Dobraszczyk - The Dead City

Paul Dobraszczyk is a visiting lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. His research focuses on visual culture and the built environment from the nineteenth century onwards, and he is author of Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain (2014) and Londons Sewers (2014), as well as co-editor of Global Undergrounds: Exploring Cities Within (2016) and Function and Fantasy: Iron Architecture in the Long Nineteenth Century (2016).

The Dead City is an elegantly argued and lacerating insight into our contemporary collective ruin lust. The book binds together stunning images and carefully crafted prose in an elegy to ruin aesthetics, moving adroitly between critical commentary to personal experience and propelling the reader into unexpected introspection.

Bradley L. Garrett, University of Sydney

The Dead City: Urban Ruins and the Spectacle of Decay

PAUL DOBRASZCZYK

Contents

Illustrations

Gustave Dor, The New Zealander, in Blanchard Jerrold, London: A Pilgrimage (London, 1872), wood-engraved print.

Digital wallpaper image by Alex Koshelkov showing the City of London submerged by flood waters, 2013. Reproduced by permission of the artist.

Still from 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle, 2002) showing a CGI statue above Queen Victoria Street in the City of London.

Photograph of Dresden in the aftermath of the Allied air attacks, February 1945.

The sunken dome of St Pauls Cathedral after a nuclear war as seen in The Bed Sitting Room (Richard Lester, 1969).

Rupert Jordans photograph of St Pauls Cathedral from the River Thames, from his River London series, 2013. Reproduced by permission of the artist.

Manchesters tallest building, the Beetham Tower (2006), mirroring the form of a nineteenth-century ruin on the Rochdale Canal in Castlefield.

Subsidence of blocks of stone in the wall at the corner of Hunts Bank and Victoria Street, Manchester.

Former cattle bridge suspended between the walls of the Irk culvert underneath Victoria Station, Manchester.

Former World War II air-raid shelters constructed beneath the Great Northern Warehouse, Manchester.

Image of the devil on one of the walls of the former air-raid shelters.

Manchester, getting up the steam, Builder, October 1853. Wood-engraved print.

Demolition of Royd Mill, Oldham, September 2013.

Still from A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, 1961), showing Victoria Mill on the banks of the Rochdale Canal in Miles Platting.

Interior of Hartford Mill, Oldham, March 2014.

Festival at Hartford Mill in 1864, as shown in the Illustrated London News, celebrating the owner John Platts election as the Member of Parliament for Oldham.

Brunswick Mill on Old Mill Street, Ancoats, March 2014.

Private houses under construction in New Islington in June 2015 (top), compared with a promotional hoarding depicting Urban Splashs original vision for the area (bottom).

The former Ancoats Dispensary building on Old Mill Street, Ancoats, where a vigil by local residents took place for over three years from 2011, before they secured the property in 2015.

The fence around Varosha marking the Forbidden Zone, 2013.

Decaying frontage of one of Varoshas high-rise hotel buildings, as seen from Palm Beach, 2013.

View of Varosha at night from the fence across Palm Beach, 2013.

View of Varosha from the fifth-floor terrace of an apartment building in Irakleos Street, 2013.

View northwards along 16th of June Street, Varosha, Cyprus, 2013.

First-floor hallway in a former house in Galinou Street, Varosha, 2013.

Remains of an unidentified object in the first-floor hallway of a house in Galinou Street, Varosha, 2013.

Former workshop in Akropoleos Street, Varosha, Cyprus, 2013.

View of the sarcophagus constructed around the remains of Chernobyls fourth reactor in 2007 before the new Shelter was built from 2012 onwards, showing the author standing next to the 2006 monument to those who died in the clean-up operation. Reproduced by permission of Quintin Lake.

Detail of the model used to describe the Chernobyl accident to visitors, showing the destroyed reactor.

1996 monument to the 28 firefighters killed in the immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986.

View of Pripyat from the terrace of the Polyssia Hotel, 2007.

Ferris wheel in Pripyats amusement park, due to open just days after Chernobyls reactor exploded on 26 April 1986 (photograph taken in 2007).

Soviet socialist paintings stored in a room in the former Palace of Culture in Pripyat, 2007.

Childrens education posters in a former classroom, Pripyat, 2007.

Quintin Lakes photograph of a silver birch tree growing through the floor of a room in the former Polyssia Hotel, Pripyat, 2007. Reproduced by permission of the photographer.

Gynaecological chair and gas mask in the grounds of the former hospital in Pripyat, 2007.

Childrens toys left on the seat of a rusting carousel in the amusement park in Pripyat, 2007.

I-94 Industrial Park, formerly the St Cyril neighbourhood in northeastern Detroit, 2015.

House in northeastern Detroit transformed by the artist Monica Canilao, 2015.

The Imagination Station, Corktown, 2015, created by the artist Catie Newell in 2011.

Installation in one of the houses destroyed by arson in 2014 at the Heidelberg Project, Detroit, 2015.

Structural cut in the Michigan Theater in downtown Detroit, 2015.

One of the many concrete abutments preserved in the Dequindre Cut, Detroit, 2015.

Mural in Detroits Eastern Market district, April 2015.

Mural in Hamtramck, an ethnically-diverse city within Detroit, 2015.

Mural by Revok overpainted by Sintex in Detroits Grand River Creative Corridor, 2015.

The African Language Wall, part of Olayami Dablss African Bead Museum, Detroit, 2015.

Sculpture created from recycled waste in Detroits Lincoln Park, 2015.

Scott Hocking, Ziggurat and Fisher Body 21 (20072009), photographed by Hocking in 2009. Reproduced by permission of the artist.

Graffiti in Detroits abandoned Southwest Hospital, 2015.

Some of the many representations of clocks in the Heidelberg Project, Detroit, 2015.