Tag: Reading response

Cat Links Lecture 7: Monsters, Materials & Skyscrapers

[Reading Response: Abbas, M. A. AND Tsutsui W.M. ]

Posted on fishyujo@connect.hku.hk

What is Hong Kong Architecture, and how these architecture constructs Hong Kong’s identity?  I always thought Hong Kong architecture is in lack of culturally uniqueness and identity. However, Abbas (1997) has concluded a few characteristics of Hong Kong buildings and revealed the culture that they represents: the culture of disappearance. Hong Kong, just as many other Asian cities like Tokyo, have undergone major destruction and construction continuously. However, while this process is being catalyzed by natural or man-made disasters in the case of Tokyo (Tsutsui, 2010), in Hong Kong, economic development and market restructuring is the main culprit. Throughout the

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Cat Links Lecture 6 Housing Stories

[Reading Response: Cheung, E. M. K.]

Posted on leungmh1@connect.hku.hk

  Cheung discusses “Made in Hong Kong”, specifically how the film references Hong Kong as a “spectral city”. Through light and darkness, warped space, shadows and abject images, the director manipulates what can and cannot be seen. Hong Kong’s transition to a global city illustrates an estrangement for the people living there as there exists a large wealth disparity and the sharing of dense spaces of living between the two is difficult. The defamiliarization of the city is reflected through Victoria Harbour, shadowing the unglorified parts of Hong Kong. To me, describing Hong Kong as a spectral city is a

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Cat Links Lecture 7 Monsters, Materials & Skyscrapers

[Reading Response: Abbas]

Posted on leungmh1@connect.hku.hk

Abbas discusses the transition of the city of Hong Kong, the disappearance of its architectural history and the attempts of preserving history. Through constant restructuring, Hong Kong becomes unrecognizable when looking back at its past. The article mentions how market erodes place, and with the city’s economic transition, every piece of Hong Kong’s history is of imminent destruction, to make way for newer, more profitable spaces. Though, this fast-paced transition makes Hong Kong difficult in constructing an identity as local culture is devalued for economic success. As a city, there are attempts to preserve old architecture, a form of post-colonial

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Cat Links Lecture 7: Monsters, Materials & Skyscrapers

Reading response: Abbas

Posted on pennyw@connect.hku.hk

The writer claims that Hong Kong’s colonial space is particularly a space of disappearance. However, what he means is disappearance does not imply going entirely unnoticed. It can work really well with projects of preservation and a concern for the present. The writer brings out three examples to support his argument. They are Hong Kong Cultural Center, Flagstaff House, and Repulse Bay Hotel. He against the use of preservation as history to bring about the disappearance of history. Preservation of these architecture intentionally add Chinese elements into colonial architecture or integrate the “old” and the “new”. It leads to the

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Cat Links Monsters, Materials + Skyscrapers

[Reading Response: Abbas, M. A.]

Posted on u3598391@connect.hku.hk

The subject of Abbas’ book “Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance” is how architecture both shapes and embodies culture. The removal of recognizable structures and public areas in Hong Kong serves as an example of how architecture imbues a place with a sense of place and belonging by reflecting distinctive cultural character through its design and symbolism.  The book emphasizes on how maintaining a place and its identity requires balancing modernization with cultural preservation. A significant representation of cultural and historical values, architecture is more than just physical structures, as demonstrated by Abba. The book also underlines the

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Cat Links Lecture 7: Monsters, Materials & Skyscrapers

[Reading Response: Abbas, M. A.]

Posted on u3610652@connect.hku.hk

This article provides valuable arguments about the disappearance of historical and colonial spaces. The author proposes new possibilities for the concept of “disappearance”: the “disappearance” of a building does not mean that it disappears without a trace in itself. This “disappearance” can even coexist with the existence and preservation of the building. The preservation of old buildings gives us a historical vision of the site, but it also requires the maintenance of historical and cultural traces. At first I was confused about the relationship between preservation and disappearance, but the author’s examples of the Hong Kong Cultural Center, Flagstaff House

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Cat Links Lecture 6: Housing Stories

Reading Response: Katarzyna Ancuta

Posted on stelgong@connect.hku.hk

In Asian ghost films, “apartment horror” is conjured by monotonous concrete cubicles and inexorable, impersonal domestic spaces. It conveys the physical and social mobility (or lack thereof) with respect to the inhabitants in these airless, natural light-less interiors. Experience of tension and constriction between the architecture and human tenants is allegorically shared by the ghostly tenants, bounded to a specific apartment and a specific anthropomorphic mien, albeit non-entity in theory. Such parallel represents how we read ghostly narratives as Asians: our past carried and constituted into the afterlife, or Karma. When urban legends of wild, wandering, expectedly wronged spirits seek

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Cat Links Lecture 7: Monsters, Materials & Skyscrapers

[Reading Response: Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of disappearance]

Posted on u3600267@connect.hku.hk

The reading talks about how the buildings in Hong Kong show how the city has changed over time. The writer provides a valuable perspective on the complex interplay between architecture, colonialism, and identity in Hong Kong. It also mentions the constructed environment of the city reflects a process of “disappearance,” and draws attention to how colonial influences are gradually being replaced by a more Chinese identity. The reading also offers a helpful analysis of the role of architecture in shaping cultural individuality, based on the reading, the term “disappearance” involves a shift from the colonial history of Hong Kong, which

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Cat Links Lecture 7 Monsters, Materials & Skyscrapers

[Reading Response: Abbas, M. A.]

Posted on u3608449@connect.hku.hk

In the reading, Abba explores different reasons behind the architecture disappearance in Hong Kong and its impact on the disappearance of its identity and culture. According to him, the disappearance relates to several aspects, such as the economic aspect, the architectural style, and the people living in the area. In my understanding, first, the author provides an example of the Ritz Carlton Hotel to explain the impact of the economic market, wherein the building was sold due to the fact that the newly built building would produce more income. Second, the architectural style of Hong Hong is highly influenced by

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Cat Links Lecture 7: Monsters, Materials & Skyscrapers

reading response: Abbas, M. A.

Posted on u3610052@connect.hku.hk

Hong Kong is a city where the “old” and the “new” coexist side by side. The city’s urban landscape reflects the conflict between traditional and contemporary architecture and design brought about by the city’s rapid modernization and urbanization. The city’s older structures, like the colonial-era Flagstaff House, which depicts the city’s history and the influence of Western culture, are on the one hand. On the other hand, there are the cutting-edge skyscrapers and high-rise structures that control the city’s skyline and symbolize its globalization and rapid growth. Despite these differences, Hong Kong is a city where the “old” and the

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