably an astonishing atmosphere. Mountains and forests cover the 70% of its territory and figures talk of 7.827 buildings of more than 35 meters high intertwined with genuine tropical jungle forming what has been described as the ‘vertical city’.

Throughout the decades, the dense and compact high-rise public housing estates have shaped Hong-Kong skyline with concrete blocks piled up one next to the other almost unreal, overwhelming.

It was in the early years ‘50s when multitudes of people poured into Hong-Kong due to the political turmoil on the mainland of China. This led to a drastic increase in the number of squatters. In 1953, a tragic fire broke out on Christmas night devastating the squatter area in Shek Kip Mei, making more than 50 000 people homeless overnight.

Since then, the government set up a fund for constructing multi-story buildings to provide lower and middle-income families low-cost housing. Today, the Housing Authority provides homes for over 2 million people, about 30% of the population in Hong Kong. Land values are also a determining factor: with each square meter worth tens of thousands of dollars, developers are pushed to build as high as possible leading to what has been defined the “condition of groundlessness”.

Alessandro Guida, 2017