Category: 2020 Spring

Cat Links 2021 Blog, Lecture 9 Global Space, Time & Architecture, Lecture 9 Global Spaces, Time & Architecture

Reading response: Ackbar Abbas

Posted on u3578202

Abbas suggested invisible cities and generic cities in the reading and I found generic cities relatable.Generic city is a city that keeps changing rapidly and there is no fixation of identity. These cities are usually located in Asia and Hong Kong ,the hometown of mine is one of those generic cities . Hong Kong is colonised by England for almost a decade, it is a hybrid of west and east culture and the architecture in Hong Kong reflects that .As time goes on, with the change in sovereignty , Hong Kong keeps transforming as its history is erased and rewrite

Continue readingReading response: Ackbar Abbas

Cat Links 2021 Blog, Lecture 9 Global Spaces, Time & Architecture

[READING RESPONSE] ABBAS, M.A.

Posted on sumkie

After reading this passage, it’s devastating to see how the characteristics of a generic city so accurately describe Hong Kong. The city is so desperate to define its identity after being defined by others for so long. The world might think that we won’t be able to sustain our economic power after our days as an entrepôt were over, that’s why we need to prove them wrong and continue to be Asia’s international city. Much of this urge to grow and develop economically makes our lives so vividly dull. The clone-like high rises and our everyday life that’s literally the

Continue reading[READING RESPONSE] ABBAS, M.A.

Cat Links Lecture 8 Sci-fi Technoscapes

[Reading Response: Carl Abbott]

Posted on Elinor

There are quite a few parallels we can draw between sci-fi films and reality. The hunter-gatherer city has a few versions. The first version is quite benign, it only looks for better places to reside, when its original location is polluted or politically unsuitable. Other versions are less friendly, some throw citizens out and others may be led by greed. The harmful version reminds me of some countries which throw out their minorities today. Their rights are disrespected and their wellbeing or even right to life threatened. This happens in India to Muslims, in Myanmar to Rohingya, etc. Although the

Continue reading[Reading Response: Carl Abbott]

Cat Links Lecture 8 Sci-fi Technoscapes

Reading response: Carl Abbott

Posted on gahin923

In Abbott’s text, a review concerning the cities in sci-fi films and a probable future of humanity is raised. Examples of imaginary cities from various sci-fi films are used to discuss how our future world will become. And most of these examples depict a dark and pessimistic future of humanity.  This idea has some kind of resonance for the genre of ‘Cyberpunk’. In movies or literature that falls into the genre of cyberpunk, people are living with ‘high tech, low life’ as the advanced technology is used by tyrannical authorities as a tool to control them. The ‘low life’ of

Continue readingReading response: Carl Abbott

Cat Links Lecture 8 Sci-fi Technoscapes

[READING RESONSE] CARL ABBOTT AND M. CHRISTINE BOYER

Posted on angelwly

Science-fiction has always played a strong resonance with the architecture in reality. It is unsurprising to see how familiar the architecture in film looks as creativity still has to be based on reality. For instance, the repetitive buildings in Inception are taken reference from cities in the modern world Meanwhile, the future is also projected through film. M. Christine Boyer depicted Cyber City in 1992.  In the 21st century, cyber cities have swept across the globe, and become more prevalent during the pandemic. Films have given different possibilities of our future in which our behaviours are pivotal to. In the

Continue reading[READING RESONSE] CARL ABBOTT AND M. CHRISTINE BOYER

Cat Links 2021 Blog, Lecture 8 Sci-Fi Technoscapes, Lecture 8 Sci-fi Technoscapes, Workshop 2 Costumes, Characters & Urban Situations

[READING RESPONSE] M. Christine Boyer

Posted on u3582509

Architecture and sci-fi films have similar aims in some sense. They are both artifacts that generate interactions via a physical existence that comes through woolgathering and multiple experiments. However, the difference is that sci-fi films shape the way we investigate the future. They can act as an inspiration to create an utopia from cybercities, which is “the mixture of cyberspace and urban dystopia”. The futuristic and fantasy world do not help us escape from the reality, but to raise reflections on the current problems and help us better understand the reality. In this pandemic time, each of us is building

Continue reading[READING RESPONSE] M. Christine Boyer

Cat Links Lecture 8 Sci-fi Technoscapes, Uncategorized

Reading Response – Carl Abbott

Posted on Edward

In the tutorial, one of the readings we discussed was Imagining Urban Futures by Carl Abbott. It was about a variety of fantastical, impossible moving cities, mostly shown in science fiction movies. For example, Ron Herron’s Walking City was a self-contained city that looked like a robotic insect-like creature, and could move around on its legs like some giant monster seen in fiction. It was designed in such a way so that its citizens wouldn’t need to leave, almost like it was a “giant caravan”. They could leave if the situation of wherever the city was at turned bad, a concept

Continue readingReading Response – Carl Abbott

Cat Links Lecture 8 Sci-fi Technoscapes

[Reading Response: M. Christine Boyer]

Posted on Leung Kui Ming

Imagination has no boundaries but does have some limitations, which reflect the norms and values of a given society. From forms to information, as Michael Heim mentioned, is what Boyer tried to discuss. Despite its sci-fi nature, such change is not only due to technological advancement. It is interesting to see, for example, how the game theory represents an efficient-oriented mindset and assimilate into the imagination of cybercities. I appreciate the anime ‘Ghost in the shell’, which defines cybercity as ‘Still not able to integrate the individual into unity.’ Somehow it is exactly the world nowadays, we are interconnected by

Continue reading[Reading Response: M. Christine Boyer]

Cat Links 2021 Blog, Lecture 8 Sci-fi Technoscapes

[Reading Response: M. Christine Boyer]

Posted on Lai Kwong Ning, Max

In the same urban setting with concrete walls, without those imaginary high-tech structures floating in the air as described in science fictions, like it or not, we are living in the Cybercity, especially the case under the popular use of Big Data and Blockchain. The cyberspace and urban dystopia is not a mixture, as their spatial relationship is like mother-and-son.  Rather than “Form become InFORMation,” I would say information become space to define our habitat.  As simple as the use of mobile phone, or with cyber lampposts set along pavements, our whereabouts in disguise of informative data, are in surveillance. 

Continue reading[Reading Response: M. Christine Boyer]