Shanty towns are nothing new in large cities with little (enforced) regulation, but this is something you have to see to believe: everything from small shacks to multi-story structures, individual buildings to entire villages, all spread out in organic mazes over the rooftops of apartment structures and skyscrapers throughout Hong Kong – a set of smaller communities within the larger surrounding city.

In Portraits from Above: Hong Kongs Informal Rooftop Communities by Rufina Wu and Stefan Canham, a particularly stunning set of rooftop dwelling structures is explored through vivid and though-provoking pictures, drawings, diagrams and the stories of a few families who live their lives in makeshift houses built piece by piece on existing buildings. Who comes to live on rooftops, after all? How? Why?

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The penthouse is historically the most prized property of a building, but that was not always the case. Before the introduction of the elevator – an invention that made the tenth floor far more appealing almost overnight – the poorest people were forced to walk the stairs to their high-up homes.

This is an amazing phenomena – a William Gibson-style vision of urban futures unregulated by building codes and allowed to evolve out of the available space and needs of a city’s people.

From the preface written by Rufina Wu und Stefan Canham:

“There is no elevator. We walk up the eight flights of stairs, hesitating on the last one, looking at each other, out of breath: we have no right to be here.”

“The roof is a maze of corridors, narrow passageways between huts built of sheet metal, wood, brick and plastics. There are steps and ladders leading up to a second level of huts. We get lost. Our leaflets in hand, Rufina knocks on a door. There is an exchange in Cantonese. Stefan stands in the background, the foreigner, smiling, not understanding a word. They hear us out, smile back and invite us into their homes.”

“Later, we look down at the building from a higher one across the street. The roof is huge, like a village. There must be thirty or forty households on it. From the outside there is no way of knowing what is inside. Whether they have Internet or not. Whether they have a toilet. And there is no way of knowing their stories…”