Hurrah for books, especially obscure books that serve no purpose other than being intriguing. I’ve been practicing my (not so) l33t photography skillz on my esoteric book collection. Here’s part 1: “Highrise Buildings of Shanghai in 80’s”.

I picked this up in a charity shop in Newbury for about £3 along with a nice selection of arty books. I have no idea of the purpose of this book, assuming it had a purpose in the first place. It’s a lovely chunky hardback containing shedloads of text, some colour photos of Highrise buildings and a mass of intriguing floorplans for aforementioned buildings. None of the text is in latin script apart from the title on the cover and a couple of chapter headings, I’m assuming it’s all in a Chinese dialect. I don’t want to know what any of it means, that would ruin the magic, it’s probably an exceptionally dull text book, but it looks nice. It’s been rubber stamped on the inside cover (again in Chinese), which may be  a library stamp, or a school stamp or may not be. Enjoy the intrigue.

Disclaimer. I may be violating someone’s copyright here. If so, contact me and I shall remove this entry and photos.

Full set on flickr.