Category: 2022 Blog

Cat Links Lecture 4: Urban Everyday Spaces as Narrative

Reading Response: Michel De Certeau

Posted on kyk1105@connect.hku.hk

Viewing the city at the top from the highest point of the tallest skyscraper, buildings are no longer seen as “spaces” that surround us, but simply “places” as if a small lego block on a map for Gods. As much as it gives a comprehensive full picture of the city, it also hides the city’s dynamics. Without the people, architecture is but a hollow and empty shell of infrastructures. What gives a city its colors is not only its landscape, but what also lies inside such buildings. Through advancement in technology, movies bring viewers on a journey as both voyeurs

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Lecture 4: Urban Everyday Spaces as Narrative

Reading Response: Nezar AlSayyad

Posted on u3592431@connect.hku.hk

This text examines the voyeuristic behavour as shown in the film and how it varies as time goes. ”Male gaze”, as referred in the text, can be inferred superficially as the male voyeur looking into the lifes of the female flaneur. This sentence actually means that female are often materialized in early films in 1950s. An example can be the Rear Window, where Jeff uses his binocular to stock the behaviours of his neighbour.  As voyeuring requires objects or equipment with lens, it is natural to come to our mind that we, ourselves, are also voyeuring the lifes of the

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Cat Links Lecture 4: Urban Everyday Spaces as Narrative

Reading Response: Nezar AlSayyad

Posted on u3591979@connect.hku.hk

The ubiquity of surveillance systems has deprived people of their privacy and empowered those who monitor them. In Rear Window, the neighbors’ rooms are in front of the protagonist Jeff’s apartment, all within Jeff’s sight. The semi-private architectural space exposes the relationship between the voyeur and the ones being watched. The voyeur is always in the dominant position and possesses a sense of control, while whose being observed remain unaware. This leads to ill-matched rights, which enables Jeff to discover a crime. This inequality of power is magnified in The End of Violence since voyeurism is not limited to individual

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Cat Links Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Posted on Laurence

Perhaps one of the most striking parallels between architecture and film is that they both reconstruct a hallucination of the bygone things. The illusory memories, like the metaphor in the architectural forms of Flagstaff House or Pei’s Bank of China Tower, are repeatedly reproduced after the real history has vanished and ironically becomes part of Hong Kong’s identity. Over twenty years ago, Abbas wrote about the disappearance of Hong Kong, or its false images through relentless urban renewal and chaotic architectural styles. Two decades on, it seems that the continuously intensifying marketization, the architectural anonymity, and even the anxiety of

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Cat Links Lecture 4: Urban Everyday Spaces as Narrative

Reading Response: Nezar AlSayyad

Posted on u3594662@connect.hku.hk

This essay is titled Voyeuristic Modernity: the Lens, the Screen, and the City, which was written by Nezar AlSayyad in 2006. When viewing the writing method, the author mainly examines and exemplifies the character of the “voyeur” in the films. The essay can generally be divided into three sections–introductory part, analysis of three films, and the conclusion drawn from the former sections. The author presents a series of citations of people from different careers and nations, making the essay more persuasive. As I read beyond the writing form, I entirely agree with the statement that gaze can be served as a

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Cat Links Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Posted on u3586421@connect.hku.hk

This reading have raises the thoughts of the bonding of disappearance and the architecture. In Hong Kong, a place that nostalgic with the skyscrapers with a view to provide the accommodation to a high density population. Moreover,  the city is a mixture of architecture from the western post-colonialism and the traditional Chinese style which makes Hong Kong become Muti-culture city. Yet, Ackbar Abbas mentions that some of the architecture more likely a decorative rather than a historical and sophisticated building. As day goes by, Hong Kong lost its own colour and it is hard to distinguish the building that is visualise in the

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Cat Links Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Posted on djr2002@connect.hku.hk

This article with the theme of disappearance mentions a very interesting opinion, that is, cities are divided into three types: real, surreal, and simulated according to the degree of relevance to their historical context. Interestingly, with different perspectives, Hong Kong will present the characteristics of all these three different urban forms at the same time. This stemmed from the long-standing conflict and interaction between Chinese culture and western colonialism in Hong Kong, resulting in floating identity recognition. Such confusion of cultural identity has led to the absence of architecture in reflecting urban culture, as a result, Hong Kong’s historical buildings,

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Posted on kristyth@connect.hku.hk

A disappearance of a building does not necessarily mean it was being demolished, which may be because it lost its historical significance or is out of place in the environment. In a commercial society like Hong Kong, businesspeople are always anxious to maximize the benefit of all things and use the commercial point to calculate everything, including architecture. Like the clock tower in front of Hong Kong Culture Center, the value of these historical sites merely remains decorative. Similar with the consequence of the clock tower and Repulse Bay Hotel, many preservations of the historical sites become gimmicks of the

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Cat Links 2022 Blog, Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

[READING RESPONSE] Ackbar Abbas

Posted on fl2003@connect.hku.hk

Abbas mentioned that some colonial culture in Hong Kong is slowly disappearing and the city is gradually becoming ordinary. I actually do not agree with this view. I think both Hong Kong itself and Hong Kong architecture are the result of cultural collision and impact. Architecturally, modern skyscrapers can coexist with temples and old tube-shaped apartments. No matter how the appearance of the city changes, the essence of the city is still human. Due to the colonial history, there are still a large number of foreigners in Hong Kong. It is the special population composition that causes cultural conflicts and

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Cat Links Lecture 2: Filming the Modern Asian City

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Posted on u3582402@connect.hku.hk

The article mainly talks about the disappearances in Hong Kong. The most obvious disappearance is the architecture which is regarded as a commodity. These buildings can be easily ruined due to economic reasons. In some cases such as the clock tower and the Hong Kong culture centre, although the government kept the original building it is so weird to connect colonial architecture with the modern cultural centre with continuity. It is only used for visual consumption and we ignore the meaning behind these buildings. Other examples like the Flagstaff House and the Repulse Bay Hotel have a similar problem that

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