Nobile rovina. Desinunt ista, non pereunt

Three paths to ruin. Before being a work, or great work, it is primarily a remnant: cessa- tion of function, uselessness, achieved gratuitousness. Must we infer its appeal is an attempt to redeem architecture from the yoke of the immense mechanism of utility holding under its iron heel every interstice of the capitalist Großstadt? An extreme, extraordinarily naive strategy to escape the hinges of the ratio of late modernity with its efficiency, functionality, and profit. Or is it a link to Bataille’s grande tradition, that long Western season founded on the underground, cohesive unity of the diverse expressions composing life’s colorful mosaic? Or an unexpected, clever move to anticipate-annul the work of time, confirming nihil sub sole novum: quid est quod est? ipsum quod fuit. Finally, spoliation – loss faced with a diametrical reversal of meaning, clai- ming a new condition, an unprecedented integrity born of liberation and denuding: «a work of art makes manifest the wholeness of the Form». If ruin is the result of the formless, the non-in- stituted, gradually consuming the formed – the Vorstellung – here we hypothesize a stalemate, a conquered equilibrium. The object lies not in the motility of passing, but in frozen suspension. Ruins thus appear as emblemata: ancient codes lost, yet still revealing with rough evidence the rational writing that generated and ordered them (und die Toten/ knospen und blühen).