Rufina Wu and Stefan Canham on Hong Kong's Informal Rooftop Communities

2009.03.17

“You have to be careful. It is very dangerous up there. Those places are filled with thieves and drug addicts. It is easy for them to hide from the police on a rooftop – if you don’t know the place, you’d get lost for sure…”

No publicly accessible maps or guidebooks offer the specific locations of Hong Kong’s rooftop communities. The best way to find them is to walk through the city with your head tilted upward. We discovered a broad range of informal rooftop structures after climbing countless flights of stairs—more often than not, there are no elevators. In more affluent areas, the improvised structures are now used as storage sheds, or as living space extensions from the floor below. But it is the roofs of tenement buildings built in the 1950s and 1960s that are often transformed into affordable living space catering to low-income groups, particularly immigrants. Some of these intricate two- and three-story-high structures are equipped with amenities like high-speed Internet; others provide little more than basic shelter.

The rise of rooftop communities is closely linked to the migration history from Chinese Mainland to Hong Kong. With each of China’s tumultuous political movements in the 20th century, like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, there was a corresponding wave of Mainland Chinese migrating to Hong Kong. These successive population influxes into a city notoriously short of flat land resulted in severe housing shortages and ultimately fostered the emergence of informal settlements. Flat roofs became attractive construction sites in the context of Hong Kong’s mountainous terrain and subtropical climate. Without the need to protect piping from destructive freeze-thaw action, plumbing pipes are typically found on the exterior of the building envelope and can be easily extended upwards to service rooftop units. The meter-high parapet wall along the perimeter of the roof and air wells provides a secure armature for subsequent layers of construction. Often, the first layer of rooftop units provides the foundation for a second, and sometimes a third. The evolution of a rooftop settlement can be traced by taking clues from the various strata of building materials. Over time, the huts become dependent on each other structurally: Remove one, and the rest may collapse.

The majority of rooftop residents climb four to nine stories getting to and from their homes. Only those living atop newer, taller buildings enjoy the luxury of elevators. A maze-like system of corridors and stairs provides access to each unit. More importantly, the corridors double as flexible extensions of living space for rooftop dwellers. Never static, the circulation spaces on rooftops are constantly evolving, depending on daily, weekly, and yearly cycles of activity. Seen from higher buildings across the street, the rooftops resemble small villages.

Today subsidized public housing accounts for more than 40 percent of Hong Kong’s total housing stock.† The scale of the city’s public housing provision is second only to Singapore. With such a robust housing program in place, one might wonder why rooftop housing continue to exist. And yet the vibrancy of these communities points to certain inadequacies in the provision of housing for people in need. Currently there is a seven-year residency requirement before one can claim eligibility for public housing and other social welfare. In effect, this stringent requirement denies migrants access to public housing. Those who cannot afford accommodations in the private sector but are also ineligible for public housing are left with very limited choices. The majority of current rooftop residents are Chinese immigrants—54,000 arrive in Hong Kong annually—although people from other parts of Asia and the Middle East are similarly enticed by Hong Kong's employment opportunities, higher wages, education, and health care. †† Rooftop housing enables the underprivileged to live in the city by providing affordable housing where it is needed: in central urban areas, in the vicinity of employment opportunities, and in areas with well-established social networks.

The rooftop units are an urban legacy, built by the first generation of migrants, but continuing to serve the city’s newcomers today. But in the course of the city’s rapid urban renewal, areas with older buildings and a large number of inhabited roofs are generally subject to a tabula rasa redevelopment approach, as whole building blocks and traditional urban fabrics are demolished in a prelude to new construction. Current building laws classify rooftop dwellings as illegal structures, their residents subject to eviction at any time. This, coupled with the current redevelopment schemes now in place for older neighborhoods, makes the future of Hong Kong’s rooftop housing precarious at best.

Our research combines the tools of an architect and the tools of a photographer to understand and to provide insight into Hong Kong’s rooftop communities. High-resolution, large-format images present interior and exterior spaces in detail for the viewer to “read.” Architectural drawings reconstruct the underlying order and present the complex spatial relationships the detail obscures. The interplay between these two media offers a full-spectrum documentation of the physical conditions of rooftop settlements. The variety of rooftop units attracts a diverse mixture of inhabitants, with households ranging from elderly singletons to families with young children sharing the same roof area. The residents we encountered do not justify the prevailing stigma. They opened their doors to us, allowed us to photograph and measure their homes, and they shared stories, hopes and dreams with us. Without their voices, the portrait of Hong Kong’s rooftops would be incomplete.

† According to the 2007 Hong Kong Yearbook, about 30 per cent of the city’s population live in public rental housing flats, and 18 per cent live in subsidized home ownership flats.

†† A quota system implemented in 1995 allows a maximum of 150 PRC citizens per day to migrate to Hong Kong. According to the Bauhinia Foundation Research, Mainlanders account for more than 90% of the city’s population growth.

Rufina Wu and Stefan Canham's book Portraits from Above: Hong Kong's Informal Rooftop Communities was published this month by Peperoni Books.

— 文/ Rufina Wu and Stefan Canham