[Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas]

“Disappointment is the realisation that every desire that we want to believe is unique and original is already a repetition” We strive to search for our own identity as a person, as a student, as a city. We tried to be unique, like in architecture studio sessions, we tried to design something unique. Originality as an aim is a repetition but the outcome is not repeated. Generic cities are cities that create their own identity without their history. They wanted to be unique. Cities made iconic landmarks to define their city, for example, the CCTV building in Beijing has an

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[READING RESPONSE: ACKBAR ABBAS]

This time, Ackbar Abbas brings the concept of the invisible and exorbitant city to the discussion. Indeed, such a city is rather subjective and can only be interpreted by ourselves. Just as the essay suggests, that kind of city is interconnected with too many anomalies. The general picture of exorbitant cities can hardly be recognised. We just make too many interpretations in fragmented places. Homogenisation makes us interconnected and interrelated, forming a global metropolis. We try to make our cities recognisable, but ironically we are doing the opposite. We denied our histories. This is our history. But looking on the

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[READING RESPONSE: ACKBAR ABBAS]

In this article, the author put an effort to examine how is a generic and exorbitant city interconnected and interrelated, and the differences between them. It depends mainly on visibility, in a generic city it is hard to identify the characteristics and uniqueness of it due to globalization – in which architectural design is similar in design, culture and history aspect are disappearing, on the other hand, the text mentioned that “It is invisible because it is exorbitant”. In my opinion exorbitant city does not only implies elements and characteristics of a city is shown, but it also related to

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[READING RESPONSE: ACKBAR ABBAS]

In this essay, Ackbar Abbas discussed the exorbitant city and generic city. The exorbitant city is defined as the invisible city as mentioned in Calvino’s novel. The exorbitant city should be based on its own special history which is unique and kind of unrealistic. As mentioned in the essay,” No face is surrealistic in the same degree as the true face of the city”, every exorbitant city should be different from each other in the aspect of the cultural and structural aspects. Because of the history of the city, the exorbitant city should be complex, unstable, labyrinthine and phantasmagoric. As

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[Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas]

The essay ‘Cinema, The City, And The Cinematic’ want to tell readers the concepts of generic city and exorbitant city. In fact, I feel confused on these two words. What I understand and agree with the writer is that films can give people from other city to know the view of an urban space. For example, the film does not mention where the city is. But the audiences can guess by looking the roads, the style of architecture or some famous buildings. Maybe a generic city is look like the picture I saw on tutorial. Every building looks almost the

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[Reading Response]: Ackbar Abbas

In this paragraph, the author illustrates the connection between cinema and the city. The author first raised the idea of the exorbitant city by mentioned various opinions towards the concept, such as complex, invisible, phantasmagoric, and labyrinthine. Based on the exorbitant town, the author then compared it with the generic city suggested by Koolhaas. The generic city is about the modern city without much identity or history, and the complexity makes the city generic. The other two examples, namely Crouching Tiger and the mood for love, explain the exorbitant and generic city in detail. LI, ZIYUAN 3035701641

[Reading Response]: Ackbar Abbas

In the tutorial, the term “generic city” was discussed. The definition is “a city which gives a new identity to themselves by escaping from their past histories”. We also discussed Hong Kong as a generic city, where it tries to detach from colonialism by reinventing an individual urban image of itself, building a lot of skyscrapers by starchitects. However, some mentioned while every city is trying to be unique, the actuality is that they are doing the same imitation of the urban image of each other. Therefore, I would call these cities “globalized generic cities”. The exorbitant city is a

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[READING RESPONSE: ACKBAR ABBAS]

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

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[Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas]

Ackbar Abbas examines Hong Kong through the lens of the exorbitant city and generic city. The idea that movies like the Crouching Tigers perfectly exemplifies the inclusion of a “generic city”, where the idea of an idealistic techno-fueled city is optimized through the use of CGI and the portrayal of “cyber Kung Fu”. On the other hand, Hong Kong is described as an exorbitant city where movies like “In the mood for love” shows clips of everyday life and irrational impulses of human nature, conveying the idea that Hong Kong is more than just a few images of one dimension

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[Reading Response:Abbas]

“Global city” is an attractive issue to discuss. Inspired by Abbas, I have some thoughts on this topic. A global city must have the ability to collect resources like well-educated labor, money, commerce and technologies from all over the world, so it must be advanced in most fields. At the same time, it must be open, which means that in a global city, people from different backgrounds and having diverse beliefs are living together and equally attribute to world development. All these characters reflect on the city itself—from an urban perspective: a global city possesses the most advanced architectures, which

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