When I speak with Gary Chang, the Hong Kong architect is busy preparing to give a talk on micro-dwellings at a conference in Singapore. This is routine for Chang, who gained a measure of internet fame recently when a video tour of his “transformer home” hit YouTube.

The 360-square foot apartment can be morphed into some two dozen different configurations with sliding panels mounted on ceiling tracks. Slide one panel to reveal a kitchen as tight and tidy as a ship’s galley, slide another to open a laundry room, lift a tabletop to uncover a spa full-size bathtub. “So the idea is almost like a time-based design,” explains Chang in the video, “Instead of me moving from one room to the other, I don’t move, actually, the home moves for me.”

Gary Chang’s “transformer home.” Photo courtesy of Edge Design Institute

Incredibly, this space was Chang’s childhood home, and once housed him, his parents, three sisters, and a boarder – 360-square feet divided seven ways. As a result, the family, like many Hong Kongers, had to be ingenious about use of space. One surface transformed from dining table to homework station to workbench with the addition or subtraction of a cloth or a layer of newspaper; chairs folded for easy storage, even the sofa could be taken apart. Chang’s current apartment is just a high-tech improvement on this modular style of living.

These days, Chang hosts weekly tours of his apartment for groups of students, architects, developers and manufacturers from around the globe.

The 24 configurations of Chang’s apartment. Image courtesy of Edge Design Institute

“Hong Kongers have a long history of compact living,” says Chang, adding that he and his sisters dealt with the close quarters by inventing a private symbol language so they could talk without their mother hearing.

Calling Hong Kong apartments “compact” is an understatement. In Hong Kong, the average person has a mere 161 square feet to themselves. Compare this to 832 in the US, 960 in Australia, 587 in Germany, 379 in Japan and 356 in the UK. The average new home in Hong Kong is 484 square feet, compared to 2,164 in the US, 1,023 in Japan and 818 in the UK.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development defines ‘overcrowding’ as less than 165 square feet per person. Only 2.4 percent of US households are overcrowded by this standard. In other words, the average Hong Konger lives in conditions considered dangerously overcrowded by the US government, conditions shared by only a tiny minority of the American population.

In order to subdivide already minuscule apartments, Hong Kong’s poorest citizens often resort to so-called “cage” or “coffin” homes. Framed out of wood or chicken wire, the units are often stacked two or three high. A resident might pay US$100–150 a month for as little as 30 square feet. A cage home fits a mattress roll, a hot plate and a tiny TV set. In the midst of a city that prides itself on its modernity, they bring to mind jail cells in a steampunk horror novel.