In June 2017, the winners of the first-ever Hong Kong Pixel Homes Competition were revealed. When the contest was first announced back in February, its entrants were asked to address the need for a more efficient form of multifamily housing in densely-populated cities. In the end, the $3000 first prize went to ”Towers Within A Tower,” an innovative architectural concept by the Chicago-based Kwong Von Glinow Design Office.

The competition was organized by Bee Breeders in an effort to solve the “perennial typological challenge of multi-unit housing.” Overcrowding is a real problem in a lot of major cities and directly contributes to housing shortages, inflationary markets, and increased economic disparity. To tackle this problem, contestants had to come up with a way to comfortably fit more people into a limited 100-square-meter space.
Winners Lap Chi Kwong, Alison Von Glinow, and Kevin Lamyuktseung approached the issue by designing a modular housing system in which each unit’s rooms would be placed on top of, rather than next to, each other. The resulting apartments resemble mini-towers and come together to form a single tower block. In a recent interview with CNN, Kwong explained: “In Hong Kong, everyone’s apartment is horizontal — you don’t really experience a vertical spatial quality within (people’s) houses. So we thought about making a tower out of each apartment unit, and then stacking them.”

To accom...