KOWLOON MEGA STRUCTURAL

Mathew Suen

What fascinates about the Walled City is that, for all its horrible shortcomings, its builders and residents succeeded in creating what modern architects, with all their resources of money and expertise, have failed to: the city as organic megastructure, not set rigidly for a lifetime but continually responsive to the changing requirements of its users, fulfilling every need from water supply to religion, yet providing also the warmth and intimacy of a single huge household. Ian Lambot

Introduction
Any investigation into the predominant ideas pertaining to urbanism around the sixties would inevitably turn up the concept of the megastructure. Vaguely defined, the megastructure captured the minds of academics, theorists, and popular culture. Architects and theorists could hardly be faulted for this lack of agreement or scarcity in details as the one thing consistent with the wildly varying ideas on megastructures were that almost none of them were ever realized. Defining what a megastructure was also a
Above: Birds eye view of the Kowloon Walled City prior to its demolition. Image: blokink.wordpress.com

like of their megastructure projects, the Kowloon Walled City emerged as a natural result of a peculiar political situation coupled with Hong Kongs usual density. The Kowloon Walled City was not a product of intellectual planning and discussion, but an organism borne of countless unrelated decisions by individuals. In this respect, the Walled City achieved the democratization of design so often advocated by modernists and megastructuralists. Just as Ian Lambot had remarked, the Walled City accomplished what countless architects before it have tried to do, all without an architect.
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conquest.4 As it was under Chinese jurisdiction, Kowloon provided services which were prohibited in British Hong Kong most notable gambling. These activities were eventually suppressed by the Chinese, but it was under British rule after World War II when brothels and opium was banned that the Walled City became an infamous haven for illicit activities.5 It was not until 1899 when Britain occupied the New Territories that the Walled City fell into its unique political situation. Though a clause was agreed upon, the Walled Citys Chinese officers would retain jurisdiction over the district, the British eventually attempted to take it by force, sparking fierce diplomatic action which ultimately resulted in stalemate, placing the Walled City in an awkward position of being somewhat British and somewhat Chinese.6 The population up until the 1930s was no more than 500. As Hong Kong developed along the lines of British influence, the Walled City remained as a Chinese curiosity. The British, defying initial agreements with the Chinese chose to clean up the City in an attempt to turn it into a place of popular resort and antiquarian interest. This marked the end of the original Walled City fortress which was further torn apart during the Japanese occupation.7
4 Steve Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004) p. 67 5 Elizabeth Sinn, Kowloon Walled City: Its Origin and Early History Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 27 (1987) p. 31 6 Ibid, 3738 7 Ibid, 36

difficult endeavour as its interpretation varied from person to person. However, despite these inconsistencies, the bulk of them (conceptualized megastructures) shared some commonalities. Foremost was the emphasis on mobility, flexibility and alterability.1 The megastructure was in many ways a vertical interpretation of empty lots lots stacked and ready to be built in, demolished, and rebuilt in again with every changing need or whim. If we can define the megastructure as a sort of adaptable framework that could facilitate other autonomous architectural programs a sort of contained collection of microcosms then the Kowloon Walled City was perhaps the closest ever realization of a megastructure. While architects pondered endlessly over physi-

Pre-Megastructure
The City began as a small insignificant signal station at the northeastern corner of Kowloon peninsula. To further fortifications as the demands on the station increased, a wall was erected in 1847 which finally gave name to the place as Kowloon Walled City.3 Kept under Chinese rule, the British mostly stayed out of the Citys affairs. This was unsurprising given the lack of British interest in Chinese governance as long as stability and order remained to allow for the efficient running of trade, which was the chief British purpose of their Chinese

Previous Page: A woman enters back into the Walled City through a long dark alley. Image: Lambot and Girard, p. 86

cal and political structures, economies, and the

1 Sabrina van der Lay and Markus Richter,. Megastructure Reloaded (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008) p. 30

2 Girard, Greg, and Ian Lambot, City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City. (Chiddingfold: Watermark, 2007), p. 13 3 Seth Harter, Hong Kongs Dirty Little Secret: Clearing the Walled City of Kowloon Journal of Urban History 27.92 (2000) p. 103

Emergence of Something Architectural

The political ambiguities were not torn down with the walls. Perhaps the one component that megastructure theorists were right about was the need for a new sociopolitical order if megastructure were to work.8 The Walled City remained as a haven for illicit activity. When opium smoking and prostitution was banned in Hong Kong, it moved into the Walled City away from British jurisdiction and now unmanaged by the Chinese.9 As more and more refugees and illegal aliens moved in, the population rose to about 2000 in 1947 and continued growing.10 By the late eighties, 33,000 people were packed into the small six and a half acre lot, housed in towers ranging some ten, twelve and sometimes fourteen storeys high.11 As a place of uncontrolled development and anarchy, the Walled City developed a reputation as a dangerous underworld of crime, prostitution, and addiction. While these assumptions were not entirely unfounded as these vices certainly proliferated with the lack of formal authority, a unique quality of community and interdependence formed a popular majority of decent people trying to make ends which was mostly overlooked until the years following up to its demolition. The impending end of the Walled
8 Lay and Ritcher, p. 29 9 Harter, p. 97 10 Sinn, p. 40 11 Girard and Lambot, p. 9

City meant a large influx of tourists trying to get a glimpse of the megastructure before its demise; an effect of this also lessened the general animosity held by those in the City against outsiders.12 Perhaps the most salient attribute of the Walled City which contributed to its megastructurality was its level of autonomy. Like any habitable building with people, it had to meet certain requirements to fulfill those peoples needs. The level of independence in the Walled City exemplifies the cell-like modular units often advocated by megastructuralists. Just as a living organism contains the necessary means to sustain itself, so did the Walled City. When faced with the need for water, it dug its own wells and tapped city mains.13 Electricity was not as necessary for most but was stolen off the grid if needed.14 Essential services also emerged in the chaotic fabric of the Walled City. Many medical professionals who received sufficient education in mainland China but could not pay for expensive licenses started up practices within the Walled City their offices often an oases of cleanliness amongst the dark and gritty megastructure.15 A point must be made that while many megastructuralists believed that radical governance was needed for radical architecture (such as a
12 13 14 15 Ibid Ibid, 36 Ibid, 46 Ibid, 24 Water was a chief concern for the inhabitants of the Walled City. Water usually came from wells or illegal taps into the municpial supply. Image: Girard and Lambort, p. 36

megastructure), the Walled City ultimately developed a very typical form of governance. The Kai Fong Association grew from ad hoc coalitions against external forces most notably the threat of demolition.16 The association grew into a de facto government. Like taxes, it took association fees but it also contributed back to the community, such as funding and repairing
16 Ibid, 28

public facilities. There were rarely ever problems with local Triad gangs as both usually kept to themselves a sort of criminal and official coexistance not often found in any situation.17

Top Left: The Kai Fong Association eventually established an office. It was only after the original leader was arrested when issues of sanitation, water supply, property ownership, and other civic problems began to be dealt with by the Kai Fong government. Image: Girard and Lambot, p. 176

Top Right: Lam Mei Kwong, a Shantou educated dentist originally rented a small space, but as he made more money, he could afford to build a ten storey building which he subsequently rented out. Unlike the complicated regulations and codes he would have to have gone through in Hong Kong, all Lam Mei Kwong needed here was money and willingness to contribute to the megastructure. Image: Girard and Lambot, p. 25

17 Ibid

Kowloon Megastructural
To most Hong Kongers and to the distress of the colonial government, the Walled City was a slum. Yet, it touched on all the points Ralph Wilcoxon outlined as necessary to the megastructure ; it was constructed of modular
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Would it even be fair to call the Walled City a slum with all the negative connotations of the word? Constant Nieuwenhuys proposed a megastructure of his own New Babylon which was a world without rules. Though he refused to call it utopian, New Babylon would usher a complete and absolute freedom for its inhabitants. This was possible through commodity-producing/procuring machines and a lack of official governance. This freedom from control meant that people no longer had to be burdened with corporeal concerns and would thus be able to do anything they pleased. Though the Walled
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Pullingers drug rehabilitation work.20 A resident had said, Outsiders always feel that the Walled City is mysterious and frightening but, for us, its the place where we grew up. When I was a child I played in is streets, and I have a lot of happy memories of the City. There was nothing scary about it.21 Perhaps it was wrong to assume that a lack of order meant chaos. While politically, the Walled City approached that of Nieuwenhuys New Babylon, it may be structurally and conceptually more akin to Yona Friedmans megastructure ideas. His advocacy of inhabitant participation in design was perhaps the germ of the Walled Citys very existence and sustenance.
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of the megastructure, a certain logic remained a sort of collective consciousness that kept the Walled City operating. It was like Friedmans plan, without the Friedman to theorize it into being. With the signing Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, the legal status of the Walled City became much clearer. As Hong Kong was to be returned to Chinese sovereignty, so ended the centuries-long history of the Kowloon Walled City, and the megastructural phenomenon that lasted for its final decades.25 The Walled City became what was perhaps the truest realization of a megastructure by combining a unique sociopolitical mistake, its relative attractiveness (making it a haven for illegal immigrants and refugees), and an unavoidable density due to its confined site. It was dirty, mostly poor, and filled with every vice of society ; but what place are these things ever absent? The Kowloon Walled City provided the finest model of a living megastructure but like all the other paper megastructures of the 60s, it was eventually laid to rest; the only testaments to its success and phenomena remaining as scant disjointed photographs and textbook mentions.

units capable of great expansion. Its structural framework was vaguely defined but it did allow for the expansion of smaller structures which plugged in and the general tower forms did outlast the units which were ever-changing. Despite controversial definitions of what a megastructure is, it would be difficult not to include the Walled City in the movements repertoire. The Walled City poses an interesting discussion in regards to megastructures. A lack of formal government allowed for unhindered development and the lack of space dictated that the city grow vertically. While not a planned framework like most megastructures, the Walled City became megastructural when the towers that made it up became so interconnected that it could no longer be interpreted as a collection but as a whole. Sections were added and removed as its residents saw fit, unhindered by official regulations and dictated only by the users wishes. Was this what megastructuralists wanted? The Walled City provided a living sample of an adaptable organic architecture which was free of rules, but with that anarchy came vice. Yet, was vice necessarily a bad thing?
18 Banham, p. 8

City differs in that it was grounded in a lowtech economy without fantastical machines, its people did enjoy a freedom their neighbours outside the walls did not. While New Babylon treated deviance and conflict merely as another type of human interaction (play) to be explored, such quixotic schemes would have been grossly impractical in our urban realities. Though crime was one of the Walled Citys primary criticisms, not all inhabitants were criminals. Many ran legitimate businesses and great examples of altruism and charity could be found throughout perhaps the most touching of these stories being Jackie

The bulk of the

Walled City had been built by private families, businesses, and prospective individuals. People built as they needed or pleased. Friedmans dreams of self-organization were also evident in the Walled City.
23

People had developed

governing bodies (the Kai Fong Association) and worked together to achieve basic necessities like water wells. Architecturally, within the maddening mass of 33,000 people, some level of organization was possible. Postal workers still managed to deliver their routes, often relying on visual cues developed over time. Even
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in the chaotic construction and reconstruction

20 Jackie Pullinger, Crack in the Wall: The Life and Death of Kowloon Walled City (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989) 21 Girard and Lambot, p. 120 22 Pelin Tan, Megastrucure Reloaded, p. 128 23 Yona Friedman, Megastructure Reloaded, p. 129 24 Girard and Lambot, p. 120

19 John Heintz, New Babylon A Persistant Provocation. 1972-73. Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations 195676. Eds. Martin van Schaik and Otakar Mel (New York: Prestel Verlag, 2005) pp. 212-219.

25 Ibid, 29

Little light manages to penetrate through to dot the roof tiles of this old but operating temple. Much like some of Friedmans concepts, the historic and existing is left intact as the new is layered on. Image: Lambot and Girard, p. 138

Works Cited
Banham, Reyner. Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past. London: Thames and Hudson, 1976 Cerizza, Luca, Martina Fuchs, Thilo Hilpert, Eilfried Huth, Markus Richter, Marie Theres. Stauffer, Hadas Steiner, Pelin Tan, Joyce Tsai, and Florian Urban. Megastructure Reloaded: Visionre Architektur Und Stadtplanungen Der 1960er-Jahre Reflektiert Von Zeitgenssischen Knstlern. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2008 Girard, Greg, and Ian Lambot. City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City. Chiddingfold: Watermark, 2007 Harter, Seth.Hong Kongs Dirty Little Secret: Clearing the Walled City of Kowloon Journal of Urban History 27.92 (2000) pp. 92113 Heintz, John. New Babylon A Persistant Provocation. 1972-73. Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations 1956-76. Eds. Martin van Schaik and Otakar Mel. New York: Prestel Verlag, 2005 Pullinger, Jackie. Crack in the Wall: The Life and Death of Kowloon Walled City. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989 Sinn, Elizabeth. Kowloon Walled City: Its Origin and Early History Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 27 (1987) pp. 3045 Tsang, Steve. A Modern History of Hong Kong. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004

Cover Images: Labot and Girard, p. 157

Left Image: Lambot and Girard, p. 53