Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

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

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[Reading 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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[READING RESPONSE] Giuliana Bruno

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

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Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

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

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

After the reading, I couldn’t help thinking about how architecture shapes national and individual cultural identity. As far as I am concerned, the environment and society I grew up in created my own cultural identity, and architecture is indispensable in the environment. Buildings give people emotion and support. Every building tells its historical story. To demolish the building and forget the history due to the needs of urban development will undoubtedly be strongly opposed and stopped by people. The Reading points out that “architecture is defined by the people who live in it.” This sentence indicates that architecture itself has

Continue readingReading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

In 1997, where a sense of the imminence of Hong Kong’s disappearance pervaded, there was an intense desire for an identity. Yet “Hong Kong is a space traversed by different times and speed, where changes has no clear direction.” As a “para-site”, it had always had a tendency towards timelessness and placelessness. Therefore, the harder people attempted to define it, the quicker the complex space disappear into a facile, ersatz one-dimensional image. Hong Kong architecture, which intimately related to the city’s definition, had failed to link history, space and affectivity. Preservation denied any pain and dirt. Together with the too-easy

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Reading Response: Giuliano Bruno

Andy Warhol’s Empire State Building lasted for eight hours, using a single fixed camera to shoot the changes of the Empire State Building in New York from dark to early morning for eight hours, and then splicing the negatives. While some critics say Warhol’s films are a boring aesthetic, his “artwork” gives architecture a whole new definition. Seen from his Empire State Building film: Perceiving space is achieved through the observation of the passage of time and changes in light. Architecture becomes a vehicle for many actions, preserving the movement of time and the passage of people. Of course, at

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Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

In the article, Hong Kong is described as city of heterogeneity and contradictions as disappearance develops tendency towards timelessness, placelessness, yet also proposes need of cultural identity. When narrating architecture, movies are double-edged swords. For viewers, films may be the only window to have a glimpse of Hong Kong’s landscape, hence fostering one-dimensional understanding towards the city. Even me who grew up here sometimes subconsciously take what’s portrayed in films as the only “architectures” in Hong Kong, neglecting what constructs the remaining dull yet essential part:  urban vernacular. The city is not only the old Hong Kong with traditional Chinese-styled

Continue readingReading Response: Ackbar Abbas

Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas

According to the article by Ackbar Abbas, the concept of disappearance refers to a tendency to timelessness and placelessness, and he seems to believe that Hong Kong best exemplifies this concept. As a Korean, I had lived in Seoul for a long time (16 years and a half). After visiting such cities as Tokyo and New York, I had this frustration that Seoul, compared with these cities whose uniqueness had astonished and enchanted me, was rather dull and boring, having nothing to offer but a confused topology, broken skylines, labyrinths of unimpressive streets, perpetual stress, and pneumonia. Perhaps this judgment

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Reading Response: Ackbar Abbas and Giuliano Bruno

In Abbas’ article, he mainly discuss the connection between architecture and films. Since they are all preeminently visuals, film can show audiences the architecture from the point of view of the city. Besides, Abbas mentioned the concept “disappearance”, which means that many architectures and histories were disappearing in the context of Hong Kong. However, I think what makes every city has unique charm lies on the experience of it, including the passing of architectures and histories. In Bruno’s article, he skillfully compare the real time in reality and the ‘real’ time in the movie. It is important to transfer the

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