2023

Haotian Zhang, with Qian Guo and Tianying Li

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Second place, Hong Kong Architecture Micro Film Competition 2022;

Best Experimental Short, Atlantic Bridge Film Festival;

Official selection in Serbest International Film Festival, Venice Architecture Film Festival, Belgrade International Film Festival, Winter Leopard International Film Festival, and D-ARCH Film Festival. 

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The short film “Fractal Cities” documents a diverse collection of habitation, ranging from various forms of housing estates to temporary shelters in underground tunnels. These typical cases selected from the wide spectrum of living conditions in Hong Kong are dissected, folded, and morphed into an imaginary landscape. In this fractal city, concepts such as big and small, in and out, are no longer applicable. It challenges the 3-dimensional constraint and suggests a future digital scape with fluid spatial structure.
The 3D scanned fragments of the city are represented as point clouds, faithfully archiving bygone experiences while remaining at a distance from reality aesthetically. In such tension with the physical world, the film proposes an alternative imagination of virtual space that is not detached from but entangled with reality.

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Supported by Design Trust and the 9th Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture (Shenzhen).

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Designboom, "Haotian Zhang's short film distorts Hong Kong's cityscape as an animated evolving fractal."

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