"Too Young and Vibrant for Ruins"

As details in a previous post, Ground Zero in New York is perhaps the most well-known modern ruin of our time. As such, it is a prominent case in which people have asked some important questions about ruins and suffering: is it okay to enjoy ruins? Is it okay to find ruins beautiful, when in fact they may have been the source of pain? How does our understanding of ancient ruins color our view of them?

In a recent article in the journal Afterimage from Nov/Dec 2008, entitled "Too Young and Vibrant for Ruins: Ground Zero Photography and the Problem of Contemporary Ruin," Weena Perry addresses these questions. She asks how we should relate to photographs of the World Trade Center ruins, and starts by drawing a comparison between them and ancient ruins:

"The remains of those interlocking perimeter columns--a High Modernist innovation for what briefly was the world's tallest building--became likened to the ruins of a cathedral. The invocation of religious architecture both expressed the sacrosanct nature of Ground Zero for many and connected the ruins to western culture's venerable past. Valid, too, is the comparison of the towers' shell to the pagan ruins of ancient Rome, especially the Coliseum."

Workers at Ground Zero are compared to the monks of Casper David Friedrich's paintings - both had a higher purpose in mind, and went on with their work despite the ruined nature of their building. However, a key distinction here is that while the monks were presumably doing what they had done while the church was intact, the Ground Zero workers were not going to trade stocks or write insurance premiums; rather, they were clearing the rubble and searching for remains.

Perry surveys various editorials that have been written about the ruins, in which people asked if it was perverse to find the ruins beautiful, and in which people looked at the ruins as symbols of resilience and survival, rather than as signs of destruction.

There is also an interesting distinction made between the ruins in NYC, a vibrant city, and those in midwestern cities, like Detroit, in which ruins are caused by neglect and decay. Despite the great suffering associated with the former, they are somehow more hopeful and less morose. Another comparison is between American ruins and European ruins. "America is considered 'too young and vibrant for ruins'", so when deciding how to preserve a memorial, it seemed wrong to many to leave actual ruins in place. Perry writes that the study of ruins has always been tied to a fear that this could happen to us as well. European and American scholars look at the ruins of Greece and Rome and fear that this will be our fate as well. The WTC ruins are unencumbered by this fear, as they happened in a thriving city and could quickly be rebuilt. However, even so politicians worried that this hit too close to home.

Ikea Ruins

New ruins today in Netanya:

The iconic Ikea branch was gutted by fire and left a smoldering ruin. Thankfully, no one was hurt, though all the merchandise went up in smoke. On facebook, a number of my friends posted things like "Where will we shop for furniture now?"

Ikea, which has branches all over the world, has become somewhat of an Israeli institution. I've personally never been there, but I have friends who go there for fun, to hang out. As the first branch that opened in Israel, do the ruins of this building deserve preservation? Probably not. In any case, I have to imagine that they will start rebuilding almost immediately.

Here are some pictures of the building, and for comparison, a mock ruin of a similar type of store, The Best Produces Company Showroom in Houston, from 1975.

Ruins no more...

Top, the site razed, as seen yesterday, and bottom, the site with the five consecutive bays, as seen on our last visit.

Yesterday we visited Rosh HaAyin again. We had several meetings with people involved in preservation/planning/building in the City Council (on the committee for planning and building in the city) and independently, a historian passionate about the preservation of the old buildings and culture in Rosh HaAyin. After these meetings we went to measure the British Buildings, not having found any blueprints or plans etc. of any of this type of British army hangars. We decided to go to the British ruins which until recently functioned as a factory where blind people used to come to work. We came to the site and what a shock! Lo and behold the building, the ruins, was no longer in existence. The site was razed. However, the leaning British watchtower on site was left untouched.
The ruins as we had previously documented it, was a factory for the blind, whereby it seemed it has been completely abandoned, leaving piles of shoe soles all over (assumedly what the factory produced) and folders, papers, files belonging to the blind association. There had been a fire there, it is unclear whether the fire occurred after the building had been abandoned or if this was the reason for it being abandoned. Below, are some images of the Blind Factory British ruins before it was destroyed completely.

Where London Stood

I found a wonderful site about ruins called Where London Stood, which David Platt has assembled. It shows images of imagined ruins from the 18th century and onward. There are so many lovely images he collected that it's hard to know where to start. He has Modern Ruins, a comparison of Shelley and Smith's similar Ozymandias poems, beautiful renderings of a ruined America from John Ames Mitchell's The Last American, Paris in BBC's The Tripod, Philadelphia in Twelve Monkeys (note the lion on the roof), and Washington in Logan's Run. He also has an extensive bibliography.

Click on the links, enjoy the fruits of the imagination, and think about why ruins are so evocative.

Returning to Ruins: The Carmel Disaster

Something that has been at the fore of the news in the past few days in Israel, has been the fire up in the Carmel. The largest bushfire in the country's history. It has left many houses in ruin.


These ruins fit with our 'Ruins Criteria':

1) the buildings are man made structures

2) the buildings were built as permanent structures

3) the building envelope is now no longer complete

4) the building appears different than how it was intended (yet enough remains to give an impression of the original structure)

5) nature has clearly encroached upon the structure

6) no significant human intervention/conservation has yet taken place upon the ruins

The images of the ashen ruins below are from Kibbutz Beit Oren and from the Children's Village of Yemin-Orde.

Ruin Criteria II: Vegetation

One of the most important aspects of a ruin is its vegetation. Ruins are the result of conflicting forces: the force of man, building structures and defying gravity, and the force of nature, eroding and returning things to equilibrium. Even a structure that is first destroyed by human force undergoes a transformation at the hands of nature. I suppose this is not an ironclad rule, as buildings become ruins immediately following their destruction; but until nature has had time to encroach, the ruin is not really complete. Florence Hetzler writes as much, saying that 

"The 'ruining' may be started by human or natural causes but the maturation process must be done by nature in ruin time. Otherwise there is only devastation and there is no unity forming the ruins." ("Causality: Ruin Time and Ruins" in Leonardo 21:1 (1988) pp51-55.) 

Christopher Woodward devotes a section in his wonderful book, In Ruins, to this topic. He points out the conflict between archaeologists and ruin-lovers. Archaeologists try to clear sites of their destruction vegetation. Woodward writes that 

"I want to tell them that a ruin has two values. It has an objective value as an assemblage of bring and stone, and it has a subjective value as an inspiration to artists. You can uproot the alder tree, superintendente, erect more fences, spray more weed-killer, excavate and polish. You will preserve every single brick for posterity, and analyse the very occasional discovery of a more ornamental fragment in a learned publication. You will have a great many bricks, but nothing more."

  He quotes Shelley who credited the ruins of Rome as the inspiration for Prometheus Unbound, and presents some examples of the artistic inspiration that Shelley derived from ruins:

"Never was any desolation more sublime and lovely. The perpendicular wall of ruin is cloven into steep ravines filled with flowering shrubs whose thick twisted roots are knotted in the rifts of the stones...the tick entangled wilderness of myrtle & bay & flowering laurustinus...& the wild figs & a thousand nameless plants sown by the wandering winds [forming a] landscape like mountain hills intersected by paths like sheep tracks."

Woodward finishes by stating emphatically that "If the archaeologists had arrived before Shelley there would be no Prometheus Unbound."

This obsession of ruin lovers is somewhat of a fetish. Gustave Flubert wrote in a letter:

"I love above all the sight of vegetation resting upon old ruins; this embrace of nature, coming swiftly to bury the work of man the moment his hand is no longer there to defend it, fills me with deep and ample joy." 

In one of the many fascinating anecdotes in Woodward's book, he describes a study by an English botanist, Flora in the Colosseum (1855). The study found more that 420 species of plants growing in the Colosseum, including trees, 56 types of grass, 41 types of peas, and many wild flowers. He writes that 

"Some flowers in the Colosseum were so rare in western Europe that the only explanation for their presence was that nearly two thousand years before their seeds had been scattered in the sand from the bodies of animals brought from the mountains of Persia or the banks of the Nile for the gladiatorial games." 

The botanist concludes that the plants, "tell us of the regenerating power which animates the dust of mouldering greatness." 

When it comes to the life of a ruin, there are two potential routes: if the building is actively destroyed, there is a period in which it is a ruin before nature invades. However, if the building is abandoned, then as nature moves in the building becomes a ruin. In the latter case, it is clear that invasive flora is a critical part of the ruin. In the former case, the vegetation still plays an important role, turning the site from a place of horror to an area with hazy memory, where the terror is less real and more distant. In a sense the vegetation helps with the healing process. In most cases, people prefer to see a ruin encrusted with vegetation than one that remains stark and real. Only when we wish for ruins to serve as a memorial do we keep them unencumbered by plant-life.

Ruin Criteria I: Dangerous?

This is the first in a series of posts that will address the central question of "What is a Ruin?"

There are many abandoned buildings within the built-up urban fabric of Jerusalem. Some of them are relatively new, some are in pretty good shape. Avid urban explorers might be tempted to sneak in and check them out - that's part of the fun of old, ruined buildings. To protect against this, abandoned buildings are often sealed off. However, sometimes the buildings pose enough of a danger that added warning is required, as in the President Hotel on Ahad Ha'am street. In the sign below, you can see this. I especially like the icon of the building collapsing.

Are ruins necessarily dangerous? I think that it's important that ruins be abandoned and that no one is taking care of them. I suppose this means that one day they will become dangerous. Let's say that the life cycle of a ruin begins when the building is abandoned, but only really gets moving once it becomes dangerous. That's when the structure starts to fail and the building starts to fall apart. However, on the other end, eventually the building collapses enough that it stabilizes and no longer poses a danger. According to this logic, a ruin doesn't necessarily have to be dangerous, but unless it either IS dangerous or HAS BEEN dangerous, it isn't really a ruin. Rather, it's just an abandoned building.

Modern Ruins - The British RAF Base Remains - Rosh Ha'Ayin

Watchtower on Ha'avoda in Old Industrial Area

Old Industrial Area, Ha'avoda 21

Old Industrial Area, Ha'avoda

On Shalom Mantzura, a British building converted into living quarters, separate units done up, yet parts of the building remain ruinous...

Shalom Mantzura

Old Industrial Area, Ha'avoda 17

Shalom Mantzura 19

Graffiti on Ruinous British Building, part of which is still in use for a tabacco factory, the graffiti says, 'Tehillim neged Tilim' - 'Psalms against Missiles', reflecting the religious persuasion of many of the original population of Rosh Ha'ayin.

Tobacco Factory Building, Shalom Mantzura 32