ONE SQUARE FOOT 樓花

by John Fung 馮建中

Hong Kong is often cited as the city with the most high-rise buildings and highest population density. Yet more skyscrapers are being built to fulfill economic ends. Various reclamation projects along the city’s coastlines have made way for gigantic architectural mega-structures, further narrowing our harbour. Older buildings are torn down with no consideration for urban conservation or regeneration. While there are buildings with low or zero occupancy, developers continue to feed their insatiable desire to play the market game as residential and commercial property values rise at an escalating rate. Meanwhile, housing remains a major concern to citizens – for people living in tightly packed spaces with no privacy, owning a home is the highest aspiration of many, and a home mortgage becomes a lifelong obligation.
 
How much higher will our one square foot go? We are helplessly trapped in this city jungle of architecture, including photographer John Fung. Fung’s One Square Foot challenges us to seek a different appreciation of the open, geometric abstraction and complexity of spatial relationships in our concrete city. While aesthetically intriguing and disarmingly amiable - and at times one will be lost in these people-less images - Fung’s new series of multi-exposure photography works literally triumphs over the emptiness of this purposeless congestion. One begins to question what put us in such an unsympathetic city situation.