City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City
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| Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong |
Kowloon Walled City was a remarkable high-rise squatter camp where more than 50,000 people were crammed into a mass of 500 slum buildings, within the 6.4 acres land of Hong Kong. It was once the most densely populated spot in the world before the demolition by the authorities in 1993. Originally a Chinese military fort, the walled city became an ungoverned enclave in 1989 and controlled by local triads from 1950s to 1970s, with high rates of prostitution, gambling and drug abuse. Therefore, it comes with the name 'City of Darkness' in Cantonese.
Architecture without Architects
The unplanned walled city was a self-constructed autonomous district that grew without input from architects or planners, from a squatter camp inside an abandoned military fort to the most densely housing on earth. Despite its dystopian appearance and poor image to the outsiders, for thousands who called it home, Kowloon Walled City was a friendly, tight-knit community that was poor but generally happy.
Here's the info-graphic describing the Life in Kowloon Walled City:
There seems to be no accounting for taste in architectural fashion. Shunned, condemned and demonised in its "lifetime", Kowloon Walled City was long considered a malignant blot on the progressive Hong Kong landscape. Yet just 20 years after its destruction, the squatter camp has been transformed in the minds of commentators into a paragon of design - albeit organic - and the archetype of a workable, livable development underpinned by a sense of community among those who resided there. The truth is somewhere in between. -James King, 2014The sprawling Kowloon Walled City, demolished 20 years ago, was reviled in its lifetime. But the structure is now looked upon as a classic of organic design, says James King. The dramatic architectural from a near bare site in 1945 to a 17-storey megalith housing evolution was the masterpiece of the community, built from whatever resources they had. The architecture of kowloon walled city is definitely the bottom-up, community-driven development. Even though it's dark, dirty and complicated labyrinth, it's still the happily home for the thousands. The inhabitants know their neighbors, interact with them everyday in such a small compound and always keep in touch with the surroundings. Apart from the poor physical and environmental value, I think the architects should learn from the social value that the Kowloon Walled City produced.
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