Abbas’s composition regarding the disappearance of historical buildings in Hong Kong raises concerns about preservation and integration. The “disappearance” is implied as a substitution for another, starting from waves of Chinese immigration and economic development changing the city into a vast network of interconnected architectural systems. The external horizontal pressures contributed to local and merely local places being demolished for vertical high-rise buildings. This is the case of the Shek Kip Mei, the first public housing estate to counter an urban crisis from the government acquiring valuable land. Simultaneously, these new spaces serve multiple purposes, mixing commercial and residential use. Hence, it’s an alternative metropolis not in line with tradition because the lines of spillover places aren’t neatly drawn, despite otherwise from harbor view. These architectural norms generate visual anonymity holding one-dimensional characteristics, causing the disappearance of building styles.
In conjunction, the slogan “fifty years without change” is a political allegory that’s disproven in Chinese immigration, resulting in the creation of the unplanned Kowloon Walled City, one of the famous spillover places and later demolished. Architecture preservation is selective, for instance, the leftover places like the colonial Flagstaff House transformed into a tea museum. In the process, it eliminated the past, ignoring what the building had once stood for, in favor of early examples of placeless architecture. Another instance is the Hong Kong Cultural Center where the clock tower was added. This is an example of dissonance in the preservation of the cityscape. Therefore, the ability and lack of a cohesive plan risks both local and colonial architecture to vanish in favor of placeless and visual anonymity, erasing its intangible landmarks from films.