Georg Simmel's "The Ruin": The Importance of Nature in Ruins

In a recent presentation, we listed our various Ruin Criteria. We included among them that ruins must show signs of the invasion of nature; in particular, we said, flora is an important component. After our presentation, there were some comments that this criterion was misplaced, with references to sites that may be ruins yet do not have invasive nature.

In another post about the Carmel Fires, a reader commented that fresh ruins like these have been termed "immature ruins." I think that properly captures the spirit of the matter. These ruins are ruins-in-the-making, and in a surprisingly short time nature will invade. But for now, they are prepubescent.

Returning to the question of nature, this is a good opportunity to reference an essay by Georg Simmel, aptly titled "The Ruin" (translated by David Kettler.) Simmel was a great advocate of nature as a central factor in ruins. He describes architecture as a struggle between man and nature, and a completed building as a temporary triumph of man over nature.

"This unique balance - between mechanical, inert matter which passively resists pressure, and informing spirituality which pushes upward - breaks, however, the instant a building crumbles. For this means nothing else than that merely natural forces begin to become master over the work of man: the balance between nature and spirit, which the building manifested, shifts in favor of nature. This shift becomes a cosmic tragedy which, so we fell, makes every ruin an object infused with our nostalgia; for now the decay appears as nature's revenge for the spirit's having violated it by making a form in its own image."

Simmel explains that this gives a ruin a unique position in the art world. Normally, once a work of art is destroyed it ceases to have meaning. But with architecture, a ruin carries a significance: "Where the work of art is dying, other forces and forms, those of nature, have grown." The work of man is combined with the work of nature, the building becomes a natural phenomenon. Additionally, Simmel writes that we appreciate ruins as manifestations of the saying that "all that is human is taken from earth and to earth shall return." Thus ruins are tragic, but not necessarily sad, since it is part of the natural order, "the realization of a tendency inherent in the deepest layer of existence of the destroyed."

As a parting shot, Simmel points out the innate tension that exists within ruins, a tension we in our project have noticed as well. Rather than try to resolve this tension, the ruin preserves it:

"Thus purpose and accident, nature and spirit, past and present here resolve the tension of their contrasts - or, rather, preserving this tension, they yet lead to a unity of external image and internal effect."

The importance of nature in ruins is thus fundamental. Although it is possible to argue with Simmel and explain ruin-fascination in another manner, it seems to us that the struggle between man and nature is latent and vital in ruins.

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 IV: Materials (and Time)

We tend to think of ruins as the remains of stone structures. Most likely this is because stone ruins are the most common type. Stone construction has been around for a long, long time, and stones tend to last, whereas wooden buildings decay and disappear more quickly, as do adobe brick structures and igloos. Perhaps partly due to our conditioning and partly because of an actual aesthetic superiority, stone ruins also seem to be particularly appealing.

Despite this predisposition to stone, ruins can actually result from just about any building material that can last long enough. Surprisingly enough, I'm not the first one to mention igloo ruins. While the example is silly, it illustrates my point about duration: ruins take time to develop. Depending on the harshness of the climate, twenty years is probably the bare minimum for anything remotely ruin-like. A material that is not durable enough to remain in existence for twenty plus years is therefore not going to turn into a ruin. Or, to think about it in terms of an igloo, it will become a ruin in five hours and have disappeared by ten. While elements of the revenge of nature do enter into the equation, the lack of time simply precludes this from being considered a ruin. Why does time matter? Perhaps because ruins symbolize a significant loss, and something that comes and goes in a day hardly seems significant. Perhaps it is because part of a ruin is its "continual transition caused by natural deterioration" (Paul Zucker, Fascination of Decay, p.2) and there is no continual transition in something that moves so quickly. Ruins are supposed to be "fragments of an earlier age," and 10 hours ago doesn't quite qualify.

So material does matter, but only until a certain threshold of durability. Beyond this border, there are far less limitations on ruin materials.

Chippewa Lake Park - Wooden ruins of a roller coaster.

















Adobe Ruins by Adam Schallau



















Log Cabin Ruins by John Wilson












Brick ruins in Detroit (from Ghostly Ruins by Harry Skrdla, p. 141)

















Steel Mill ruins in Bethlehem, PA

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.