#9 A ruin is always real. A ruin is always virtual.

Ruin: mirror and brick

Tatiana Reshetnikova, architect, PhD candidate

Void_mirror_brick

What does it mean - ruins? If they are dead cells of urban body, why do they attract our curiosity? Why is it: a scientific interest in historical artifacts of our life-world, destroyed by time, smoldering memory preservation or architectural necrophilia? Or there is life in the ruins?

(Presented images are made by the author and display the decomposition of architectural, cultural and social layers in Russia, Germany, towns and villages)

Ruins act, in my opinion, in two ways: as space markers, genius loci, (as a "mirror") and as a medium for creation, sometimes virtual (as a "brick").

Mirror Ruins create heterotopia, other spaces. Portals of transition state are the former hospitals, dormitories, bridges, clubs etc. These polyvalent spaces are full of self-references, myths and legends from the past, eager to be revealed. Myths of these places connect us simultaneously with the past and the future like movies of the 80th about the future are no more than ruins. Ruins are in plurality of life images: from old photographs, memories, movie shots to unfulfilled and in this reason unforgettable dreams. These ruins win in comparison to the juvenile new, something that is still without history.

However, at the same time, ruins have physical coordinates, being marked by ruined walls, settled foundation, forgotten things, gouged bricks or broken mirrors. These "other" spaces bind us with timeless continuum. “The spaces through which we go daily are provided for by locations; their nature is grounded in things of the type of buildings.

If we pay heed to these relations between locations and spaces, between spaces and space, we get a due to help us in thinking of the relation of man and space” (Heidegger, 1971).

mirror_birds

mirror_bridge

mirror_cistern

mirror_Dacha

mirror_emblem

mirror_guten appetit

mirror_jam

mirror_phone

mirror_skeleton

mirror_stair

mirror_theatre

mirror_tower

mirror_Красный гвоздильщик

mirror_Красный гвоздильщик_Chernihov

Brick Ruins are medium for re-creation: the art from garbage, the use of useless, life from death. Utzon took his inspiration from Maya ruins for his podium in the project of the Sydney Opera House, SITE group designed literal ruins and utopias, Lebbeus Woods created futuristic images with the poetics of the deconstruction. Ruins as a resource, the humus, for new artifacts, are in photos of past life legends, architectural interpretations and vernacular second-hand design.

brick_angel

brick_dwelling

brick_hill house

brick_houseboat

brick_memory

brick_pile

brick_play bed

brick_play wheel

brick_post

brick_shop

brick_tree

brick_sketch

brick_hotel mock up

References

Foucault, Michel. Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias. Translated by Jay Miskowiec. “Des Espace Autres,” March 1967. Heidegger, Martin. Building Dwelling Thinking. Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1971. Betsky, Aaron; Natanson, Stephen. Out there. Architecture beyond building : the making of the Biennale with Aaron Betsky. 1st ed. Venezia: Marsilio; Fondazione La Biennale di Venezia, 2008