Buildings Born Ruins: Philosophy and Architecture After the Apocalypse - Failed Architecture

The ongoing work of making the spaces in which we live cultivates a kind of alchemy, in which stronger links between people and place can arise.

Ruins can be potent "containers for emergent forms of inhabitation in a damaged world." Relating to ruins as more than nostalgic, fetishized objects interrupts our memory cycles, reminding us that place can be remade in imaginative ways even when conditions are harsh.

Reshaping ruins activates the future through experimentation with the past, a dynamic that both shifts embedded memories of physical spaces and diversifies what and how we imagine what can be.

People have been inspired to create new spaces, rituals and infrastructure amongst ruins for millennia, artists in particular. From London to Berlin to Rome to Manila, many cities have been continually built anew atop the wreckage of their pasts, with creative groups often leading the way.

When ruins become places for celebration and growth, they challenge the narrative of inevitable decay. They offer us the chance to cultivate Lefebrve’s ideas of “the right to the city” through the experience of everyday inhabitation.