Rejecting Diderot, or the comeupance of 'Ruined Buildings'

In a previous post Rebecca quoted Denis Diderot as food for thought. Diderot raises an interesting point in his writing when he discussed which buildings are eligible to become ruins. Jukka Jokilehto describes Diderot's approach in his "History of Architectural Conservation":

"The concept of a 'ruin' was related to ruins of important monumental buildings; beautiful buildings made 'beautiful ruins'! The remains of less important houses could only be 'ruined buildings'." (Jokilehto, p.52)

This is a concept we did not properly consider in our review of ruins. Diderot felt that only important, beautiful buildings could become ruins in the Picturesque sense. In our ruins criteria we did not acknowledge this idea. But I think our project must clearly reject it - we, after all, dealt with ruins of industrial buildings, ruins of mass-produced buildings, which were not 'beautiful'. Nonetheless, we found that the Rosh Ha'ayin ruins were significant and could enrich the city. Diderot's concept, while fitting with the canonical, reflexive ideas of ruins, is exactly the stance against which our project rebelled. As has already been discovered by cities that have included industrial ruins into their parks, ruins of lesser buildings can be every bit as sublime as ruins of palaces and temples.

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.