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Figure 1: Author's Picture, 2012
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Storytelling Architecture:
A fence of barbed wire holds my curiosity back, I struggle to see what lies beyond the runway and the concrete building seems to be glaring at me, speechless. I create scenarios in my head. Heavy luggage being hauled out of an old triumph car, amazed children’s faces stuck upon window panes watching planes depart and arrive, queues of impatient and excited people filling the corridors, and the sound of a plane’s wheel skidding upon the hot tarmac. The same car remains in the parking lot, now with one wheel, tilting, windows smashed. The same plane sits quietly in the middle of the runway, stripped of its engines, empty, hollow. Now fragmented, the building looks like a symbol of conflict. Light cuts through the bullet holes left in the concrete slabs, and the sound of the hustle and bustle has been replaced by the flutter of pigeons, echoing within the atrium. Everything remains untouched. Frozen in time the airport acts as a memory void, now serving as a powerful device of spatial experience. The hollowness accentuates the feeling of remembrance and the memory of a place. Remains of glass from shattered window panes and skylights cover the floor, while a blanket of dust runs throughout the departure lounge. Cafes, booths, gift shops remain vacant. It was once a busy airport, and is now a labyrinth of ruins, a space of disorientation where bombarded walls create visual layering and a depth of further spaces to discover. Even though the space is lifeless, the architecture is packed with rich stories to tell. A dialogue is formed and like performance scenes each space waits to be activated. Different emotions and interpretations are evoked due to different psychological connections people have with the building. Shards of light penetrating through spaces and glimpses into dark voids, inaccessible, make sure that emotions of nostalgia and 1 melancholy never vanish.
Figure 2: Emilia Christofis, 2009 Nicosia International Airport
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The extract of ‘storytelling architecture’ is about the abandoned Nicosia International Airport, which lies within the Buffer Zone. It is an example of how this hollow absent space, awakened my imagination, and strengthened the feeling of my identity and culture. 1
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Contents Introduction – pg. 5
Ruin Perception over Time- pg. 6
Sublime vs. Beautiful The Picturesque Authenticity in Ruins Modernism as controlled reality
Narrative of Decaying Buffer Zone- pg. 10
Nature as an Agent of Transformation Awakening Senses Dissolving Symmetries and Boundaries Absence as Remembrance
Conclusion- pg. 17 Bibliography- pg. 18
Figure 3: Nicosia Star City encompassing Buffer Zone
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Introduction I am a child of the war generation. Intense senses of war such as the sound of piercing sirens and blinding flashes of light from bombardments encompass the memories of our grandparents and parents. These memories are intensified through the existence of a landscape frozen in time; the buffer zone. In 1974 the Island of Cyprus became a battleground of a Turkish invasion which resulted in the partition of the island. The buffer zone developed into a ‘No Man’s Land’; the land inbetween. The south of it is controlled by the government of Cyprus and the north by the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. The area is a demilitarised zone, guarded by the United Nations Peacekeeping force in Cyprus. Nicosia remains the last divided city in Europe. The part of the buffer zone that I am examining lies in the old town of Nicosia, a scarred landscape which has been put on pause for 39 years. Once the magnet of social interaction, it now contains fragments of a past life. Ruins of houses, boutiques and restaurants wrap the remaining scattered personal possessions. In the architectural ruin the past is present in its decaying form. The fact that the buffer zone is inaccessible creates a powerful tool in triggering the emotions of nostalgia for the people of Cyprus. The word nostalgia reflects a feeling of longing for the past also described as melancholy in the early modern period, becoming an important element in romanticism. The word is derived from the Greek word ‘nostos’ meaning home and the word ‘algos’ meaning pain. What distinguishes the decaying landscape of the Nicosia buffer zone from other ruins is that it rests static, untouched by human interventions symbolising a vessel full of memories. It evokes emotions of pain, anger and reminiscence. An ‘anxious landscape’ develops where inaccessibility keeps one in tension and makes us curious to explore the depth of layers within the ruins. One is left to visualise an imaginary world through various cuts in the wounded landscape. It almost resembles a painting, a scene that you can only see and not walk through to taste the experience. Anxiety in the ruin is explored by Freud. (Trigg,2012) It is distinct from the surrounding world in its capability to distort our rational grip on space and time. It seems dead, but continuously growing, belongs to the past but lingers in the present and lacks life but at the same time full of it. These peculiar dialectics of the ruin is what creates anxiety as we try to comprehend its presence. Spectators of the ruins are either viewers or victims. What is it that encourages us to perceive debris as waste in one place and as ruins or even monuments in another? The buffer zone is a physical trace of war. It is an uncomfortable reminder of pain to the people of Cyprus, the victims. Similar to the ruins of the Second World War in Germany, these landscapes are seen as collectors of war memories. (Krejberg,2010) They could be seen as unwanted heritage distorting the peaceful present. Ruins are the result of the passage of time and symbolise the uncertainty of things that were concrete. When treated and repaired, its clean and perfect symmetry could be described as a monument. Decay and human absence defines an authentic ruin. (Simmel, 1911.) The fact that the buffer zone is inaccessible to humans and has been frozen in time, portrays it as more than a war remnant, but also as a space transformed by Mother –Nature. For some visitors the ruin provokes fascination and curiosity, wondering about the nearly disappeared past, slightly evident through ruins’ cracks but also imagined through the visible contrast of the past and present. It is through this contrast that stories and memories are activated. People are forced to connect the dots which would create the whole picture of what could have happened within a specific scene.
The aim of this paper is not to try to encourage ruins as places of restoration and monumentality, nor seek to answer artificial questions whether ruins are beautiful. Rather it tries to show the experience of an untouched ruin landscape, where natural decay continues uninterrupted. There is a 5
belief throughout the text that within the absence of a space, there is a rich presence such as the progress of nature and our lingering imagination. In order to understand this mysterious presence, concepts of the sublime, obscurity and ruggedness fascination explains the beginning of landscape feeling.
Ruin Perception over Time Sublime vs. Beautiful
Thomas Burnet (1681) talked about how the earth, until the Flood, had been smooth, perfectly symmetrical, but that later it was blemished by mountains and wounded by the deep uneven rivers and seas. It seems here that Burnet was persuaded that the earth was not at its original state and its majestic irregularities and disorder perplexed his sense. He saw the world made up of broken materials, as a great ruin. At the beginning of the 18th century beauty was evaluated by classical rules and architectural aesthetics were grounded upon mathematical proportions. Contradicting these ideals were thinkers such as Edmund Burke (1729-1797) and Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804). They believed the word beautiful described an elegant symmetrical form delightful to the eye and the sublime as an irregular, obscure form that would provoke an emotional experience. Kant argued that a beautiful object would have a perfect symmetry containing boundaries whilst the sublime was a formless, rough, boundless object.(Kant,1790) A perfectly worked out ‘mathematical’ object would put limits upon the spectator’s imagination, whilst a ‘dynamic’ form, dictated by the rhythms of nature, would let the mind travel limitless. Beauty reaches a concept of ‘understanding ‘the surface of a beautiful monument whilst the sublime delves deeper becoming the ‘reason’. According to Burke, the pleasure of beauty activates calming effects on the fibres of the body, whereas sublimity tightens these fibres creating emotions of pain and fear. (1756) Darkness, silence, roughness and obscurity are sublime qualities which describe the viewer’s phenomenological relation to the scene. When as spectators we immerse ourselves into the process of nature, making ourselves part of the obscure boundless scene, we experience the sublime trying to perceive it. Romanticism and the Picturesque
The ruggedness quality is what creates the 18th century picturesque, a tendency to display objects as ruins, which provide rough asymmetrical pleasing qualities. Artists’ drawings of the picturesque ruin at the beginning of the century looked artificial, broken down on purpose and the weed surrounding the architecture seemed like ornament. This idealism was reacting against the Age of Enlightenment where industrial and scientific experiments were justifying nature. Robert Hubert’s A Game of Dice Amidst Roman Ruins, (1780) unfolds a picturesque scene. Within the dilapidated classical ruins, people engage in a game of dice. As the perfect symmetry of the monument has collapsed, the space changes function becoming a stage set for 6
Figure 4: Hubert Robert, 1780 A Game of Dice amongst the Ruins,
daily activity. The suspenseful pause of the gambling game is reflected in the frozen narrative of the eroded monument. The colonizing nature and the game of chance highlight the temporality and uncertainty of the future. Hubert’s work is incomplete, an effect accentuated by the fading use of colour. The unfinished work becomes, as the romantic aesthetics pointed out, the creators of the imagination. Hubert’s commentator Dennis Diderot, argues that one can find greater pleasure in an unfinished sketch as ‘’the more forms one introduces, the more life disappears.’’(Diderot, 1767 cited in Dubin, 2010:11) In ruins we are able to dream. After visits to Rome the artist created dilapidated and fashionably Italian picturesque gardens in France. The gardens were filled with references to antiquity and fractured columns, creating the ideal romantic landscape. This however made objects look foreign to their surroundings, growing unnaturally. In the Stones of Venice (1851), Ruskin emphasised how an artist should be a ’’seeing and feeling creature,’’ (Ruskin, 1851 cited in Landow, 2005) that no line, no texture should be left unnoticed. In the artificial picturesque the artist is reduced to an only ‘’seeing’’ person hindering him from having an emotional approach towards the subject. Ruskin believed that it was that ‘‘peculiar character’’ ’that separated the picturesque from the sublime; he called it the ‘’parasitical sublime’’. (1851) Following Ruskin’s theories on the picturesque, when observing a scene one puts on his ‘’narrative eye.’’ The imagination puts the spectator in the midst of the landscape and he starts sketching the broader outlines of his surroundings. Having established these general outlines the narrative eye moves closer into the scene and the zoomed in vision creates a different layer of story. The increased clarity of vision reveals the faulty and asymmetrical details within nature. A broken stone reveals a selection of forms than a whole one and every stain of moss will reveal more varieties of colours. The process of nature does not only produce a beautiful scene pleasant to the eye, but also reveals a deeper layer, one which contains wounds of aging. The audience was to appreciate the ‘‘noble picturesque’’ instead of the ‘’surface picturesque’’ (Ruskin, 1851) which focused on attractive textures. The noble picturesque involved the emotional sublime qualities of aging and melancholy. It is a ruin of unpretending suffering. People began to find delight in looking at the injuries of time, as they looked more genuine. The surface picturesque is a theatrical one, making no complaint about its injuries of time. On the other hand the noble picturesque is at its sorrow state, turning its back on the tourist, not wanting to be a spectacle. It is indifferent for what one thinks about it.
Authenticity in Ruins
‘’The mosaics have fallen out of half the columns, and lie in weedy ruin beneath; in many, the frost has torn large masses of the entire coating away, leaving a scarred unsightly surface. Two of the shafts of the upper star window are eaten entirely away by the sea-wind, the rest have lost their proportions, the edges of the arches are hacked into deep hollows, and cast indented shadows on the weed grown wall. The process has gone too far, and yes I doubt not but this building is seen to greater be now than when first built.’’ (Ruskin, 1851 cited in Hunt 1992:199).
In Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture he describes that he does not discard rugged and broken lines or peculiar contrasts of light, shadow and colours. (Ruskin, 1849 cited in Hewison, 1976)These qualities represent the true patterns of nature and intensify our awareness of its power. These characteristics are effective as they remind us of forms on which true sublimity exist; rocky mountains, clouds and stormy waves.( Ruskin, 1849 cited in Landow,2005) As nature shapes our buildings we become aware of true forms and shades. He allows the viewer’s to collect the remaining pieces of evidence and reconstruct the façade in their imagination. The noble picturesque 7
is ‘’ the record of its years written so visibly’’, ‘’expressing spirit’’ allowing mental expression. (Ruskin, 1849)Our gaze upon ruins sets us free from the control of punctual chronologies and we allow ourselves to float in time. Ruskin argued that the true side of things were found in the mysterious depths hidden underneath heaps of information. No truth can be found without a taint of melancholy and nausea. Under the work of nature, lies a darkness, which is gently concealed. (Ruskin, 1849) Ruskin’s aim was not to just express nature’s beauty, but to also convey its ‘grotesqueness’ and faults which were concealed by the romantic symbol. His picturesque ruin was in-between the sublime and the beautiful. ‘’In the Ruin, history has physically merged into the setting.’’ (Benjamin, 1925:178) Walter Benjamin studies the value of a ruin as a process, a way of removing myth and stripping away romantic symbolism, coming closer to a historical truth through reduction. (Stead, 2003) Walter Benjamin as a modernist theorist condemns the romantic symbol which was involved around values of beauty and the myth image of classical principles. The symbol desires aesthetic completion and unity. As Aristotle has said, the romantic symbol outdoes history and time, displacing the suffering of life with images of a harmony and beauty. Benjamin sees the allegorical 2ruin as winning over the totalising goals of symbolism, representing frailty and finality of human life. The spectator sees in the ruin landscape an image of his own irreversible death and we start realising about the meaning and value of human life. It is a reminder that everything around us will eventually reach an end. A ruin illustrates a process of time, brokenness, where all traces of history are written upon the surface of the object. He allows us to see the world in fragments, where the passage of time does not mean development but disintegration. Destruction may be seen as a process needed to set loose history and myths, revealing a stripped down ruin open to interpretations. Through close examination of these melancholic remnants one could reason injuries of time. Benjamin’s law spoke of a true ruin, one of spontaneity, futility and delicacy of life. A ruin is accidental where the original aim of the architect has been lost. ‘’Overgrown with ivy, its’ columns fallen, the walls crumbling here and there, but the outlines still remaining’’. (Speer, 1943 cited in Stead :55) On the other hand, Speer’s Theory of ‘Ruin Value’3 was inspired by the aesthetic fascination of ruins, and his theory lies in the interest of creating a highly valued mythology of Nazi power. This theory was developed in 1943 and claimed that modern building structure did not fit into Hitler’s idealisms of passing the memory of Nazi power to future generations. Speer found it hard to imagine that decaying pieces of rubble, and rusting steel, would communicate the glory of their monuments in the future. It is clear that his interpretation of the ruins represented the ordered classical monument. He was more interested in the permanent moment and the preservation of monumentality. Speer’s intention was to use archaic methods and materials to allow the process of a pretentious decay. The ruin provides a link to aesthetic value and a way of adding age qualities, not targeting the historical truth but a story of myths, a propaganda tool, reinforced by the ruin’s picturesque aesthetic.( (Stead, 2003) Tradition meant for him an unchanging ideal. For Speer, the ugly decayed rubble meant ‘traces of destruction’ and did not reflect permanence and persistence. His controlled ruin expresses a totality, where the lack of absence does not lead the spectator to strong contemplation but leads to a clear surface understanding. Speer manipulates the process of
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Ruins are allegories as they point beyond themselves, to some absent wholeness. It invokes a tension between the present and absent of the material trace and the presence absence of the sublime. In invoking totality and sublimity, ruins become allegories of authority and deviations. Benjamin suggests that allegorical representations such as statues and poems concretize ideas the same way ruins concretize changing histories.(Benjamin, 1925) 3 Ruin value (German: Ruinenwert) is the idea of Hitler’s architect (Albert Speer) that a building is designed in a specific way so as to when it eventually collapses, it would leave behind an aesthetically pleasing ruin.
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decay by using nature as ornamentation, wanting to convey a message of immortality, a monument in disguise. It is seen as a planned monument, an artificial symbol of memory.
Modernism as a Controlled Reality
The years of the 20th century saw a scientific approach to aesthetical experience. The modernists tried to build a better world with the help of technology. As it was known, modernism claimed that mud, blood and killing of the world war left its survivors wanting a future that looked like a ‘whitetiled bathroom’. The movement was directed by Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus School of Design where form followed function and the geometric shape was praised. The simple geometry would be understood easily in its totality and ornamentation was perceived as insignificant. Whiteness was taken to signify honesty and morality. Any stain or decay would symbolise imperfection, while something clean and perfect would hold a truth. Modern architects would see stains and dirt as an accumulation of faults which had to be annihilated. Le Corbusier’s housing ideals of a ‘machine for living’, stated a new way of habitation. By restricting building exposure to the elements, he aimed to resist weathering and faults. The free forms of ruins contrast with the controlled, clean idealisms of modernism which feel like they imprison mental expression. ‘’Architecture is a stage set where we need to be at ease in order to perform.’’ (Ballard, 2006) Architecture seemed dry and our imaginations couldn’t protect us from our fears. It lacked the qualities of sublime, and feelings of mystery and emotion were absent. It projected an artificial reality, one which did not prepare us for human finality.
We can compare the voiceless idealisms of modernism and the sublime decaying landscape with Walter Benjamin’s theories of memory in his Illuminations (1969). ‘Voluntary memory’ is when we deliberately try to remember the past. The ‘Involuntary memory’ happens more naturally where unexpected encounters in life evoke recollections of the past. These two types of memories are explored in two kinds of communications. The modern newspaper carries finite, hard- edged information about the world, not intended for the user’s experience. The traditional ‘story’ informs us through an experience, rather than filling us up with facts. The voluntary memory of the newspaper is functional and has a purpose whereas the involuntary memory of the story renders a limitless experience upon the user. The replacement of traditional narration with the dry accretion of information weakens the role of an experience. Benjamin’s involuntary memory is linked with Ruskin’s description of ‘’Turnerian Topography’’ in his Modern Painters (1856 cited in Wheeler, 1995). The ‘topographical painter’ gives the spectator facts about the scene whereas the ‘imaginative artist’ cares more about portraying the impression the scene has made on his mind creating a story. What matters most to Benjamin and Ruskin is how a scene provokes the imagination, therefore building up an experience of the scene with the user. An aura is created when what we are gazing at has the ability to look back at us in return.(Benjamin,1936) The static object becomes alive through our gaze and the decaying Nicosia Buffer Zone becomes a storyteller. Before the invention of the camera, the artist would look at a scene and have control over what he wanted to convey to his audience. Today the camera captures an existing landscape, freezing the moment, allowing us to become the interpretive artists.
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Narrative of Decaying Buffer Zone The silent and inaccessible fossilized zone enhances the phenomenological relation to the scene. Absence and decay have facilitated the creation of an irregular and obscure landscape, emphasising the sublime and mental expression. The dramatic impression of decay accentuates through the sounds of a creaking step or of the wind whistling, as it passes through gaps. Within this absence an eerie echo can be heard. ‘’In the case of the ruin, the fact that life, with its wealth and changes, once dwelled here, constitutes an immediately perceived presence.’’ (Simmel, 1911:264-6) As the building decays we come to find new experiences. When you return to a house, what was once unimportant becomes dramatic and important. Layers of traces on the walls talk about past lives. Each story represents one man, in his own space and time, creating a montage of narratives over narratives. Memories become anchored to the space, the longer the time the more firm they are. (Bachelard, 1994:9) The ‘’noble picturesque’’ can describe the buffer zone as it hasn’t been designed to be a tourist spectacle and has been naturally left in the hands of nature. Its unpretentious nature has a voice of its own, displaying various narratives hidden in its dramatic landscape. With our ‘’narrative eye’’ we scan the scarred landscape of ‘no man’s land’, observing it blending into its natural surroundings. Speer’s idealisms of a controlled and glorious ruin, contrasts with the natural decay of the Buffer Zone. Its injuries rather portray a truth about our delicate humanity. The lack of human intervention in the frozen landscape provides an endless decay creating a deconstructed stratum of unexpected spaces and emerging imaginations. Nature as an Agent of Transformation
Nicosia’s Buffer Zone sits silently still, but within its absence one can notice nature’s presence. ‘’The fascination of the ruin is that here the work of man appears to us entirely as a product of nature.’’(Simmel, 1911:259-61). Signs of life and hope are visible within the scarred ‘no man’s land’ of Nicosia. Slowly moving, uninterrupted, dissecting through piles of rubble and cracks of the urban forms is natural growth. The elements of weather transform the landscape of pain into a place unknown. In the ruin, nature finally has the strongest hand; ‘’the brute, downward dragging, corroding, crumbling power, produces a new form, entirely meaningful, comprehensible, differentiated.’’ (Simmel, 1911:264-6) The buffer zone has suffered from conditions of war and then lies exposed to be transformed by the elements of the weather. Rain sculptures the stone and the symbols of life are concreted into static objects; time is embedded into the landscape. Differences between inside and outside cannot clearly be seen and the city is constantly redrawn and reimagined. In science, weathering is a power of subtraction where colours and textures of surfaces are changed by the rain, wind and sun. However, weathering can also be seen as a tool of enhancement and addition. (Mostafavi & Leatherbarrow 2001:6)These additions upon the landscape of the buffer zone create layers of disguise where melancholy could be accentuated in a poetic way. The ruins of 10
the static landscape of Nicosia can be seen as a new beginning of a transformed space meaning different things to different generations. The finishing process of decay continues uninterrupted. Design is seen as the agency that forms buildings, however in the time of construction, it is nature that re-forms the architecture. The surface of the primary landscape is covered by a ‘‘time bound growth of skin’’ (Mostafavi & Leatherbarrow 2001:64) where the accumulation represents a tension between nature’s work of art and the conditions of its location. Even though the buffer zone is seen as ‘no man’s land’’ the growth of nature upon the ruins fixes the urban structures more into the landscape becoming one with it and creating more of a place for itself. In the process of ruination the building takes on the qualities of the area in which they exist. Their colours and textures are changed, and in turn change those of the near landscape. Today the buffer zone can be seen as a place which has grown from its landscape/site and not placed there as a foreign object. There is now a bonding of the building with its place. The remnants enter invisibly one another, or flow into each other until this movement pushes the construction into bits. As the audience, we delve deep into its decay, following the journey of a narrative inscripted into the material. You start to put your own experiences into the ruin in order to describe it. A detailed look at the result that time leaves upon the texture of the material reveals a world of its own, self-sufficient, a world finely worked on like a complicated miniature. The logical relationships of scale depart and this acts as a characteristic which enhances the imagination. When looking at crumpled steel we imagine the contours of its surface and every wrinkle on the plaster awakens our curiosity.
Figure 5: Author's Picture, 2012.Buffer Zone
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Figure 5
Both pictures have been taken through holes across the barriers of the Buffer Zone. They display the fragmented viewpoints. This peculiar interaction with the scene enhances the sublime.
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Awakening Senses
The exposure of the ruin to the weather creates the textured surfaces of ruins which contrast with the smoothed over surfaces of the rest of the city. As people are prohibited from walking through the Buffer Zone, the roughness of the ruins can only be felt through the imagination, enhancing the sublime. One thinks of himself moving across the dilapidated space triggering the sensation of crumbling rubble and broken glass underfoot. He imagines the feeling of the jagged, decaying material as he runs his hand across it. One feels at odds when he stands amongst vast abandoned spaces alone. When nothing seems to be moving the quietness intensifies and the subtle sound of the rustling of leaves seems louder than usual. Empty spaces heighten echoes of symphonies created from raindrops landing on tin, glass and stone. A delicate soundscape starts to evolve. The fresh smells of the contemporary city contrast with the rich mix of mustiness and decay in the ruin. Smells of rotting wood and dampness are overlaid by the sweet smells of newly blossomed flowers in spring or summer. Our slow progress through the ruin gives us time to contemplate upon our relationship with the surroundings. The disordered space gives pleasures to the eye where one wonders the meanings and reasons behind left over life possessions in the scene. ‘’It is a way of looking and experiencing the world…it is a way of looking that feels its way round that place.’’(Latham 1999 cited in Endensor 2005:92) The sight becomes closely linked to the other sensations of the body as we try to explain the existence of deteriorated objects. Artefacts and spaces no longer have assigned functions, differentiating themselves from the ordered pattern of the city.
Dissolving Symmetries and Boundaries
‘’Through the bombed out building a stairway climbs up and up, fearless, to the roofless peak where it connects to the sky.’’(Macaulay, 1953:453-5) The metamorphosis of architecture through decay dissolves the known boundaries, creating new ones. Perfectly symmetrical spaces disintegrate into sublime places unknown. A wall becomes an opening and the bullet hole perforations allow the sun to penetrate the space in an unexpected poetic way. Timber constructed roofs slowly start caving in inviting the elements to penetrate. This further accelerates the rate of deterioration where masonry surfaces collapse creating new layers. Air borne seeds land within the envelope of the building, where they grow and finally pushing building layers further out of their original position. Olalquiaga talks about the way dust falls on modern things; it is the decay of the ‘aura’ and the deterioration of the previous ‘aura’ like the shells and debris that continuously sink to the ocean bottom, building a new layer of sediment. (1998)Every coating represents a new generation of people and the dust of the today connects with the dust of yesterday. Once dust falls, conditions of dreaming and curiosity move closer to the viewer and the urban fabric seems not static any more. The deterioration of the spaces may transform a private domestic space into a permeable, open public space which draws people in. The absent pieces trigger thoughts and fantasies. When one revisits his home after a catastrophe the bounder less building is a new level of experience. The mental expression is in tension trying to put the pieces back together whilst discovering newly formed spaces. The body moves randomly when barriers are loosened. With the destruction of guided pathways, ruins become a mysterious labyrinth structure and one is asked to take multiple paths. Therefore progress through a ruin would require: 12
‘‘improvisational path-making, according to what catches the eye or looks as if it might promise surprises…’’ (Edensor, 2005:87) Movement through a deconstructed body is comparable to the ‘derives’ undertaken by the Situationists. (1950) Spectators were encouraged to move towards unanticipated sights where the mechanical and ruled paths were disrupted. Within ruins, the absence of a centre and any linear pathways would inspire people to become ‘wanderers.’(Situationists, 1950 cited in Endensor, 2005:88) The body enters spaces not originally designed for the body, lounge on a rickety table and walk on a collapsed wall. The ruin forces the body to perform as we are forced to explore while bending, jumping and turning around obstacles. However, a zoomed out image of the city of Nicosia dictates a different pattern of movement.
Figure 6: Author's Picture, 2012. Buffer Zone
The barriers encapsulating the buffer zone of ruins direct the movement of the body. The line of division which cuts through one’s ‘place’ influences the psychological movement through the city. When our parents and grandparents return back to this familiar space which is now imprisoned, the body takes over its memories and guides it through the urban realm. It is in a state of recognition 13
where movements and habits are unconsciously triggered, but disrupted by the barriers of the buffer zone. Walking along the perimeter of the buffer zone the body is constantly pushed towards dead ends where one comes closest to the frozen ruins lying in the zone. Within these dead ends, viewpoints are limited and one sees the ruins in a fragmented way. The inaccessibity and limited viewpoints of the site enhances the sublime, the sense of obscureness and curiosity. This fragmented journey remakes the story of the place. The breaks in the journey and in ruin remnants intensify memory and the imagination. This is apparent in Bachelard’s (1950) statements; ‘thought and creation involve negation and ruptures.’(Cited in Russell, 2005) He understands themes of sequential rhythms and memory. He argues time is influenced by a dialogue of presence and absence, breaks and flows, creating a narrative of temporality, a result of human imagination. (Ibid, 2005) On the other hand Bergson’s theory of ‘duree’ in his essay Time and Free Will (1927), argues that time involves a flow, an infiltration of moments and rejects the idea that we can split duration into moments of reason and outcome.(Ibid,2005) Bachelard sees that where there is no emptiness, no void but a continuous flow between present and past, it hinders the present to create something new. These arguments may come to mind when thinking about ruins and journeys as fragments where their incompleteness trigger creation .As the eye moves along a continuous smooth surface it stops where a piece is absent or fractured allowing time for contemplation, imagination and remembrance.
Figure 7
Figure 7: Author's Picture, 2012.Buffer Zone
For Ruskin in a scene of beauty where things lie in perfect symmetry ‘’men cannot be taught to compose or to invent.’’ (1848) .The incomplete and absent qualities of the buffer zone invites people to imagine their versions of the landscape creating a hybrid between history and fantasy. By depriving the architecture from the layer of contemporaneity, the stripped down element of the ruin allows the viewer to focus in its architectural details undistracted. Walking along the buffer zone one can see the domestic scenes unfolding, resembling stage sets. Kitchen closets remain open revealing treasures of a time that has passed, scattered personal belongings lie on dusty floors and retail store fronts display forgotten antiques provoking endless inescapable narratives. None of these narratives are concrete or obvious, nor is any quality didactic, symbolic or illustrative. Objects have been left by people in fright and confusion. This highlights the present emotion of uncertainty and unease. It feels like the process of life in the area will reactivate.
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Figure 8: Tzalavras.T, 2007. Nicosia in Dark and White
Figure 8
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Absence as Remembrance
The absence which persists in the buffer zone can also be linked to the quality of forgetting. Adrian Forty talks about how places of vacancy and absence tend to stimulate the mind. One tries to remember what has been forgotten; ‘’Remembering is the malady for which forgetting is the cure’’.(Forty,1999:7) Within the Aristotelian tradition, if objects are made to represent memory, their decay or destruction implies forgetting. However for Freud physical objects could not be symbols of memory. (1936). Mental expression would not go through the same process of decay as objects in the phenomenal world. The art of Rachel Whiteread expresses these themes. The memorial for the exterminated Austrian Jews for the Judenplatz in Vienna (2000) includes a cast of the interior of a library and books as the treasures of memory. These books however are inaccessible; the shelves are empty and are carrying the negative voids imprinted by the books. Whatever is remembered has been removed and the viewer is put in a psychological condition of trying to remember what remains and inaccessible to him. The relationship between memory and objects is also investigated in the difficulties of remembrance in the Holocaust, where memorial practices were inadequate to the task. The natural task for one is to try forgetting the unbearable memory of war, but then that would risk its repetition. Only those who survived it can remember it as the writer Jorge Semprun said; ‘’they alone know the smell of burning flesh, and a day is coming when no one will actually remember the smell of burning flesh, it will be nothing more than a phrase, a literary reference, an idea of odour.’’ (Semprun, 1943 cited in Forty,1999:6) The buffer zone takes the form of an amnesiac landscape; it is not an artefact memorial, which was constructed from scratch to represent a memory. It acts as a memorial made up of a reality and allowed to decay becoming a present past. Smells, touch, sight from the past have metamorphosed but still exist in a poignant form. The generation which has lived the real smells of the war and the life that existed there will have gone soon, however the remnants of the buffer zone still awake strong thoughts to the younger generations about their identity and culture. Empty spaces, disfigured structures and the unreachable quality of the Buffer Zone, intensify the feeling of remembrance and sensitivity towards the space for the local people of Cyprus. The ruins are treasures, our connection to what occurred before, our guide to situating ourselves in the realms of time. Solnit supports that by erasing the evident public generators of memory, a city without ruins and signs of aging is ‘’like a mind without memories. ‘’(Solnit, 2007:352-3)This argument depicts the importance of preserving parts of ruins within a city in order to create a tension between the old and new, the passage of time and the embedment of our identity in a chaotic city of the future.
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Figure 9, Author's Picture, 2012. The Buffer Zone
Conclusion We are dealing with two realities; one is man’s ambition to complete projects, renew, and create perfection, while nature within time will deteriorate these until the last stop of the journey. In traditional landscapes the constructions of man yielded to nature in the form of a ruin. However in the contemporary city, buildings would have to disappear at once having reached the end of their cycle. (Picon, 2000) The contemporary world prefers its buildings functional. Absence and decay within the dense city is seen as a waste of space. However these ruined areas within the Buffer Zone of Nicosia, portray the true language of nature, slowly deconstructing and reforming what we once thought was permanent. Even though the life of the Buffer Zone has been put on pause, it has rooted itself into the landscape, constructing its own ‘place’ through an uninterrupted process of decay. This builds up a natural ruin, one stripped off didactic, spectacle and monumental symbolisms. Its natural decay portrays a rare reality of our human finality. Smithson remarks that the ruin is always dynamic and in process, giving rise to: ‘’dialectical landscapes, that hover between the geological past and the catastrophic future.’’(Smithson, 1996:68-74) 17
In the contemporary realm, ruins are not only perceived as melancholic and nostalgic, evoking a morbid enthusiasm. The layered stories inscripted upon the ruin display the various transformations our cities have gone through. They function as narrators of truth, warning us about the consequences of future catastrophic wars. Reflecting on Ruskin’s words, the process of decay has revealed nature’s rugged patterns of forms and colours upon the architectural body of the Buffer Zone. However this romantic blanket of textures does not lie alone, as it blends with the truth of its suffering history, fusing into the scenery. The incessant weathering of the zone reminds us that architectural surfaces are continuously shifting, allowing us to recognize the journey of time and uncertainty of our future. These natural transformations give the architecture a voice of its own, one that keeps fading over time, as the ruins of the Buffer Zone will slowly deteriorate5 returning back into the landscape.
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As The Buffer Zone is a war zone and inaccessible, that means restoration of the buildings cannot take place. Sooner or later the buildings will weaken even more, leading to their collapse.
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Images - Author’s photos. 2012. Nicosia Buffer Zone: Cover Photo and Figure 1. - Author’s Pictures. 2012. Nicosia Buffer Zone. Figure 5 - Author’s Pictures. 2012. Nicosia Buffer Zone. Figure 6
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- Author’s Pictures. 2012. Nicosia Buffer Zone. Figure 7 - Author’s Pictures. 2012. Nicosia Buffer Zone. Figure 9. -Georgiou.K. 2010. Nicosia Within the Walls. Available at : http://www.flickr.com/photos/39459881@N02/4841134793/. Figure 3 -Hubert.R. 1780. A Game of Dice Amongst the Ruins. Figure 4. Available: http://www.amazon.com/Futures-Ruins-Eighteenth-Century-Hubert-Robert/dp/1606060236 -Tzalavras.T, 2007. Nicosia in Dark and White. Available at: http://www.tzalavras.com/photography01.html. Figure 8 -UN News and Media Photo, 2010. Cyprus Airport Abandoned in UN Buffer Zone. Available at: http://www.unmultimedia.org/s/photo/detail/428/0428483.html.Figure 2
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