Michael Wolf: ‘Architecture of Density.’

 by Sam Lewis

It has now been a year since the main string of protests in Hong Kong, and while the mobs may have died down, the unrest and hostility certainly have not. The ‘stalemate’ between the people and the government, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic, have kept many inside, making Hong Kong’s housing problems more prominent than ever.

Hong Kong has seen a rapid boom in the past 30 years, quickly becoming the world’s most densely populated city. It is this rapid boom that has also seen a major inequality form, where lustrous, sleek skyscrapers can neighbour dilapidated and overcrowded apartment complexes, with entire residences likely smaller than your bedroom. Over 200,000 of the poorest Hong Kong citizens live in these conditions, where the average living space per person is under 5 square metres, giving the ‘nano-apartments’, or more commonly called ‘coffin homes’ their name. Many of the residents experience a kind of monotony and repetition in their day-to-day lives.

This is exactly what photographer Michael Wolf aimed to capture. Retiring from his role as a photojournalist in 2003, Wolf turned to his personal work. He wanted to explore and document the tightly-woven communities of the sprawling apartment blocks around him. These vast complexes greatly intrigued him, being so far removed from his childhood in Germany, thus ‘Architecture of Density’ was born.

Architecture of Density is Wolf’s best known work in Hong Kong, which focused more on the facades of Hong Kong’s monumental tower blocks than the cramped interiors.

The vast concrete monoliths are hidden behind Hong Kong’s famous skyline, retaining none of the dazzling lustre of its most iconic buildings, but rather looking as if the city planners had copy-pasted each floor. By cropping out the sky and any other surroundings the buildings were turned into seemingly infinite ‘formal abstractions’, with the evidence of human life inside just barely visible upon closer inspection. It is the repetition and monotony of these facades that very much reflects the repetition and monotony of the inhabitant’s lives, the scale of the buildings making it almost impossible to visualise the lives that are contained within.

 This is exactly why Wolf’s next series of photos, 100x100, focused more on the interior of the apartments, tackling the most common question he was asked about Architecture of Density: “How do people live in there?” The title refers both to the Shek Kip Mei’s 100 identical rooms, each with an area of 10 x 10 feet, but also the number of photos in the collection. Even though over 100 inhabitants were photographed in their apartment, the number is only a small sliver of the hundreds of thousands that live in these conditions, emphasising the scale of Hong Kong’s housing problem.

Although Wolf is no longer with us, his work continues to inspire me today. The photos of the apartment's inhabitants are in some way relatable to the feeling of confinement we all felt in lockdown. I look forward to learning more about his work, and using it to inspire my own art.