RUINE
AUSGABE
Winter 2014
11€ (D)
Zeitschrift für Architekturdiskurs
Umschlaggestaltung f端r Horizonte: Paul Polaris, Boom Bang Shaka Laka, 2014
» S ie ist kein Thema, da sie vielmehr das Thema, die Setzung, die Präsentation und Repräsentation von allem und jedem ruiniert.« — Derrida
» T he Ruin is not a theme, it rather ruins the theme, the settlement, the presentation and representation of everything and everyone.« — Derrida
Der Entwurf beabsichtigt die Ruine. Der Entwurf vermeidet die Ruine. Die Ruine besch채ftigt unser Bewusstsein. Die Ruine besch채ftigt unsere Erinnerung. Ruinen sind das Ergebnis von Verfall. Ruinen sind das Ergebnis von Transformation. Ruinen entstehen durch Abtragung von Schichten. Ruinen entstehen durch Auftragen von Schichten. Eine Ruine ist immer Verkl채rung. Die Ruine ist immer klar. Die Ruine wird nicht durch Nutzung beeinflusst. Die Ruine wird durch Nutzung aufgehoben.
Editorial
Die Ruine ist immer künstlich. Die Ruine ist immer natürlich. Die Ruine ist gegenwärtige Vergangenheit. Die Ruine ist vergangene Gegenwart. Ruinen sind das Ergebnis eines Mangels an Willen. Ruinen sind das Ergebnis eines Willens zum Ruin. Ruinen stehen als Fragmente außerhalb historischer Kontinuität. Ruinen stehen fragmentarisch innerhalb historischer Kontinuität. Eine Ruine ist immer real. Eine Ruine ist immer virtuell. Die Ruine vererbt. Das Erbe ist Ruin.
The draft intends the ruin. The draft avoids the ruin. The ruin occupies our conscience. The ruin occupies our memory. Ruins are the result of decay. Ruins are the result of transformation. A ruin is always transfiguration. A ruin is always precise. Ruins are created by removing layers. Ruins are created by applying layers. The ruin is not affected by use. The ruin is suspended by use.
Editorial
The ruin is always artificial. The ruin is always natural. The ruin is the past brought into the present. The ruin is the present past. Ruins are the result of a lack of will. Ruins are the result of a will for ruin. Ruins are fragments beyond historic continuity. Ruins stand fragmentarily within historic continuity. A ruin is always real. A ruin is always virtual. The ruin bequeathes. The inheritance is ruin.
Die Ruine ist ein unbestimmbares Fragment, schwankend zwischen Todessehnsucht und Dauerhaftigkeit, entzieht sie sich unserem Verständnis. Als Verkörperung der Différance steht sie unentschieden zwischen den Dingen und verschiebt sich aufgrund unserer Versuche sie festzulegen. Indem wir sie als Träger von Diskursen betrachten und uns so weit wie möglich von Ruinenlust, der Faszination des Verfalls entfernen, glauben wir einen Zugang zu finden, der das Offensichtliche und Sentimentale meidet. Erst durch diesen Umweg kann eine Sichtweise entstehen, die nicht nur das Objekt in den Blick nimmt, sondern auch die Ambiguität, die es auslöst. Begriffe wie Gegenwart und Vergangenheit, Natur und Kultur, Erinnerung und Bewusstsein, Klarheit und Verklärung, Gedanke und Wahrnehmung werden unscharf und überlagern sich. Es eröffnen sich neue Möglichkeiten mit ihnen umzugehen, sie selbst als Möglichkeit zu betrachten. Ein Bewusstsein abseits linearer historischer Narration scheint auf, die Ruine reflektiert ihren Zerfall und verunklart ihren Zustand. Unsere Faszination der Ruine, wird zu einer Faszination des Zerfalls von Ideen. Die Abwesenheit von Sinn nicht als Verlust, als Mangel, als Unsicherheit zu begreifen, sondern diese Konnotationen umzudeuten, darin liegt das subversive und konstruktive Potential der Ruine. Horizonte Nr. 9 versucht diese dialektischen Beziehungen zu untersuchen, Perspektiven zusammenzufügen und ein Bild entstehen zu lassen, das Zweifel erzeugt und die Frage offen lässt ob am Ende mehr bleibt als das Bild der Ruine.
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Editorial
Jedes Projekt impliziert die Zerstörung anderer idealer Projekte. Wai Think Tank entwerfen einen Palace of Failed Optimism in dem zahlreiche Ruinen unverwirklicht und doch präsent bleiben. Der Optimismus der Moderne findet so eine späte Transzendenz, eine letzte Stätte, die sie vor der Ruinierung schützt. Die Ambivalenz sich wandelnder kapitalistischer und marktwirtschaftlicher Einflüsse und der Dauerhaftigkeit gebauter Struktur beschreibt Gregory Marinic in seinem Essay Heaven on Earth. Am Beispiel des Holiday Inn Downtown Houston verfolgt er eindrücklich die Transformation des Gebäudes. Der Beitrag The Destruction of Ruins as Spatial Planning von Diana Soeiro beschäftigt sich mit der Differenz zwischen intakten Gebäuden und den ruinierten Ideen, die sie verkörpern. Anhand von Gedanken Husserls und Kierkegaards zeigt sie auf, welche Folgen dieses Missverhältnis hat und wie wir damit umgehen können. Den funktionalen Verfall des Justizpalastes in Brüssel nimmt Autor Stefan Staehle zum Anlass, die monumentale Monstrosität unter si-
tuationistischen Aspekten zu untersuchen. Die architektonische Ohnmacht, einen angemessenen Umgang mit dieser modernen Ruine zu finden, illustriert sein Text All Palaces are temporary Palaces. Die Photostrecke Vogelsang Murals von Benjamin Busch zeigt die Wandmalereien in einer verlassenen Kaserne. Er macht die verschiedenen Schichten von Verfallsprozessen innerhalb eines Gebäudes sichtbar. Daniel Springer schlägt mit seinem Projekt The Library of Unbabel
das Weiterbauen eines unvollendeten Stadtteilzentrums in der Beiruter Innenstadt vor. Er reprogrammiert diesen ungenutzten Körper durch eine Strategie der Subtraktion. Dass Ruinen Symbole einer politischen und wirtschaftlichen Situation sein können, beschreibt Fabiano Micocci in seinem Essay Athens new Ruins – the extended horizon of the contemporary city. Leerstehende und nicht fertiggestellte Wohnblöcke in Athen zeugen von der Veränderung der Stadt. The Bartlebian Act untersucht das Potential des Nichtstuns als architektonisches Mittel. Miloš Kosec findet in Melvilles Bartleby eine Inspiration, deren Bedeutung sich nicht auf Architektur beschränkt, sondern vielmehr Symptom einer kulturellen Krise ist.
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In unserem Interview Letztendlich zählt das Objekt mit HHF Architekten aus Basel diskutierten wir die Bedeutung von Erinnerung, Geometrie und Eiswürfelformen und die zahlreichen Verbindungen dieser Themen zur Ruine. Louis Volkmann macht mit seinen Photographien sichtbar, dass Ruine nicht zwingend mit physischem Verfall verbunden ist. Der unaufhaltsame Einfluss der Schwerkraft ist in diesen atektonischen Körpern aufgehoben. Serafina Amoroso beruft sich auf Piranesi, dem wir die wohl wich-
tigsten Beiträge zur Ruine verdanken. Ihr Beitrag Learning from Piranesi’s etchings: plug-in tactics in contemporary ruins untersucht Taktiken, die vernachlässigte urbane Räume zu Katalysatoren neuer Aktivitäten werden lassen. Der Palast der Republik in Berlin ist im Fokus der beiden Dokumentationen AltlastPalast und Symbols in Transition. Diese dienen als Grundlage des Textes Ort der Ungewissheit von Felix Rössl. Er versucht mit seinem Beitrag eine intermediale Auseinandersetzung mit dieser authentischen Ruine. Andy Westner und Christian Zöhrer lassen sich von »Stalker« in Zo-
nen führen, die sie in Detroit, Berlin und in Rom finden. Die Stapelung städtischer Brachen die sie dort entdecken, faszinieren in ihrer Ambivalenz zwischen Erinnerung und Vergessen. Collectivo Zooburbia beschreiben in Building New Ruins die Verfeh-
lungen mexikanischer Wohnungsbaupolitik und ihre fatalen Konsequenzen. Dass Abwesenheit nicht Abwesenheit von Sinn bedeuten muss, zeigen Eric A. Kahn und Russell N. Thomsen in ihrem Projekt Thinking the Future of Auschwitz, das eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem unausweichlichen Verfall dieses Erinnerungsortes sucht und den Schwierigkeiten der Erinnerung und der Authentizität mit der Konstruktion einer Ruine begegnet.
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Editorial
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The Ruin is an undeterminable fragment: oscillating between death wish and permanence, it surpasses our understanding. Embodying the Différance, it remains undecided between things and shifts due to our attempt to define it. By considering the ruin to be the carrier of discourses and moving away as far as possible from ruin lust, i. e. the fascination of decay, we believe to find an access that avoids the obvious and sentimental. Only through this indirect approach we might form a perspective that not only focuses on the object but also on the ambiguity it releases. Concepts of present and past, nature and culture, memory and consciousness, clarity and transfiguration, thoughts and perception – become blurred and overlap. New opportunities to approach them and to see them as opportunities themselves emerge. A new consciousness beyond the linear narrative historical narrative shines through – the ruin reflects its decay and blurs its condition. Our fascination for the ruin becomes a fascination for disintegrating concepts. The absence of sense should not be seen as loss, as defect, as uncertainty. The subversive and constructive potential of the ruin lies in the ability to reinterpret those connotations. Horizonte No. 9 tries to examine this dialectical relationship, to uncover new points of view and to create a picture that raises doubts and leaves open the question whether in the end there remains more than the picture of the ruin.
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Editorial
Each project implies the destruction of other ideal projects. Wai Think Tank design a Palace of Failed Optimism in which numerous ruins remain unrealized and still are present. The optimism of the Modern Age thus finds a late transcendence, a last site which protects it from ruination. In his essay Heaven on Earth Gregory Marinic describes the ambivalence of changing capitalist and market-based influences and the durability of built structures. He impressively portraits the transformation of the Holiday Inn Downtown Houston. The article The Destruction of Ruins as Spatial Planning by Diana Soeiro deals with the difference between intact buildings and the ruined ideas they embody. Based on Husserl’s and Kierkegaard’s thoughts she demonstrates the consequences of this discrepant and how to deal with them. In our interview Letztendlich zählt das Objekt with HHF architects from Basel we discuss the significance of memory, geometry, ice cube trays and its numerous connections to ruins. Serafina Amoroso refers to Piranesi to whom we owe the most im-
portant articles on ruins. Her article Learning from Piranesi’s etchings: plug-in tactics in contemporary ruins analyses strategies for transforming neglected urban areas into catalysts for new activities. Daniel Springer’s project The Library of Unbabel proposes to continue with the construction of an unfinished district center in the inner-city of Beirut. He reprograms this unused object by using a strategy of subtraction.
In his essay Athens new Ruins – The extended horizon of the contemporary city, Fabiano Micocci describes how ruins can be symbols of a political and economic situation. Vacant and unfinished apartment buildings bear witness to the city's changes. The Bartlebian Act explores the potential of inactivity as an architectural tool. In Melville’s Bartleby, Miloš Kosec finds an indication for symptoms of a cultural crisis whose importance is not only relevant to architecture. Stefan Staehle takes the functional decay of the Palace of Justice in
Brussels as an occasion to examine the monumental monstrosity under situationist aspects. The architectural helplessness to find an appropri-
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ate approach for maintaining the building is illustrated in his text All Palaces are temporary Palaces. Louis Volkmann photographies visualise that a ruin is not necessarily
connected to physical deterioration. The inexorable influence of gravity seems to become neutralized in this atectonic objects. The photo series Vogelsang Murals by Benjamin Busch displays mural paintings in deserted barracks. He visualises the different layers of processes of decay within the building. The documentations AltlastPalast and Symbols in Transition focus on the Palast der Republik in Berlin. They serve as a Basis vor the article Ort der Ungewissheit by Felix Rössl. In his text he attempts an intermedial examination of this authentic ruin. Andy Westner and Christian Zöhrer are guided by »Stalker« into
districts they find in Detroit, Berlin and Rome. There they discover a stacking of urban brownfields which are fascinating due to their ambivalence between memory and oblivion. In Building New Ruins Collectivo Zooburbia describes the shortcomings regarding Mexican housing policy and their fatal consequences. Eric A. Kahn and Russell N. Thomsen show that absence itself does
not necessarily lead to an absence of meaning. In their project Thinking the Future of Auschwitz, they seek a controversial argument about the inevitable decay of this memorial site. They try to face the difficulties of memory and authenticity with the construction of a ruin.
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EDITORIAL
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Wai Think Tank Daniel Springer Palace of failed The Library of Unbabel Optimism 21–31
69–77
Gregory Marinic 43. Heaven on Horizonte Vortragsreihe Earth Consumption, Fabiano Micocci Obsolence, Athens new and Ruin at the Holiday Inn Ruins – The extended Downtown horizon of the Houston contemporary city Diana Soeiro The Deconstruction Miloš Kosec of Ruins as The Bartlebian Act Spatial Planning HHF Architekten Stefan Staehle Letztendlich All Palaces zählt are temporary das Objekt Palaces 79–85
33–45
87–99
101–111
47–55
113–125
57–67
INHALT
Louis Volkmann Schleuse & Steinbruch
127–135
Benjamin Busch Vogelsang Murals
Andy Westner & Christian Zöhrer Die Ruine der Moderne – Rom Berlin Detroit
189–195
137–143
Collectivo Zooburbia Building New Ruins
Serafina Amoroso Learning from Piranesi’s etchings: Eric A. Kahn plug-in tactics & Russell N. in contemporary Thomsen Thinking the Ruins Future of Felix Rössl Auschwitz Ort der Ungewissheit
197–203
145–157
159–169
Editorial 10–17
Further Reading 219
Paul Polaris Boom Boom Bang Bang
Autorenverzeichnis 220–223 Impressum 224
171–186
205–217
Wai Think Tank
Palace of failed  Optimism
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»They wanted to build one vast barn or hangar, new and shiny, a festive hangar. While we were already under the ruins, the remains of that barn, which had collapsed so spectacularly. We belonged to the end of the epic story. They started the epic and we ended it. We saw the results, whereas they saw only the project. They were at the start, peculiar overture of the symphony, dénouement fell to our share. […] While we remain human, we plan. Everyone has projects. But if we realize them in terms of politics, everything ends in death and blood, in 22
the destruction of the gene pool and so on. What can we do? Thus things intended to change life for the better, those so-called universal projects should all be poured down the design-drain. They should not be put into effect, but into a special room called a museum, art, culture, i. e. they should remain on paper, or at best as wooden models. They’re all wonderful, just leave it all on paper, in the library, in the cases named Campanella, Thomas Mores, Lissitzky, Malevich and so on. [1]
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Pal ace of FAILED optimism
1 → S. 2 3 Ilya Kabakov; Ozerkov, Dimitri, Interview with Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, from Utopia and Reality: El Lissitzky, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Exhibition Catalog, The State Hermitage Museum, Moscow, 2013, p. 61–62
Every ideal project implies the destruction of other ideal projects. Since unfeasibility is its main feature, the ideal project must be
impossible to achieve. The more absurd the proportion of the ideal project, the more powerful its strength. Because the history of the ideal project is written with blood and gun powder, someone finally decided to build a place for it. A building, where ideal projects could not only coexist, but where they could harmlessly flourish. The building implied the victory of humankind by defeating the ideal project. It was conceived after realizing that failed optimism due to stagnating idealism led to the vanishing of ambition and therefore the salvation of the world as we know it; architecture as ultimate preservation. Every optimistic project deserves an afterlife. Instead of using the world as a canvas to draw the utopian picture, a special place could be designated where no dream can ever be dangerous enough. Fueled by eschatological fears and an addiction for new beginnings, the new palace was the concretization of a contemporary tragedy; always contemporary, forever tragic. It forecasts humankind’s eternal predicament with ideology as prognosis and orthodoxy as resistance. Faustian perversity in architectural form, the building was a structural Pandora’s Box, a cynical museum of philistinism; architecture as ultimate conformism. Every lost cause deserves a space to be studied, critically scrutinized. For every uncompromising enterprise, there should be a space for collecting the ungraspable need to rule lives under a cosmic order of divine canon, in the form of black squares and electronic poems, of pyramids, and hexahedrons, of beautifully idealistic master plans and horrifically dreadful concentration camps. There should be a palace for the Lissitzkys and the Kabakovs, for the Malevichs and the Tatlins, for the Moses and the Wrights, for the Le Corbusiers and the Hilberseimers, for the Haussmans and the Cerdas, for the Khidekels and the Chernikovs, for the Chiricos and the Palermos, for the Mendelsohns and the Konwiarz, but also for the Speers and the Iofans, for all the dream-makers and the nightmare enforcers, for the geodesic domes and the walled cities, for those who dream of anthropological transformations and radical new beginnings. In order to protect humankind from itself a very big pavilion was built for the coexistence of opposition and divergence, where form is free of friction and ambition can be manifest as drawings and installations, as pictures hanging from the walls and models on pedestals. A temple for the glorification of disillusionment. A palace for the ultimate ambition; architecture as ultimate absolutism.
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Projekt
Palace
Guided by the inexhaustible curiosity of desperation, the palace for ambitious projects was said to be discovered by those willing to look for it. Like a Tarkovskian Stalker, instinct could drive the optimistic – or those curious enough – to this archival cemetery where legends are truth, where the walls hold the gospels of dreamware. Walking away from a world with no more hope in hope, contours are drawn and paths crossed in the search for reciprocal faith as hope turns into failure and failure evolves into hope. In the journey to find this mystical
totem a series of pictures emanate. They are all so beautifully personal; so freshly sublime. Like postcards from an idealistic countryside they display a journey of despair. An unfathomable open book; a tour guide to the utopia of utopias.
Journey
The journey to that special place of places can be recalled as the consecration of an epiphany where despair meets hope. It starts with the incursion in an intoxicating wilderness beyond any regional boundary. Past all the bucolic openness and virgin landscapes, far from the city, deep into the woods, the sharp edges of the pyramid rise awkwardly above the dense contour of the trees. The jagged figure breaks the homogeneous calm of the surroundings, as if announcing the mysterious figure that waits. Beyond the stained bunker, an unusual silhouette can be spotted. Mythical stories described it as a palace of projects; less optimistic ones as a cemetery of utopia. Its construction was fueled by
fear of uncertainty. It started as a single block, cast in the slowness of
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Pal ace of FAILED optimism
weathered concrete, anchored monolithically to the ground. It was built like a hangar to store works, which ambitions threatened to destabilize, as in the comforting predictability of daily life, the quotidian rhythm of the status quo. Work after work, the first section was quickly filled. Projects were hung on the walls, displayed on pedestals. The walls were awash in a rain of light that poured through the slits in the ceiling. A second part was annexed, and as projects piled up, a third and a fourth section quickly followed. Every new hall rose above the previous one. Some sections sloping in ramps. Others cantilevered their flat slabs defiantly above the ground. The structure coiled always upwards. Cores with circulation systems scarcely supported the gravity defying structure. The concrete hovered with crushing weight, as if suggesting the severe density of its contents. The building, if we can call it a building, grew bigger and bigger, rising like a promethean phoenix from the ashes of perennial conformism. Spiraling under hermetic control, its every movement predetermined, calculated, it reached seventy meters high. And today it keeps growing, filled with failure and extinguished ambition. A Museum of lost projects. A palace of failed optimism‌
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