Jonathan Hill - The Architecture of Ruins: Designs on the Past, Present and Future

The Architecture of Ruins: Designs on the Past, Present and Future identifies an alternative and significant history of architecture from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century, in which a building is designed, occupied and imagined as a ruin. This design practice conceives a monument and a ruin as creative, interdependent and simultaneous themes within a single building dialectic, addressing temporal and environmental questions in poetic, psychological and practical terms, and stimulating questions of personal and national identity, nature and culture, weather and climate, permanence and impermanence and life and death. Conceiving a building as a dialogue between a monument and a ruin intensifies the already blurred relations between the unfinished and the ruined and envisages the past, the present and the future in a single architecture.

Structured around a collection of biographies, this book conceives a monument and a ruin as metaphors for a life and means to negotiate between a self and a society. Emphasising the interconnections between designers and the particular ways in which later architects learned from earlier ones, the chapters investigate an evolving, interdisciplinary design practice to show the relevance of historical understanding to design. Like a history, a design is a reinterpretation of the past that is meaningful to the present. Equally, a design is equivalent to a fiction, convincing users to suspend disbelief. We expect a history or a novel to be written in words, but they can also be delineated in drawing, cast in concrete or seeded in soil. The architect is a physical novelist as well as a physical historian.

Like building sites, ruins are full of potential. In revealing not only what is lost, but also what is incomplete, a ruin suggests the future as well as the past. As a stimulus to the imagination, a ruins incomplete and broken forms expand architectures allegorical and metaphorical capacity, indicating that a building can remain unfinished, literally and in the imagination, focusing attention on the creativity of users as well as architects. Emphasising the symbiotic relations between nature and culture, a building designed, occupied and imagined as a ruin acknowledges the coproduction of multiple authors, whether human, non-human or atmospheric, and is an appropriate model for architecture in an era of increasing climate change.

Jonathan Hill is Professor of Architecture and Visual Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, where he directs the MPhil/PhD Architectural Design programme. He is the author of The Illegal Architect (1998), Actions of Architecture (2003), Immaterial Architecture (2006), Weather Architecture (2012) and A Landscape of Architecture, History and Fiction (2016); editor of Occupying Architecture (1998) and Architecturethe Subject is Matter (2001); and co-editor of Critical Architecture (2007).

Designs on the Past, Present and Future

Jonathan Hill

First published 2019

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2019 Jonathan Hill

The right of Jonathan Hill to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hill, Jonathan, 1958 author.

Title: The architecture of ruins: designs on the past, present and future /
Jonathan Hill.

Description: New York: Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical
references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018056339 | ISBN 9781138367777
(hardback: alk. paper) |

ISBN 9781138367784 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780429429644 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Architectural design. | Ruined buildings. | Monuments.

Classification: LCC NA2750 .H55 2019 | DDC 729dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056339

ISBN: 978-1-138-36777-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-36778-4 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-42964-4 (ebk)

Typeset in News Gothic

by codeMantra

Denys Lasdun, scrapheap of discarded models of the National Theatre, London, in his studio, 1970. Courtesy of Lasdun Archive/RIBA Collections.

The Architecture of Ruins: Designs on the Past, Present and Future is dedicated to Dr Izabela Wieczorek, who makes life special, and inspired, encouraged and supported my research.

This book developed from my teaching and research at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. I particularly thank Elizabeth Dow, my teaching partner in MArch Unit 12, and Matthew Butcher for their stimulating and generous discussions. My colleagues in the MPhil/PhD Architectural Design programme offered invaluable encouragement, especially Professor Ben Campkin, Professor Nat Chard, Dr Edward Denison, Professor Murray Fraser, Dr Penelope Haralambidou, Professor Yeoryia Manolopoulou, Professor Sophia Psarra, Professor Peg Rawes, Professor Jane Rendell and Dr Nina Vollenbrker. Also at The Bartlett, I wish to thank Professor Laura Allen, Dr Eva Branscome, Barbara-Ann Campbell-Lange, Professor Adrian Forty, Dr Jan Kattein, Chee-Kit Lai, Dr Guan Lee, Professor CJ Lim, Professor Barbara Penner, Dr Tania Sengupta, Professor Bob Sheil, Professor Mark Smout and Colin Thom, Survey of London. Dialogue with an exceptional group of MArch and PhD graduates and students has influenced the character of this book, including Dr Alessandro Ayuso, Sophie Barks, Boon Yik Chung, Dr David Buck, Sam Coulton, Ben Ferns, Clare Hawes, Ines Dantas, Colin Herperger, Dr Felipe Lanuza Rilling, Ifigeneia Liangi, Aisling OCarroll, Dr Luke Pearson, Natalia Romik, Wiltrud Simbrger, Elin Soderberg, Camila Sotomayor, Quynh Vantu, Dan Wilkinson and Tim Zihong Yue. The Bartlett Architecture Research Fund supported a sabbatical and contributed to image permission costs.

I appreciate the advice of the many individuals and their institutions, who have assisted my research. These include Stephen Astley, former Curator of Drawings, and Dr Frances Sands, Curator of Drawings and Books, Sir John Soanes Museum, London; Professor Peter Brimblecombe, UEA; Colin Harris, Bodleian Library, Oxford; Kurt Helfrich, Fiona Orsini and Suzanne Walters, RIBA Drawings & Archives Collections; Christine Hiskey, Archivist, and Dr Suzanne Reynolds, Manuscript Curator, Holkham Hall; Whitney Kerr-Lewis, Assistant Curator of Designs, Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Monica Lais and H.E. Fra Emmanuel Rousseau, Curator of the Magistral Libraries and Archives, Sovereign Order of Malta, Rome; Lady (Susan) Lasdun; Jonathan Makepeace, RIBA British Architectural Library; Fiona Messham, Kedleston Hall, National Trust; Hal Moggridge, Colvin & Moggridge Landscape Architects; Secrtariat de la Trinit des Monts, Rome; Dr Joyce Townsend, Senior Conservation Scientist, Tate, London; William Whitaker, Curator and Collections Manager, Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania School of Design; and David Yaxley, Archivist, Houghton Hall.