THE AESTHETICS OF RUINS: FAILURE, DECAY, PLANNING AND POVERTY

Authors

  • João Sarmento João Sarmento Geography Department, University of Minho & Centre for Geographical Studies, University of Lisbon, Portugal http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4770-2427

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18055/Finis11806

Abstract

Ruins take many shapes and result from numerous and diverse human and non-human interactions. Acknowledging their place and arrangements, considering their spatial orderings, evaluating hierarchies, patterns and significations, and unravelling their ‘performance’, role, effect and marked absences, is key to a critical and significant engagement with the politics, grammars and productive power of materials that are in place. Ruins are material sites that animate new possibilities of living: they should be perceived as dynamic and relational, as interstitial, as sites of plurality, plasticity, dismantling and destabilizing the power of endless self-invention. Schönle’s (2006: 652) argument that ‘we cannot leave ruins alone and let them simply exist in their mute materiality’ guides the following four examples. While ruins pose challenges to planners and to politicians, constituting threats and opportunities, they speak to us of decadence, failure, loss, beauty, change and pleasure.

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Author Biography

João Sarmento, João Sarmento Geography Department, University of Minho & Centre for Geographical Studies, University of Lisbon, Portugal

Assistant Professor with habilitation at the Geography Department, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal.
Senior Researcher at the Center for Geographical Studies, University of Lisbon, Portugal ('Tourism, Culture and Space' Group).

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Published

2019-01-18

How to Cite

Sarmento, J. (2019). THE AESTHETICS OF RUINS: FAILURE, DECAY, PLANNING AND POVERTY. Finisterra, 53(109), 171–175. https://doi.org/10.18055/Finis11806

Issue

Vol. 53 No. 109 (2018)

Section

Commentary

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