After three decades of an epic boom, the contemporary Chinese architectural landscape has seen a unique development: Stadiums without an audience; abandoned buildings with no residents; commercial complexes that have not seen customers in 50 years. These dormant buildings — in limbo between nothingness and perfection — are left unfinished, and reduced to ruins before they were ever used.

The project focuses on a property of urban crisis termed “unreal estate”: Neglected territory that equals a liability or an unreal value, which prevents the circulation of property in the market economy. By exploring the potential value of unreal estate in post-socialist China, and the possibility of using the wisdom of the masses to adapt it to their daily needs, the proposal aims to find possible responses to resolve real-life dilemmas for the marginalised in metropolises, the anxious generation and the expanding population of ordinary Chinese citizens. The Hyper Rich Unreal Estate Agency was established with a hypothetical mission to transform unreal estate and provide sufficient cheap houses for people who struggle to make ends meet.