Material for thought

Check out my conversation with Kati Blom on the website of the International Society for the Philosophy of Architecture. It follows a philosophical paper I published last year on the appropriation of space.

“The objective of I S P A is to promote rigorous philosophical engagement with the subject of architecture by providing an informal platform for parties interested in furthering the cause.” Excellent initiative indeed!

The Hermitage is a massive residential property under construction in Kowloon (Hong Kong). I was living just next to its location, so I could see the progress of its development and I was very intrigued by the inside. Few weeks ago, I was walking in the adjacent Olympian shopping mall and I discovered that The Hermitage opened its showroom to the public. It went beyond all my expectations and was by far the craziest thing I have seen during my stay in Hong Kong, The showroom is completely out of reality, immersing visitors into a manufactured ‘dream’-like experience.

New and shiny buildings are the ones that attract most of the attention in Hong Kong. But older buildings are also remarkable. The new towns in the Hong Kong New Territories (such as Fo Tan and Sha Tin) and some residential lots in Hong Kong Island and Kowloon are worthwhile a visit. They are usually from the 70s and look all more or less the same: apartment towers, multiple levels of public spaces for pedestrians, a park and a playground, a shopping mall, parking and roads at the ground level. I have seen similar examples in Western cities but most of them become urbanistic nightmares. The model seems to work much better here, maybe because of the habits of its people.

I was not so keen to visit the monastery, knowing it is a relatively recent building dating from the 50s, and is not actually a real monastery. But I was in Sha Tin anyway so I gave it a try. As its name indicates, it has more than ten thousands Buddhas statues, all different. The first impression is of very cheap statues, but more of them I saw, more I liked them.

I started to appreciate the amazing diversity of their forms and of the symbols used. It is actually a very interesting place because religious icons are not historical relics here; they are the evidences of a living religious practice.

Here are two fast food chains that I think are interesting in Hong Kong.

The first, Café de Coral, is from Hong Kong. It has a very distinctive board at the entrance where meal placards are hanged and moved manually by waiters dressed like flight attendants. Other smaller chains have also this system and I don’t know if Café de Coral was the first one to use it. But it still makes the experience feel different. It materializes a menu that is changing day by day, even hours by hours between the breakfast, lunch, dinner and meals being sold out. But the fact that it is updated manually makes it somehow more playful and trustworthy than a digital screen, even though the entire process flow seems to be anyway automated.