In CINEMA, THE CITY AND THE CINEMATIC, the writing used two Hong Kong films, Crouching Tiger and In the Mood for Love, to illustrate his understanding of ‘genetic city’ and ‘exorbitant city’. In my point of view, the writer defines the former one as a city that has little specific feature architectures or, in other words, as a city without its history presented. In my point of view, I do not appreciate a city with all modern features and not telling its own story. However, as an architecture student, I do appreciate some architectures built that only present its designer’s, architect, thoughts and soul. Even the building has not many regional features, it can be a part of this city’s history in the future.
As for ‘exorbitant city’, what I learned, after reading the writer’s words, is that it goes to another end when talking about the icon of a city. While cities are devoting themselves to gain one or more nationally-acclaimed ‘logo’, the ‘logo’ or ‘icon’ makes the city plane and boring. We should embrace the diversity of a city and its complexity. Those features, which are representing the true city, in the writer’s point of view, can only be represented in the cinematic city.
Name: Shun Ying, Zhuang
UID: 3035702827
Appreciate this good reflection on Abbas’ notion of the generic and exorbitant city. From your response, it seems that you consider the “logo” or “icon” architecture to result in a “plain and boring” city. In that case, which aspect of Hong Kong (or a city that you understand deeply) in your opinion, should be embraced to represent the diversity and complexity of its existence?