Name: KWAI SHING WEST ESTATE
Author: Pascal Greco

Published on May 02, 2024

Kwai Shing West Estate is a residential complex in Hong Kong that is home to 18,000 people. It attracted the attention of filmmaker and photographer Pascal Greco because of its architecture and its atypical hillside construction. This book presents the fruits of a ten-year harvest and captures this strange fascination through both photography and film, accessible via a QR code.

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The book

It is divided into three sequences. The first, entitled Base and Confinement, shows how these buildings are attached to the hill and how the topographical elements must have been tamed by man. The second part reveals the architecture of this place under the scattered lights of the night. While the last sequence gains height: it is the eye of the drone that gives us a sense of this place of life.

Building Books https://buildingbooks.fr/product/kwai-shing-west-estate

The film

KWAI SHING WEST ESTATE - Image 15 of 15 — © Greco

"Hong Kong. A film, a portrait, a tribute to the atypical architecture of public housing - in particular, Kwai Shing West Estate - and its streets, but also to the loneliness experienced in these complexes where around half the population lives. Between March 2019 and January 2020, demonstrations filled these streets and Pascal Greco attended. Led by black protesters, mainly young people, they were defending their rights to democracy in Hong Kong. Out of a total population of 7.4 million, around two million demonstrators took to the streets one Sunday in June. The sound captured in the streets and on the Kwai Shing West Estate has been modified and processed, by composer Lea Bertucci, to become a raw sound material, reflecting the image of these places where concrete is omnipresent. This is the theatre of a living environment and it was the theatre of protest, which is now punishable by life imprisonment in Hong Kong since a law came into force on July 1, 2020."

Here is the teaser of the film: https://vimeo.com/895591810

The photographs in this book are organized into three sequences.
Day Sequence | Base and Confinement
Night Sequence | The Appearance of the Subject
Sky Sequence | Life Revealed

After the 3 sequences of the book, you will find 2 texts from Dr Rosman C. C. Wai and Dr Ernest Chui concerning a brief history of public housing in Hong Kong.

A film was made at the same location where this book was photographed and the QR code on the final page allows readers special access to view it. The same place, another project, the same buildings, other impressions, the same eye, another camera: Pascal Greco is keen to distinguish the two objects, which complement rather than juxtapose each other.