Stefan Al investigates Hong Kong’s vertical urbanism with “expresscalators” crisscrossing mesmerizing atriums, raising questions about architecture, city planning, culture and urban life.

Hong Kong is the twenty-first-century century paradigmatic capital of consumerism. Of all cities, it has the densest and tallest concentration of malls, sandwiched between subways and skyscrapers. Its malls are also the most visited and have become cities in and of cities in and of themselves, accommodating tens of thousands of people who live, work, and play within a single structure.

“At the nexus of density, humidity, topography, and prosperity, Hong Kong has spawned more malls per square mile than any place on earth. This fantastic book decodes and graphically depicts an environment both apart and ubiquitous, a convulsive form of public space in a liquid territory where intensely contested politics, commerce, and sociability weirdly merge in a city like no other.” — Michael Sorkin

Read more: Mall City, StefanAl

Book Talk: Stefan will speak about Mall City at The Skyscraper Museum on January 31st at 6:30 pm