Upon reflection, the reading is an exceptionally well-articulated, realistic portrayal of local cultural identity when things which hold dear to us disappear within our lives. In my opinion, the quote “unfamiliar in the familiar, that is, the unfamiliar that is half-seen or seen subliminally behind the seen/scene of the familiar” sums up this paradoxical idea, revealing this sense of emptiness and hollowness despite being in an environment that one is comfortable with. One prominent example I can deeply relate to was when Kowloon Walled City was converted into an urban park in 1987, with people who were previously living there had their sense of belonging and deep feelings towards the place taken away. Abbas grasps this sense of loss extremely accurately, explaining the roots of this identity from local or even colonial culture. Another point I feel worth mentioning by Abbas is that the more placeless and commercial the buildings, the more the urban vernacular remains anonymous and characterless. Unfortunately, the trend in modern-day culture does not look promising; These cultural buildings, as well as the characteristics and history associated with it, will likely disappear one day in the future.
Leung Kwan Ho Gordon, 3035778022
Great effort in picking on some of the key ideas in the text. Abbas mentioned a “very elegant answer” to deal with the anonymity, which is ” the vernacular baroque” – involving “no more radical transformation of the vernacular”; “[d]iversity,[…] not in terms of a profusion of architectural styles, but in the internal modification of standardized forms” ; and “accept[ing] the proliferation of anonymous high-rise blocks as the only solution” (1997, 89). Do you think Kowloon Walled City was in fact an example of the vernacular baroque where people appropriated the spaces within hyperdensity?