Inhabiting the Ruin: Interpretation for New Protocols of Territorial Negotiation

The project at a glance

Start date:

04 Jan 2021
Duration in months:

48
Funding:

Uni
Principal Investigator(s):

Markus MIESSEN

About

Urbanised territories are living, moving systems in which the certainties of a past heritage face present and future challenges. Now facing a decisive turning point in history, it is essential to reconsider the purpose of the actors critically—be they tangible or systemic—that shape these territories. Indeed at a time of unprecedented environmental emergency and land pressure leading to socio-spatial injustices—where we come to acknowledge the illusion we used to call modernity—a profound transformation, redefinition of architectural and spatial design protocols are in order. Today, territorial and political Europe seems to be the continent that must seize its responsibilities (Latour, 2017) and carry out exemplary practices. We consider the colonisation of nature by man—focusing on exploiting territories solely for the sake of productivity—as the driving force behind what we call ruin. Ruin is understood as the extraction of resources, raw materials from the soil to make the world we inhabit, which takes its revenge under the intricate forces of socio-environmental crises. In the face of this reality, architecture as a discipline and political tool is fundamentally overwhelmed. Hence the purpose of the architect mutates: coming from the builder to the modest interpreter of an existing socio-cultural and physical aggregate. A paradigmatic shift within the discipline is established, guided by the fundamental philosophy of ‘making do with’, and where tabula rasa is not an option, tackling the opportunities for a more weak, dispersed or reversible condition of our postmodern world.