Ruins in The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable

Robert Harbison's book, whimsically titled The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable, contains a chapter titled "Ruins" which is equally whimsically. The chapter itself lacks a thesis or direction, but is rather a connect-the-dots brainstorm of ideas about ruins without much editing. Still, there are a couple of interesting thoughts that Harbison hits upon. He suggests that ruins can be classified, writing:

"We need a careful series of the degrees of ruin like a paint chart or a colour wheel as one adds further minute amounts of white (that is, of passage) to the basic tone."

While it's rather unclear what he means in the context of his paragraph, the idea itself is intriguing. Asi Shalom did something along this line when he graphed ruins as a function of time versus the percentage of the building that remained. Harbinson seems to want to chart ruins based on how long it takes them to deteriorate, from instantaneous ruins to ones that decay glacially. Other charts are possible as well, and remain to be suggested.

Harbison also explains that ruins have a lot to do with the psychic state of the viewer. We are apt to recall our own personal attachment to a site and disregard previous or later strata. Thus,

"When a childhood scene is cleared to make way for something else or perhaps for nothing else, one's first thought is not of those who lived there last, one's successors, but of one's old sensations which are now a book abruptly closed."

When dealing with a layered site like Rosh Ha'ayin, there is a Jewish memory attached with the site that dates back millenia, but is so detached and minor that it is hard to cleave to it. There are other Israeli cultural associations with the site, and there are certainly memories attached to Arab and Crusader periods. However, I personally have no overwhelming association with the site. Perhaps this will give me clairvoyance when choosing what to do with its ruins; or, perhaps it means I am not in the least bit qualified to address its ruins. Still, it is important to recognize the importance of memory - and memories can sometimes be misleading or invented - when dealing with ruins.

Finally, Harbison dedicates a large percentage of his chapter modern, industrial ruins. He explains that they are unique, in that they may still be alive, but are also in danger as they are seen as machines with little aesthetic appeal.

"Ancient ruins vividly depict the passage of time, but it is now almost frozen. By noticing them we remove them from the buffeting stream. Industrial ruins are most special in this: though large and powerful they feel extremely vulnerable. No one is going to keep them just for a spectacle, so the richer they become as ruins, the nearer and surer their demolition approaches. Only ruins only look doomed anymore, these plants and factories are."

I would venture that the modern ruins in Rosh Ha'ayin are similar - few people would consider leveling Tel Aphek or Migdal Zedek, yet the utilitarian, workaday ruins of the British buildings in Rosh Ha'ayin, especially those that have deteriorated, are in danger of being erased. In this case, the question is not whether to preserve them as functioning building, but rather should we preserve them at all. We believe they should be preserved, and that preservation as ruins serves as good, if not a superior, function.

Robert Harbison, The Built, the Unbuilt, and the Unbuildable: In Pursuit of Architectural Meaning. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1991), 99-130.

Rebuilding Destroyed Sites

Robert Bevan's The Destruction of Memory does not much deal with the perception of ruins. The book is mostly a summary of wars over the last 70 years and descriptions of the deliberate destruction caused to architecture that stemmed from them. However, in one chapter he does touch on a subject relevant to our research: the problem with rebuilding ruins. In this case, Bevan discusses the rebuilding of destroyed monuments and cultural sites. He views this as a threat the authenticity of historic buildings.

As he does throughout his book, Bevan brings a number of interesting examples. With regard to the Bamiyan Buddhas that were destroyed by the Taliban, we writes that

"UNESCO has declared that any attempt to rebuild [them] will result in the site being removed from the list of World Heritage sites forthwith. Attitudes within Afghanistan to the idea of rebuilding the statues vary. The provincial government is in favour but the country's leading archaeologist decried the idea as a 'Disney re-creation.'"

He mentions that after World War II, some important sites in London were rebuilt, including the House of Commons and Buckingham Palace, while others - mostly churches - preserved their ruinous state. The French village of Oradour-sur-Glane is also preserved as a ruin to memorialize the Nazi atrocity in which villagers were burned alive in their church. In Berlin the ruins of Kaiser-Wilhelm church were included in the new iteration. There was some debate regarding the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York as well.

The interesting point which Bevan makes is that leaving a structure as ruins can be the more authentic way of preserving the building. Attempts to rebuild a destroyed building blurs the line between real and fake. On the other hand, while it is easy to say that "a ruin is a ruin," this is not necessarily the case. If treated well, a ruin can enhance new architecture. It also runs the risk of being overly kitschy and loosing the essence of what makes a ruin powerful.