Photographs of residents in their tiny flats in Hong Kong's oldest public housing estate

Michael Wolf took 100 photos of people living in Hong Kong's oldest public housing estate. Each flat is 100 square feet. Almost every room has the same kind of metal bunk bed. They almost all have a TV, electric fan, and rice cooker.

I looked at all 100 photos. Here's the creepiest room. Here's the most cluttered room. Here's the tidiest room. Here's the most spartan room.

Michael Wolf 100 x 100 (Thanks, Lookforthewoman!)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Anonymous

The link hasn’t worked for 24 hours now, but I would love to see the other photos one day.
Anonymous

Seems like the site has been boingboinged…
endymion

Two days after this was posted.

The site is technically up, and I’d love to go through all 100 rooms. But not when it takes 2 minutes to view each photograph. Not this decade.

Michael Wolf: Please improve your technical infrastructure, so your work, which looks interesting, can be seen!
Michael Leung

I live in Hong Kong and even my apartment isn’t that small.
Ted8305

I lived in a 110 square foot efficiency for 2 years as a grad student. Had a full size fold-up futon, a full size fridge, an oven, one sink, and a tiny closet with shower and toilet. It worked perfectly as a private kitchen / hygiene / sleeping area, and $210 per month utilities included wasn’t bad at all.

Of course, now I live in the country on several acres and love having the space. Amazing how adaptable humans are.
Anonymous

Apparently we crushed his puny 10×10 webserver.
maxoid

site seems to be down. anyone mirror it?
Chris Tucker

The US used to have something similar, They were called single room occupancy hotels. (ref. Elwood Blues’ building/room)

A lot of them were demolished to make way for upscale condos.

The people that lived in the SROs were tossed into the street.

Now it’s the turn of the yuppie scum to lose their homes and be evicted to the streets, and in NYC, the homeless are being housed in an upscale condo complex that went bust, because no one was buying the overpriced apartments.

<NelsonMuntz>”HAha!”</NelsonMuntz>
- torgo_x
  
  I almost had to live in an SRO in Evanston, IL, in 1995, Jake and Elwood style. Each room was really, really, barely inches larger than your bed. I think it was populated entirely by students about to start at Northwestern, who breezed into town about three days before class, expecting to find pleasant and plentiful off-campus housingâ€“ but finding out that this place, maybe two el stops south, was the only thing left by then. The place was kept clean and well-paintedâ€“ in theory “okay” by a Northwestern student’s judgement.
  
  The rent was not particularly low! Because they knew that if you ended up here, they could charge just about whatever they wanted.
PeaceLove

Interesting to see all the comments about how we can make do with less than we think, etc. I don’t think the people in those photographs live in those one-room dorm cells by choice. Anyone who has very little money quickly learns to live with very little stuff or space. I wouldn’t assume they’re possessed of Gandhi-like renunciate holiness.

I bet most or all the folks in those photos have never had any more, and never had any hope of climbing up in the world. Many of them probably started out in small villages with even less than they have now. They’re borderline poor working people, nothing more or less.

Beautiful photographs of beautiful people.
Inkstain

It really doesn’t take much space to make a human being comfortable and happy. Spoiled Westerners continue not to understand how much they have that they not only don’t need, but that isn’t contributing to their happiness.
torgo_x

City of Darkness is even freakier and scarierâ€“ it’s photos of the mini-city of Hak Nam / Kowloon Walled City, in Hong Kong. (Yes, as in Gibson’s Idoru, etc.â€“ he saw this photobook and wrote the place into his books.)

Hak Nam wasn’t even built as a housing estate, it was just sort of cobbled together. Apartments tinier and weirder than these, creepy unlicensed shops, and irregularly-shaped hallways, like catacombs with tangles of phone and power cables run thru. It’s horrendous and surreal, practically post-nuclear. It was allowed to exist only because the PRC and Hong Kong both claimed/disclaimed the block of land it was on, so it wasn’t until 1993 that it was torn down.

(Since the book costs more than pocket change, try getting it via Inter-Library Loan first/instead.)
zikman

I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this on boingboing before…
freshacconci

This is a crass generalization perhaps, but it’s interesting how much more “homey” the spaces occupied by women are then the mens’ spaces.
aquathink

I love the olive green refrigerators
Mitch

Now this kind of makes me feel guilty about moving out of my efficiency and into a 2 1/2 bedroom apartment and taking up so much more space for myself.
Mitch

I notice that there are no windows but almost everyone has a TV. Somebody ought to set up live video feeds on closed circuit or low power UHF to give people a virtual window.
Kimrod

Is it me or do these domiciles have a strong resemblance to prison cells. I guess it’s all relative, at least these folks can go out for food or take a walk, whereas, the other guys can’t.

Incredible topic, incredible find. These types of photographic studies are always fascinating. In 2085, this will be precious “How They Lived” photos.

Well done mate.
Anonymous

Inkstain,

Indeed: These folks all look thrilled! What a joy it must be, after a hard day at work, to retire to the luxury of these warm, comfortable, inviting “homes.”
SpacelordMother

I’m always fascinated by the spaces people inhabit and call home. What I find so interesting is the ability to gather so much information about a person based on the qualities and characteristics of their home. Thanks for posting this one.
unruly katy

Oooh, nice. Reminds me of the fantastic book Tokyo: A Certain Style by Kyoichi Tsuzuki. http://www.amazon.ca/Tokyo-Certain-Style-Kyoichi-Tsuzuki/dp/0811824233
Ernunnos

Not prison cells. Dorm rooms. I half expect to see a poster of Janis or Jimi every time I click one.

I like #14′s sewing machine and wooden bunk beds, and #78′s color and texture.

Notice how many of them have a strip of cloth that covers the vents near the ceiling?
Anonymous

This is little over nine square metres. Most of the world wouldn’t have been thinking “WOW! 100! WISH I HAD THAT MUCH!”