PUBLIC MARKS with tags HongKong & architecture

When film director Mamoru Oshii was looking for a model of the city of the future for his seminal 1995 animated film adaptation of Ghost in the Shell (based on the manga by Masamune Shirow), he turned to the cityscape of Hong Kong for his inspiration.

During his more than 14 years in Hong Kong, German-born photographer Michael Wolf‘s perspective on his adopted city has boiled down to an essence of density – the hemmed-in, closely built environment which shapes everything from its peoples‘ lifestyles to their outlooks and even dreams. In Hong Kong Inside Outside, Wolf collects the works of his two previous collections – Architecture of Density and 100x100 – into a two-volume set focusing on the visual elements of one of the world’s most crowded cities.

The above is not a description of a dystopian (or utopian) fantasia, but of the Kowloon Walled City which was very real.