Kowloon Walled City

With as many as 50000 residents on a footprint of just 126 x 213 meters, Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City once was the most densely populated settlement in the world.

While this model depicts only four of its levels, the actual building complex reached a height of up to 14 stories as new structures were frequently built on top of older ones. Streets were overbuilt, turning into corridors full of water pipes and exposed electrical wiring. The city housed numerous low-cost production facilities such as small workshops and food factories. Living space was scarce inside the labyrinth-like city, but residents could enjoy fresh air and sunlight on the rooftops.

The complex of intertwined buildings was finally demolished in the early nineties, but its unique construction style and dense urban aesthetic have served as an inspiration for a number of fictional settings, possibly even for Lego's Ninjago City set with its stacked architecture.

This model features:

- advertising signs as well as a grocery store at the outer face of the city

- a noodle factory

- a metal workshop

- one of the dark alleyways at ground level

- a fish gutter's shop

- a stairwell

- two very cramped apartments

- caged balconies

- a weaving and sewing shop

- a dentist's office

- a light well obstructed by lattices and clothes

- a cookshop

- a dough sheet bakery

- rooftops packed with TV antennas

Details include a carrying pole, neon tubes, a noodle machine, a fan, food items, beds, a hearth, clothes lines, a loom, and a sewing machine.

This 2385-piece model of the fascinating Walled City is compatible with modular buildings and measures 12.8 cm wide, 25.6 cm deep and more than 32 cm high.