Workers and their families lived in cramped, temporary structures, termed jhuggis, made of either corrugated tin or brick and mortar.
But with controllers working in a cramped temporary structure only 15 feet off the ground, the airport was not expected to return to full operations for weeks, officials said.
Yet for all its engaging imagination, the material feels cramped by its structure.
THE SCENE Cluttered and cramped, though more structured than the clothes themselves.
This spring, the company expects to break ground on a 22,000-square-foot municipal building that will act as a centerpiece for Edgewater Square and replace a severely cramped and outmoded structure that the borough has used since 1908.
In big cities around the world, particularly in Africa, hundreds of thousands of people have no other choice but to live in ramshackle housing, cramped conditions or inadequate structures.
Yet, these often cramped, unplanned and unsafe structures are home to millions of the planet's poorest people.
The superimposition of those cramped quarters on a structure that's fun, amid a setting of grassy luxuriance and architectural splendor, is laconically unsettling.
As building has nowhere else to go but up in Hong Kong's cramped space, at least the structures have feng shui on their side, while Shanghai seems to have turned into the world's biggest building site.
Reports have for years described grueling labor at these "fulfillment centers," where footsore workers must meet ever-increasing daily goals, their time rigidly structured and room for advancement cramped.
