Category: Architecture, Film + The Modern City

Cat Links Architecture, Film + The Modern City

Beijing 798 as Space of Disappearance

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In his book chapter “Building on Disappearance: Hong Kong architecture and colonial space”, Abbas conceptualizes the notion of “disappearance” in an insightful way. To him, the disappearance of Hong Kong architecture takes place at two levels. At the first level of disappearance, the city “reinvents itself every few years” due to the “domination of marketplace”. Buildings and spaces in Hong Kong, however monumental, are subject to demolition and destruction as soon as they become not profitable enough. This ever-changing city landscape reminds us of Karl Marx’s famous comment on capitalism, a system under which “everything that is solid melts into

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Cat Links Architecture, Film + The Modern City, Filming the Modern Asian City

Ghost in the Shell: Hong Kong’s Identity Crisis

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In his essay ‘Building on Disappearance’, Akbar Abbas explored the disappearance of the city and the current self-definition dilemma. This dilemma is played out in space: while the Empire faded, centuries of influence and subjugation persist in the very streets of this multicultural ‘future’ city dominated by intersections of old and new, or more cliché East and the West. He contended that new challenges are present in Hong Kong’s extensive search for identity amid the rubble of British colonialism and the ongoing political integration with China. In his eyes, the irony lies where the very people of Hong Kong avoid

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Cat Links Architecture, Film + The Modern City

Eroticism of the Cinema- Freedom

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  In 1895, Lumiere brothers screened ten 50 second videos using their invention of Cinematographe in the darkened room Salon Indien of the Grand Café in Paris. This was the first public screening of commercial movies. Their short films were later screened in various other nations not only in US and the adjacent countriesbut also countries in Asia like Hong Kong, Shanghai and Bombay. Since it was before the cinema was built in most places, they were presented in Gardens or in tea houses in China. Back when we were just introduced to film, we simply sought for any black

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Cat Links Architecture, Film + The Modern City

The attraction of Movie Theatre

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In the essay, ‘Leaving the Movie Theatre’, Ronald Barthes presents us how the movie theatre attracts people. There is an inconceivable magic in the theatre s that lead people watching movies. The structure of the movie theatre is basically the same, with a combination of a big screen, large amounts of seats and lighting. Why there are movie theatres which are specifically for watching movies? How these part of combination in movie theatre work to attract people? We will discuss more below. There is inseparable relationship between movie and movie theater. The first movie ‘Arrival of a train at LA

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Cat Links Architecture, Film + The Modern City

Workshop Interview Example

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Image from Finbarr Fallon, Subterranean Singapore 2065 (Architectural Film Project) XX: You have raised the possibility of infinite control and connections, and it will demand a different way of visualising our master plan. Our Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) would have to come up with a whole new set of sectional notation system and color codes! Do you think our current visualisation of land use and land ownership, with routine extrusions and setbacks, are limiting our imagination of architecture in the city? FINBARR: Yes, it would be interesting to imagine a completely three-dimensional master plan that is abstracted from the ground

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