Abstract
This chapter addresses objections that could be raised against the claims I make in Chap. 5. One could argue that industrial or urban ruins are not “real” ruins, because they seem to exhibit markedly different properties from structures like the ruins of antiquity, and because they simply have not been around long enough to earn the designation. One could also claim they upend other normative philosophical ideas about form and function. I dispute these claims, using examples to establish that modern structures are, in fact, ruins, that time need not be the determining factor in their creation, and we need not judge form and function (as well as changes in function) in such narrow terms.
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Notes
- 1.
Carolyn Korsmeyer, “The Triumph of Time: Romanticism Redux,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72 (2014), 429, 432–433. While here I dispute Korsmeyer’s attention to the age of ruins, I agree with her emphasis on the importance of touch in our encounters with them: “the ruin itself engages all the senses; it can be touched, moved around, even climbed on. Visits to some ruins require a degree of athleticism and are as much adventures [as Ginsberg says as well] as aesthetic encounters” (432).
- 2.
Zoltán Somhegyi, “The Aesthetic Attraction of Decay: From the Nature of Ruins to the Ruins of Nature,” Aesthetics in Action: International Yearbook of Aesthetics 18 (2014), 323–324.
- 3.
Macaulay, Pleasure of Ruins, 453.
- 4.
Macaulay, Pleasure of Ruins, 454.
- 5.
Elizabeth Scarbrough, “Unimagined Beauty,” 446.
- 6.
- 7.
- 8.
Woodward, In Ruins, 212, 216–218.
- 9.
Macaulay, Pleasure of Ruins, 454.
- 10.
Apel, Beautiful Terrible Ruins, 12–13.
- 11.
“Existence, Location, and Function: The Appreciation of Architecture,” in Allen Carlson, Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture (London: Routledge, 2000), 207, 212.
- 12.
Edward Winters, Aesthetics and Architecture (London: Continuum Books, 2007), 41.
- 13.
Carlson, “Existence, Location, and Function: The Appreciation of Architecture,” 209.
- 14.
Carlson, “Existence, Location, and Function: The Appreciation of Architecture,” 209–210.
- 15.
Quoted in A Global History of Architecture, 2nd edition, edited by Francis D. K. Ching, Mark Jarzombek, and Vikramaditya Prakash (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010), 701.
References
Apel, Dora. Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015.
Carlson, Allen. “Existence, Location, and Function: The Appreciation of Architecture.” In Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture, edited by Allen Carlson. London: Routledge, 2000.
Casson, Hugh, with Brenda Colvin, and Jacques Groag. Bombed Churches as War Memorials. London: Architectural Press, 1945.
Ching, Francis D.K., with Mark Jarzombek, and Vikramaditya Prakash. A Global History of Architecture. 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010.
Clark, Kenneth, et al. Letter to The Times. August 15, 1944.
Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us). Directed by Wolfgang Staudte. DEFA Studios, 1946.
Korsmeyer, Carolyn. “The Triumph of Time: Romanticism Redux.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72 (2014): 429–435.
Macaulay, Rose. Pleasure of Ruins. New York: Walker and Company, 1966.
Scarbrough, Elizabeth. “Unimagined Beauty.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72 (2014): 445–449.
Shandley, Robert R. Rubble Films: German Cinema in the Shadow of the Third Reich. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001.
Somhegyi, Zoltán. “The Aesthetic Attraction of Decay: From the Nature of Ruins to the Ruins of Nature.” Aesthetics in Action: International Yearbook of Aesthetics 18 (2014): 319–326.
Winters, Edward. Aesthetics and Architecture. London: Continuum Books, 2007.
Woodward, Christopher. In Ruins: A Journey Through History, Art, and Literature. New York: Vintage Books, 2003.
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Whitehouse, T. (2018). Assessing Function and the Ruin Category. In: How Ruins Acquire Aesthetic Value. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03065-0_7
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