Reading Response:Ackbar Abbas

After reading this article, I think “disappearance” is a double-edged sword for both architecture and social culture. Due to the complexity of Hong Kong’s history, the cultural and architectural diversity of Hong Kong exists. This diversity and the rapid development of Hong Kong have resulted in the city being constantly reinvented and rebuilt, and the desire to preserve some of the old culture in the midst of this diversity has resulted in, as Sharon Zukin’s argument puts it, “Hong Kong has become somewhat unrecognizable”. This is why the “disappearance” of Hong Kong architecture is mostly regarded as negative. The article gives specific examples of the result of “disappearance” caused by eager “preservation”. For example, “Culture centre or Repulse Bay Hotel” is due to people’s eagerness to preserve some sense of social identity and colonial emotion in the two colonial cultures, which eventually leads to these preserved historical elements becoming a kind of “visual consumption”. This way of preservation does not really retain the culture that people want to preserve. On the contrary, it makes the whole become difficult to understand due to some forced elements, leading to the real “disappearance” of architectural culture. In addition, “disappearance” can also be “the replacement of one event by another”. Flagstaff, for example, is retained as a museum of Chinese tea sets. Such “old for new” preservation, in an ironic way, beautifies Hong Kong’s history of British colonization by replacing it with Chinese culture, making some history disappear. But from another perspective, “disappearing” is not always negative. Because the development of a city is always dynamic, dynamic means change and disappearance.Only by correctly using the means of “preservation” can “disappearance” benefit the economic development and human development of a city.

Huang Shiyu

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