FACT CHECK: Does This Photo Show The Monster Building In Hong Kong With Hundreds Of Floors?

An image shared on Facebook over 330 times purportedly shows the Monster Building in Hong Kong with hundreds of floors.

Verdict: False

A photographer digitally edited the picture to add extra floors.

Fact Check:

The Facebook post, which has garnered over 4,600 reactions to date, shows a building with what appears to be hundreds of floors stretching up towards the sky. “‘Monster Building’ in Hong Kong,” claims the post’s caption. “Location: Kings road, Quarray Bay, Eastern Hongkong Island.”

The “Monster Building” is a building made up of five interconnected towers in Quarry Bay, Hong Kong, according to Atlas Obscura. They were originally built during the 1960s to offer cheaper housing options for low-income residents of the area, which explains their compact, densely-packed appearance, the article reports. (RELATED: Viral Image Claims To Show A Chinese Coronavirus Hospital In Wuhan)

A reverse image search revealed, however, the photo of the building posted on Facebook has been digitally altered. The image can be found on the photography website Yellow Korner, where a photographer named Tristan Zhou is listed as the creator. The piece’s title on the website is “The monster building multiplied,” and the “About The Artwork” section explains it includes “post-production effects” to magnify the building’s size.

Zhou also shared the piece on his Instagram page in December 2019, explaining further the techniques he used to edit the image. “This is a project I started in early 2019, ‘The Monster Building’ series,” the post’s caption reads, in part. “Mostly shot on a wide angle lens and then enhanced in post to create a sense of infinity. I’ve always been a huge fan of the idea ‘distopian’, so I’ve made my own version of it.”

The photographer shared the original, unedited image on his Instagram back on Nov. 22, 2018, with the building appearing to only have about 20 floors. The building can also be seen from this angle on Google Maps, where it still appears compact but doesn’t stretch endlessly toward the sky.

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