Archive for the ‘Architecture & Infrastructure’ Category

• VIDEO – Six Spectacular Hong Kong Time Lapse Videos

  Date: 2013.06.11 | Category: Architecture & Infrastructure, Blog, Video | Response: 1

  Perhaps the pace of HK lends itself well to what is quickly becoming a genre of local videography unto itself. The first offering is the newest - a stop-motion video from Javin Lau shot with a Canon 7D and T2LI.

  Each has a different atmosphere, reflecting different sides of our city…

  This is a preview. Read the full post (52 words, 1 image)

• BLOG – Hong Kong 2013 vs. Fritz Lang’s 1927 Masterpiece ‘Metropolis’

  Date: 2013.04.11 | Category: Architecture & Infrastructure, Blog | Response: 1

  Anyone Hong Konger watching Fritz Lang’s 1927 expressionist sci-fi masterpiece ‘Metropolis’ would find it hard to avoid the parallels between the dystopian future he predicted and the high-rise over-populated reality of our city in 2013…

  

  The functional, eclectic architecture featured in Lang’s sets have sharp, rectangular outlines, dark lighting effects, and intense shadows emphasising the enormity and density of the buildings…

  

  Jardine House? Or perhaps a NT housing estate?

  It is all reminiscent of Michael Wolf’s photography of Hong Kong, which – by far – has the largest number and highest density of skyscrapers in the world…

  This is a preview. Read the full post (491 words, 20 images)

• BLOG – Photographs of Hong Kong’s Rooftop Slums

  Date: 2013.04.08 | Category: Architecture & Infrastructure, Blog, Photography & Wallpapers, Politics: All Posts | Response: 0

  Limited space and sky-high rents have pushed HK’s poor into cages, ‘shoeboxes‘, sub-divided death traps and up onto rooftop slums in the blistering heat. Average house prices in Hong Kong have jumped 76% since 2008, with no end in sight to the ever-increasing, monstrous cost of housing…

  

  Artwork by atomier-one.blogspot.hk

  Rufina Wu & Stefan Canham have drawn attention to the underprivileged Hong Kongers who exist at the bottom of society but on top of the city. The images below are from their photographic project, ‘Portraits from Above: Hong Kong’s Informal Rooftop Communities‘…

  

  One of the five residential focus points of the book is a mixed-use structure located in Tai Kok Tsui (above). The area first developed as a shipyard which linked into other heavy industries but, since the 1980s, many of the factories have relocated. Like Sham Shui Po and Kwun Tong, this area is a redevelopment zone and is expected to undergo major transformations.

  This is a preview. Read the full post (955 words, 15 images)

• BLOG – How to Tell the Time from the HK Skyline

  Date: 2013.03.29 | Category: Architecture & Infrastructure, Blog | Response: 0

  Photographer Patrick Beekers explains how onlookers can tell the time (albeit very roughly, to an interval of 15-minutes) simply by glancing at Central Plaza. The building was completed in 1992, features 78 floors and remains the city’s third tallest skyscraper. It also contains the world’s highest church…

  “The part of the summit between the roof and the mast itself functions as a clock; incorporated in the mast’s four spandrel neon bands is a high-tech and high-profile lighting system that changes colouring in a regular sequence every quarter of an hour.

  The system works according to a six-hour colour cycle (6pm and 12am: red, 7pm and 1am: white, 8pm and 2am: purple, 9pm and 3am: yellow, 10pm and 4am: pink, and 11pm and 5am: green); every quarter of an hour one neon band changes its current colour to the one of the next hour, so for instance 6,30 pm would have two red bands (lower ones) and two white ones (upper).”

  The following chart comes courtesy of Redditor carpediem…

  

  This is a preview. Read the full post (171 words, 2 images)

• BLOG – 3 Future Maps of the MTR

  Date: 2013.02.07 | Category: Architecture & Infrastructure, Blog | Response: 2

  Some of these future MTR links are confirmed, some are under construction and some probably complete fantasy. Click the image below to enlarge. More information and maps at the Wikipedia page on Future Projects of the MTR.

  

  Click to enlarge

  This is a preview. Read the full post (47 words, 3 images)

• BLOG – Cool Photos of Hong Kong in Miniature

  Date: 2013.02.05 | Category: Architecture & Infrastructure, Blog | Response: 1

  Hong Kong’s first permanent planning and infrastructure gallery reopened last August near City Hall – click here for the website.  One of their opening ‘thematic exhibitions’ was ‘Unique Hong Kong in Miniature‘, which featured more than 30 reduced size models of HK including Woo Cheong Pawn Shop, Lui Seng Chun, Tong Lau, rooftop structures and other traditional shops.

  Photos below by Shawn Chau…

  See also: Construct your own paper HK and Tereza Hradilkova’s ‘pop-up HK’.

  
  
  This is a preview. Read the full post (74 words, 34 images)

• BLOG – Construct Your Own Paper ‘Pop-Up’ Hong Kong

  Date: 2013.01.31 | Category: Architecture & Infrastructure, Blog | Response: 1

  In the proud tradition of Blue Peter and ‘Show & Tell’, below are some templates for constructing your very own Hong Kong in your living room…

  

  Bank of China, via SkyscraperModels.us – click to enlarge

  So whip out the scissors and glue, construct a comprehensive ‘pop-up’ HK and then make like Godzilla and destroy it all…

  

  HK 1994, via pingyao on skysrapercity.com forum

  Here are some the enthusiasts at skyscrapercity.com prepared earlier…

  This is a preview. Read the full post (216 words, 18 images)

• HISTORY – Photos From Within the Abandoned Wanchai Police Station

  Date: 2013.01.29 | Category: Architecture & Infrastructure, Blog, History & Abandoned HK | Response: 0

  One of the few colonial buildings remaining in HK, the currently disused Wanchai Police Station was built in 1932…

  

  Wan Chai Police Station at its opening in 1932, via Wikimedia

  Though the station (also known as ‘number 2 station’) sat directly on Victoria Harbour until the 1960s, the building itself was also built on reclaimed land. It was constructed during the Praya East Reclamation Scheme.

  It closed in 2010 but, as a Grade III historic building, it will be partly redeveloped for business and commercial use. Below are some shots taken from inside the building, two years after it closed…

  
  This is a preview. Read the full post (135 words, 23 images)

• HISTORY – A Brief Visual History of Kowloon Walled City

  Date: 2013.01.26 | Category: Architecture & Infrastructure, Blog, History & Abandoned HK | Response: 8

  A previous blog post glimpsed life from within the notorious Kowloon Walled City, which was torn down by the colonial government in the 1990s. The collection below focuses more on the exterior with some early photographs and a few rare aerial shots…

  

  During the Sung Dynasty, between 960 and 1279, East Kowloon’s coastline was a series of salt pans. The Walled City was originally an outpost set up to manage the trade, though little else took place in the area until 1668 when 30 guards were stationed there. The intention was to defend Lei Yue Mun, Kowloon Bay, Hung Hom and Tsim Sha Tsui against foreign invaders and pirates.

  It was developed into a small coastal fort in 1810 and was improved in 1847 following the arrival of the British. The Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory of 1898 handed the New Territories over to Britain for 99 years, but excluded the Walled City which, by then, had a population of around 700…

  

  1898 – the year Britain took control of the New Territories

  China was allowed to keep officials there as long as they did not interfere with the defence of British Hong Kong. The enclosed area measured 6.5 acres and included six watchtowers, four gates, several military offices, gunpowder stores, weapons stores and soldier’s quarters – all surrounded by canons.

  This is a preview. Read the full post (1513 words, 41 images)

• PHOTOGRAPHY – Invasive or Curious? Michael Wolf’s ‘Window Watching’

  Date: 2013.01.06 | Category: Architecture & Infrastructure, Blog, Photography & Wallpapers | Response: 4

  Invasive or harmless curiosity? Mundane or interesting?… Michael Wolf‘s latest photo series contrasts his most famous work, ‘Architecture of Density‘. Instead of showcasing HK’s maddeningly dense and repetitive shoe-box residential buildings, the German photographer closes in on individual domestic scenes in ‘Window Watching’…

  See also: An update on the potential legal issues surrounding these photos.

  Click here for Wolf’s HK Cornerhouses series and 100×100.

  
  
  This is a preview. Read the full post (69 words, 17 images)