(via) Vancouver, like Hong Kong, is geographically challenged, meaning it can only grow up. This, of course, has been the recent trend in our city with the construction of many soaring residential towers and tower complexes, but it’s been nowhere near the scale of the public housing development seen in Hong Kong, where filmmaker Toby Harriman captured these aerial images for his mesmerising short film, The Block Tower. In it, the camera floats through, around and over the Chinese city’s forest of architectural ubiquity, now home to literally millions of people.

“Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with an overall density of an estimated 6,300 people per square kilometer. So to start off a 3.5 week trip a before heading to Southeast Asia, we stopped in Hong Kong for 4 days to see the area and visit Kowloon. This was our bigger stop, before heading into the quiet country. For years I have seen pictures of these public housing/apartment tower blocks being built and knew that was something I wanted to see and document for myself. Rather than just creating stills from these, I went with the goal of taking abstract videos and displaying them more like art, showing off their true scale. This was just a quick trip and a little bit of a scout. I can’t wait to go back and keep documenting these.”

Take a look…