"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.

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.