If we look at the changing city view and skyline in Hong Kong in the past century, we would realise that contemporary cities are always changing among construction and deconstruction. Architectures were built to sever for several years and then demolished. This reminds me of a saying by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki “A ruin is the future of our city, and the future is the ruin itself.” Look back into Hong Kong, a colonial city in history. The footstep of the colonial history is disappearing in terms of the built environment and the politics. The destination of architectures is like that of human beings, both are fleeting moments in the

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Starting from Andy Warhol’s Empire and other films, Giuliano Bruno analyzed and discussed the concept of reel time and architectonics of duration in his works. To develop the aesthetics embodied from the extended duration, he then further dived deep into films from Antonioni, Tsai Ming-Liang etc. and at last, concluded Warhol’s achievement as a preface of late-modernist aesthetics in the cinema by preoccupating with duration. Followed by the author’s pace, I figured out the difference between real time and reel time. Real time is the time in reality, while reel time is the time in the film, or in another word,

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After reading this article, I think “disappearance” is a double-edged sword for both architecture and social culture. Due to the complexity of Hong Kong’s history, the cultural and architectural diversity of Hong Kong exists. This diversity and the rapid development of Hong Kong have resulted in the city being constantly reinvented and rebuilt, and the desire to preserve some of the old culture in the midst of this diversity has resulted in, as Sharon Zukin’s argument puts it, “Hong Kong has become somewhat unrecognizable”. This is why the “disappearance” of Hong Kong architecture is mostly regarded as negative. The article

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This article is about the awakening and lack of spatial memory and heritage protection of Hong Kong. The most impressive example is Flagstaff House which used to be the headquarters of the British military and later became the residence for the British forces. And now it has been converted into a museum to house the Chinese Tea-ware. It seems that the historical building has been well preserved and used. However, if we look deeper into the significance of historical reservation, we will find that the conflictual colonial history of Hong Kong has been weakened and neglected. This is not what

Continue readingReading Response: Ackbar Abbas

This article explains the disappearance of historical subjects in Hong Kong, from the intangible colonial space to the tangible architecture. One of the examples given in this article is the Flagstaff House in Central District. It had been used for the residence of the British military during the colonial period and created the history of the British government. Now, the building has been revitalized into a museum with Tea culture. Through this change, the disappearance of colonial culture raises the concern of preservation of the visual architecture as well as the history of the building under hyperdensity of development. Otherwise,

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Bruno depended on architecture in reel-time and real-time to tell how artists merging reel/real-time think of the resonance of architecture and film. Time has always been an essential element in the arts. While painting and sculpture often frame moments as timeless pieces, stage play and film are often the opposite. As an audience, I often get lost at the exit of the cinema, because I cannot imagine how I have watched someone’s entire life in just a few hundred minutes. So as opposed to spending two hours watching a movie, I will choose to spend two hours wandering along the

Continue reading[READING RESPONSE] Giuliana Bruno

The most impressive concept I have read is ‘disappearance’ and ‘preservation’. Before reading, the word ‘disappearance’ was just ‘something is missing. However, when I have read the examples in the reading, I changed my mind. In the book example, disappearance represents changing the use of a building to another, which changes the building from military use to a museum. In the example Flagstaff House, the building was originally for British military use. For instance, it was the headquarters of the British military or a residence for the commander of the British forces. However, now it is totally different. It becomes

Continue readingReading Response: Ackbar Abbas