With the overwhelmed complexity of power, of history or culture, the cities abstract themselves in order to maintain their identity. Yet, will they still be real? The concepts of generic cities and exorbitant cities are discussed in the article. For here, they are two relatively opposite concepts while at the same time can be overlapped and mixed. In the tutorial, we have discussed whether Hong Kong’s architecture is generic or exorbitant. In fact, in the case of a global city like Hong Kong, they coincidentally happen. Architecture in Hong Kong can be generic because it cannot indicate its location when it’s taken out from the context while at the same time it can contain so many narratives (desires & disappointments) and sounds that space itself becomes speechless, become “invisible”. While in the scale of a city, Hong Kong has held so many styles of the building, so many different histories, and so many powers, that no exact word can describe actual Hong Kong. It has become an exuberant city, and maybe that is the reason why we need cinema to reveal, to depict part of the unseen stories that happened in the city (but will not and never be the whole picture).
Based on the case of Hong Kong, there are possibilities that at some point in the future, the feature of exorbitant be generic worldwide, that abnormal becomes the norm of the built environment.
Chen Yushan
UID: 3035660354
A deeply thoughtful and poetic response to this week’s reading on Abbas. You demonstrated an ability to critically consider the heterogeneous nature of Hong Kong and reflect it upon Abbas’ commentary.