My amazing experience in Macau owes hugely to Frankie's great job at being a perfect guide. It was simply perfect. I've never known he was such a great guide, and I was very fortunate to have him take me to some hidden and possibly more fascinating parts of Macau.
I fell in love with the cityscape of Macau too. The new and the old, the East and the West, the decay and the 'bling bling', resided next to one and another. Color palette of the city was lively. Pastel colors of Portuguese-styled buildings were beautiful. I adore decaying details that were everywhere. And there were exotic signs and billboards with Chinese characters, facing huge and superficial hotels and casinos... Mixture of all those things made the place unique and one of the kind.
In the essay "Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form", Robert Venturi talks that the spatial relationship are made by symbols rather than by forms in Las Vegas. Without signs, Las Vegas is no place.
Although I've never been to Vegas, it's easy to assume that the new buildings that are being built in Macau ultimately is a reproduction of Las Vegas. But because it is coexisting with historical buildings of Portuguese and Chinese, creating fascinating contrasts, it adds whole different dimension to it.
日帰りの予定で、大学のマカオ人の子に案内を頼んだら、泊まるマンションまで用意してくれて、２日間付きっきりで案内してくれた。特別仲が良かった訳でもなかったから、なおさら感動。そして、彼は案内をするのがとても上手だった。
彼の案内だけでも、素敵な経験だったマカオ。街自体も、面白かった。
ポルトガルの面影残るパステルカラーの建築。ごちゃごちゃしていて、サビれた住宅街。中国語の派手な看板。真新しい、変な形の巨大ホテルやカジノ。
古いものをそのまま残すだけの街や、新しいものしかない街というのは、景色としてあまり面白くない。ロンドンの町並みの大好きなところは、過去の建物と、現在や未来を感じさせる建築が混在する点。ロンドンは、１８００年代の古い建築も残っている中で、新しい建築もあり、そのミックス感が面白い。マカオも同様、様式や文化のごちゃごちゃ感がオリジナルで印象深かった。