Slab Estate

From publisher blurb: In this issue of Neighborhood Highlights, we are going to look at Slab Estate. The result of a zoning error that resulted in around 400 buildings being built in close proximity, if not direct contact, with one and another. The title itself “Slab Estate” is a colloquialism coined by the locals, and it is a name quite true of the life cycle of the building. Because each structure was an independent construction, the original buildings seemed to reach for each other. The cast-iron balconies of one building lurch against the brick annexes and concrete walls of another while exterior doors enter another building entirely. Wiring and cables necessary for one structure stretch and weave across the walls of another, or climb horizontally like innumerable rolls of dark web, binding the buildings together. After decades of dwelling in what is essentially a looping cube of urban existence, the locals have pushed the evolution of all this strange haphazardness to the next level. Walls between buildings have been broken down, makeshift bridges built to bridge gaps, a shanty town has been built amid the forest of antenna and satellites on the rooftop, and other improvisations.