The
stilt house residents were temporarily occupying the
government land. According to the July 25 government
press, the occupants have been granted a licence by
the Building department. After the serious blaze, a
part of stilt houses were burnt down. Some of stilt
house occupants wanted to rebuild their house in-situ,
instead of moving into the nearby public housing. Initially
the government did not allow the occupants to rebuild.
Later due to a strong protest from Tai O resident association,
the government backed down and allowed the fire victims
to rebuilt, but without any financial support. In this
case, the Building Department was responsible for reissuing
a year-long licence to stilt house occupants. Nevetheless,
when the government successfully formulate a long-term
development policy of Tai O, she could take back the
land by giving three months notice to residents. Thus
stilt house occupants do not have a ownership right
of their houses and hereby the houses are only temporary.
Stilt
houses are concentrating along the river bank. Their
original form is a fishing boat. As fishermen are living
on the boat, the boat parking along the bank gradually
becomes a shelter. Now we can see that stilt houses
are supported by bamboo and concrete pillars which have
plunged into the sea bed. You can imagine that the boat,
the original form of the oldest stilt houses, were lifted
up by several columns of bamboo. What amazing it is!
As
the old stilt houses are small in size, fishermen had
to build a bigger one beside the old one. They use tin
plates, woods and concrete pilloars to construct a simple
form of housing. The skin of stilt houses are coated
with silver paint. Despite being simple in structure
and form, the stilt houses look very clean and orderly
because fishermen contantly maintains their housing.
I suspect now that a good maintenance can transform
a "temporary housing" into a historially unique
housing area." If this is the case, urban decay
in city is not an ordinary phenomenon or a univeral
problem.
Silt
houses can be very beautiful only if residents put differnt
colors of plants along a balcony. In the above picture,
we can see that some plants are put on the front area
of the house and makes the house and even the whole
area lively!
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