Time / Agave Bloom

“Bloom where you are planted.”

— Idiom

Scale Figures, May 2016

From early March into the summer months I documented the end of a life - the swan song of an agave. The Century Plant (agave americana) is a majestic organism that can live upwards of 30 years. At the end of its life it sends up a giant stalk (20-30 ft) with yellow blooms. After it blooms, the plant wilts and the stalk falls. Hundreds of seeds are dispersed in this process and offshoots at the base of the original plant live on.  It is one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed.  A heroic farewell full of life and hope. 

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Swan Song 2016, Austin, Texas

In Search of Ruins / Nature and Manipulation

What has led the building upwards is human will; what gives it its present appearance is the brute, downward-dragging, corroding, crumbling power of nature. Still, so long as we can speak of a ruin at all and not a mere heap of stones, this power does not sink the  work of man into the formlessness of mere matter. There rises a new form which, from the standpoint of nature is entirely meaningful, comprehensible, differentiated.  Nature has transformed the work of art into material for her own expression, as she had previously served as material for art. -Georg Simmel, The Ruin

As a designer, there is a special relationship between nature and the ruin that we become envious of. Nature is both aggressive and passive in the ruins existence. Nature crafts the ruin, through time, the elements, and the destructive nature of humans themselves (i.e., war). While winds may crumble exposed walls, the wind also buries walls into the depths of the earth; A ruin is a product of loss and addition.  The ruin persists both in spite of and thanks to nature. 

Along Chaco Canyon the lines between ruins and the landscape become blurred. There are several exposed sites and so many so, that they become as common place as sage brush. Mounds in the distance are the ruins waiting to be discovered.  At Chaco Canyon, the exposed ruins are threatened and shaped by eroding winds and the extreme diurnal temperatures of the desert climate.  However the arid climate has also preserved much of the ruins, including the remaining fragments of timber that formed the ceiling and floor structures.  It seems that nature does a better job of preserving ruins than mankind. The National Parks system's current strategy to preserve the Chacoan ruins is to leave sites unexcavated. Any new explorations of the remains are primarily conducted through geophysical surveys that reveals structures underground through radar, without disturbing the sites physically. In this way, nature becomes the protector of the ruin rather than the destroyer. 

My independent study has turned into exploring this duality of ruin: loss and addition; decay and persistence. The product is a series of photographic manipulations including aggregation, addition, and subtraction.  The full series can be found here, but below is an early investigation of multiplication. 

Ruin Study #3, Chaco Canyon, NM

In Search of Ruins / Decay

ru·in  << ˈro͞oin/ >>
noun 
1. the physical destruction or disintegration of something or the state of disintegrating or being destroyed.
synonyms: disintegration, decay, disrepair, dilapidation, ruination; 
antonyms: preservation, reconstruction
verb
1. reduce (a building or place) to a state of decay, collapse, or disintegration.
synonyms: destroy, devastate, lay waste, ravage; 
antonyms: repair, rebuild

The evidence and process of decay is commonly used to define a ruin, as per a quick Google web search shown above. Decay is the result of inaction by people -- it is to let nature take its course. 

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Occupying one of the original barracks of the Chinati Foundation grounds is School No. 6. As neglected as the building seems, it was carefully crafted by Ilya Kabakov to replicate an abandoned school house of the Soviet era. Kabakov fabricated a state of decay to establish the building to be understood as a ruin. The installation evokes a sense of nostalgia and contemplates the demise of the Soviet Union culture. 

Upon a recent visit to the Chinati, the permanent installation was closed to restore the faux ruin. Despite the intentional fabrication of an abandoned school house left to degradation, a team of conservators are working furiously to maintain the illusion of decay -- adding UV protective film to the windows to inhibit decay.  Dust had been vacuumed, to be eventually dispersed again throughout the carefully orchestrated ruin. Flags on the outside had already been replaced with a "new" set of tattered red flags. The tour guide said the foundation consulted directly with the artist and was directed to maintain the level of decay at which he first depicted.

My initial reaction was of utter disgust. Kabakov, like many artists, seems to have missed the point of decay -- the process of degradation. The artist in this case claims control of the deterioration, which seems against the nature of decay itself.  It's dishonest, but perhaps this perversity is the artists intent, or not [for the record, I have not read any comments by the artist]. The power of a ruin is in the loss -- of time, matter, and understanding.  Kabakov draws on this and presents a specific moment to be experienced, rather than experiencing the destruction of the memory. In other words, Kabakov resists the ruin of the ruin. Or maybe it's just his ego. 

Ilya Kabakov, School No. 6  [1993]

In Search of Ruins / Intro

“Ruins remain.  They persist, whether beneath the ground or above.  In remaining, they are always already of the past, yet given to the future.  Ruins collapse temporalities.  Landscapes and buildings in ruination, reduced to abandoned sites, are traces that embody a sense of loss.  Ruins hold out an image of a once glorious present, another time, revealing a place of origin no longer as it was.  Their presence is a sign of that loss and of the impossibility of overcoming it.  They remind us of finitude as both disruptions and continuity, of the necessity of living on among ruins.”     -Charles Merewether

This summer I will be conducting an independent study to investigate the ruin, specifically establishing the characteristics of what makes an architectural ruin and those qualities that have made them so alluring over time. This blog will play host to my observations and investigations.

To provide context, the initial research will explore the perverse infatuation of designing for ruin, as seen through the lenses of the Romantic painters and the architectural visions of John Soane, Albert Speer, and Lebbeus Woods, as well as identifying contemporary examples. This research will inform a definition of ruin, such as defined by the characteristics of impermanence, imperfection, and abandonment.

Ruins are absent of their original context in time and function, and in the present allow for their own interpretation.  In experience, ruins evoke a variety of responses, of mortality, impermanence, loss, and the persistence of time despite it.  They seem defined by abandonment, although are valued through their experience. Thus the coursework will include a travel component to the historic ruins of Chaco Canyon and in comparison, the occupied Taos Pueblo of New Mexico. Both sites are significant and historic to northern New Mexico, however one is now a ruin, the other a still living and breathing occupied settlement. The experiences of these sites will be documented on this blog through imagery and text.  This experience will serve as the basis for further research and exploration during the summer session.

The culmination of research and experience will be physical and visual manifestations of these findings and a concluding statement on ruins as it relates to the life of a building in present context. Through this process I hope to address questions of the designers intent and control over the ruined state.

Alvaro Siza's Boa Nova Tea House in Ruin [Photograph by Tyler Noblin, 2013]

Lyons, Claire, Charles Merewether, and Michael S. Roth. Irresistible Decay: Ruins Reclaimed. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, 1997. Print.