{"id":1968,"date":"2025-09-05T07:32:49","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T14:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=1968"},"modified":"2025-09-05T07:32:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T14:32:49","slug":"watch-a-timelapse-of-the-notorious-kowloon-walled-city-built-to-scale-in-minecraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=1968","title":{"rendered":"Watch a Timelapse of the Notorious Kowloon Walled City Built to Scale in Minecraft"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Watch<\/p>\n

Kowloon Walled City<\/a>, considered the densest settlement on the planet, was demolished in the mid-1990s. At its height in the \u201980s, it was home to around 33,000 people\u2014a government survey provided some idea of the local population\u2014but estimates are often closer to 50,000. And that\u2019s all within an overall footprint of 2.6 hectares, or just shy of about 6.5 acres. It\u2019s an area smaller than five American football fields or about 2.5 New York City blocks.<\/p>\n

A bit of an infrastructural and legal accident, Kowloon Walled City started as a Song Dynasty military outpost, then became a Qing dynasty fort in 1810. It sat within the boundaries of Kowloon City, Hong Kong, which was eventually controlled by the British after 1842\u2019s Treaty of Nanking. But the British never really did much with the location, and for decades, only a few hundred people lived there. In 1940, only a yamen\u2014a central government office\u2014a school, and a single house stood in what would eventually transform into a city of monumental and overbearing proportions.<\/p>\n

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Kowloon Walled City continues to fascinate us today, as nothing on its scale had existed before and will likely never again. For an architect who goes by Sluda Builds<\/a> on YouTube, the astounding, densely packed metropolis spurred an elaborate Minecraft project. From the ground up, including a surprising landscape grade that often doesn\u2019t read clearly in photographs, he meticulously reconstructs the city\u2019s skyscrapers, mezzanines, interior passageways, rooftops, and alleys.<\/p>\n

Many of the Walled City\u2019s buildings were practically conjoined, with ad hoc doorways and halls interconnected so thoroughly that, supposedly, one could travel from one side of the city to the other without ever stepping outside. And what space did exist outside was limited to narrow passages just large enough for people to get by on foot.<\/p>\n

While today\u2019s architects and engineers probably bristle at the myriad contemporary code violations here, the city emerged because it fell into a bit of a legal gray area due to a kind of governance limbo. Restrictions came in the form of limited space.<\/p>\n

The British didn\u2019t have much involvement with the walled city, and then the Nationalist Chinese Government began declaring jurisdiction in the mid-20th century. Starting in 1945, refugees of the Chinese Civil War began flooding in, with at least 2,000 settling there by 1947. By 1950, that number had grown exponentially, as a fire in 1950 destroyed the homes of more than 17,000 residents. But the metropolis kept growing from there.<\/p>\n

\"a
Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sluda\u2019s project highlights the structural complexity of Kowloon Walled City through the bright\u2014and very tidy\u2014medium of Minecraft. He was drawn to the idea because not only is the settlement notorious and historically fascinating, it also possesses a strange aesthetic allure that\u2019s difficult to pin down. He wanted to explore why it has this effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are serious high-rise buildings, some of them reaching 14 stories tall, yet constructed from the ground up in a vernacular style that\u2019s more common in human-scale neighborhoods like the ones in Rio<\/a>, for example,\u201d Sluda says. \u201cThe sheer amount of character and personality in just one building is enough to be unique and interesting, but side-by-side visually with 50 others, all unique as well\u2014to me, this is a major part of why this city has become so iconic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Check out more Minecraft projects on Sluda Builds\u2019 YouTube channel<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>. You might also enjoy photographs of the city captured by Romain Jacquet-Lagr\u00e8ze<\/a> or Hitomi Terasawa\u2019s now out-of-print illustrated guide, complete with elaborate cross-sections<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/figure>\n
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The real Kowloon Walled City, photographed from the air<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member<\/a> today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Watch a Timelapse of the Notorious Kowloon Walled City Built to Scale in Minecraft<\/a> appeared first on Colossal<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kowloon Walled City, considered the densest settlement on the planet, was demolished in the mid-1990s. At its height in the \u201980s, it was home to around 33,000 people\u2014a government survey…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}