Kowloon Walled City, a series of 350 buildings within a 210 x 120 metre space, once housed 40,000 people. It was the most densely populated place on Earth. Every corner of the Hong Kong residence was milked to depletion, the connecting corridors reduced to scurry spaces. No natural light could filter through the outer perimeter, so it became known as the City of Darkness.
Nearly three decades after it was torn down, one pioneering landlord — armed with a ‘less is more’ attitude and a prayer — is on a mission to bring a slice of Kowloon Walled City to the UK. And it’s about damn time.
Leicester’s East Park Chippy is your run o’ the mill chip shop. The regulars can’t get enough of its ‘hefty portion sizes’ and Halal options, while its critics aren’t into the ‘30% fish and 70% breading’ ratio and the ‘hard as rock’ texture.
In 2019, a shop refit saw the space reinvigorated with a heart-pumping glaze of cobalt blue. Despite this, the building owner decided it was time he made an honest living. So he became a landlord.
Taking a brief sojourn from the world of deep fryers and haddock, the landlord — let’s call him Chip — donned the hat of architect.
Chip developed a planning proposal for the space behind the chip shop and submitted it to the local council. It was a plan so ambitious, so far-fetched, it simply had to work.
Except that it didn’t.
Chip’s agenda-setting proposal was rejected for reasons that you will soon discover relates almost entirely to basic human rights.
Enlisting the help of a local architecture firm, Chip drew up a proposal to convert the area behind the chip shop into flats that varied from 7.7m² to 9m².
His vision of domesticity included loft beds with a dining space beneath them, a small kitchenette sans sinks, cooking appliances, and surfaces for food preparation, plus two storerooms to be split between the three flats. Yep, it’s minimalism and it’s back in a huge (tiny) way.
In the proposed development, the en-suite shower and toilet were thoughtfully sectioned from the rest of the room by a single curtain.
No doubt Chip added the curtains with this in mind: artistic types could swap out them out for red velvet so each bathing session could be carried out with flair, and residents could give themselves the old razzle dazzle in the 10cm x 10cm mirror beneath the elevated bed.
Perhaps the most touching homage to Hong Kong’s lightless mound is the sheer lack of light. When Leicester Council calculated the amount of natural light that would enter the three proposed flats, it was found that it “would not meet daylight requirements.”
After a bit of back and forth, Chip’s proposed development was rejected on the grounds that the space was too small to be considered “dwellinghouses.”
The planning inspector noted in the appeal decision document that a “distinctive characteristic” of a dwellinghouse is the provision of the amenities and space a person might need for “day to day private domestic existence”. This includes space for storage nd furniture, as well as the “space to move around” (spoilt, much).
If you’re like me, and you want to see more money, more development rights, and more unmitigated power in the hands of our nation’s landlords, you’re going to want to read this next bit.
Like the Batman film that almost starred Charlie Sheen, or the search engine that could have bore the proud name of ‘BackRub’, the Chippy development proposal was struck down by people who wielded power, but lacked whimsy or blonde ambition. But that’s fine... because we’ll always have Paris! And by that I mean, as of September 2023, there is no legislation dictating that we can’t ruminate on everything that could have been.
The proposal may not have met the requirements of a “dwellinghouse” or provided “room to move”, but what it boils down to is attitude.
In the right hands, these 8m² units could be so much more. Starting with:
If you suspect your dog is somewhat of a jock, bring ‘em on over. The dwellinghouse’s hallway doubles as a tumble tunnel for any dog that’s a little too hench for puppy school, but still has energy to burn. Or maybe even a dog that is part of a drug liberalisation working committee and is therefore morally opposed to sniffer dog training, but still yearns for some skills-based training.
The main appeal of the hallway adjacent to Flat the Third is its minimalism. There really is very little space to fuck around with. Half of the hallway can be interrupted at any moment by a door swinging all the way open — and it’s well within its legal rights to do so.
Fortunately, your dog shouldn’t mind. Let ‘em tumble, let ‘em roll: this hallway’s gonna catch em all! And I mean that. Should you lose your dog in the chippy hallway, it’s as good as dead. We reserve the right to absorb the dog and all its contents.
If the plight of Camp Rock’s Mincy (is that her name?) has taught us anything, it’s that to be middle class is to be reprehensible.
Having a mother who runs a successful catering business (that is somehow “slow in the summer”) is an unforgivable crime for which the only acceptable penalty is death by crucifixion while the Korean Jonas brother, who appears to have lost a few fans this week, breakdances at the foot of a cross fashioned from keyboards.
If all of this sounds a bit much and you’d rather avoid all the crummy politics of Camp Rock, and any of the subsidiaries that continue to pop up around the continental United States — Club Jamm, Bass Tribe, Jazz Barracks, etc — despite strict government sanctions, you’d be forgiven.
Well, certainly not by your kids Rockstar Robbie or Cindy the Soprano, who are begging you for a turn at Camp Rock… but you’ll be forgiven by me. Only, there’s one condition: you must book them a session at Leicester’s hottest recording booth for teens.
Sure, the Chippy ain't much from the outside, but neither was Bezos, baby! And look what he’s gone and done. I urge you to see beyond the Leicester Chippy’s humble exterior and you’ll find a place where your child’s creative aspirations can be fully realised.
In Flat the Third, the curtain-sectioned ensuite has been transformed into a partially-equipped recording studio where your talented tot can lay down some truly fat beats.
Whether their musical influences are JC Chasez or Damien Leith, you’ll be pleased to know that they are operating within a sanctum of pure artistry.
You can learn a lot about a musical event from its sanitation set-up. For example, I imagine Shrek raves provide private swamps where merrymakers can relieve themselves in peace and solitude, while Fyre Fest — seriously, I need a commissioning editor send me to report on the latest re-spawn, I’m not playing around here — provide glass orbs where you can pay 80 U.S. dollars (£6,500) for the privilege of voiding one’s bowelscape in front of a crowd of YouTube’s worst content creators.
I have been to very few music festivals, but I figure I could easily recreate the festival experience in the chippy dwellinghouse.
Picture this, you pass the hallowed doors of Leicester’s East Park Chippy. You’re met with the familiar scents of vegetable oil, piping hot chips, and British curry sauce.
You seem to float through the waft and into Flat the First where you notice that instead of there being an elevated bed with a dining table in the guts of it, there’s a door, in a familiar shade of port-a-loo cyan, beckoning you forth.
You step inside to find empty baggies and wrappers of used prophylactics scattered across the floor. You are immediately thrust into the sauciest moments of your youth. An era of debauchery. An era of fun for the sake of fun. An era where it was all about the music.
You’re all the way back at Glastonbury ‘97. Feels good, huh?
The Prodigy is tearing it up on the main stage with Firestarter. Labour is in power. Heroin is a cool and fun drug.
You haven’t felt this fine in a long, long time — and it’s all thanks to the fertile dreamspace that is the 8m² dwellinghouse.
(Cultural safe zone: depending on which side of the pond you lay your larvae, you might like to think of this as a replica Coachella port-a-loo, or perhaps a Burning Man loo, if you can find it inside the “really slick” slop. The experiences are transferable.)
The storage unit out the back of the dwellinghouses provides a discreet space for play. Something to do with a leather playroom, something PVC, vegan-friendly material, something something safe word.
Okay thanks for reading folks!
I love you,
Serena Coady
Libido Sewer Weekly Gazette
Some other cultural talking points for the week:
I am watching Mad Men for the first time. I have been watching it on buses, planes, and ferries — which injects a new kind of energy to it, but I can't say for sure what that energy is. Even though Season 1 was released in 2007, it has aged quite well. This part nearly made me piss. I have revealed my predictions for the rest of the series here. No spoilers, please
One of my best friends is currently staying with me in London (yay!) before she heads back to Australia. She has brought me wine (from France!) and a kind of cherry-based aperitif. I reckon I’ll drink the latter while I write next week's newsletter
Earlier this week, a very fit man told me my perfume smelled “divine”. I didn't know how to tell him it was sweat-resistant midge and tick repellent from Mountain Warehouse in rural Scotland
I have arrived back in London to find it is stinking hot. Just putrid, really. So I've put on my most handsome linen dress and am jiving around to this playlist
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