Through the looking-glass. Works and ruins

Abstract

Using the study of the work in progress photos of Albert Kahn's industrial buildings and their likeness to classical ruins and the industrial ruins of Detroit, this article attempts to analyze the relationship between two phases which occur during the lifetime of a building. Works and ruins are studied under the consideration that the two parts belong to a single process. The analysis uses examples such as the drawings of Joseph Gandy and Auguste Choisy and the theories on ruins of Georg Simmel and Robert Smithson, to define the points of convergence and divergence between the two phases and the characteristics of the overall process into which they fit. Based on this analysis, possible operational methodologies are suggested for the industrial ruins, steering away from the strict conservation of heritage and from the current state of abandonment in which they are now found, equidistant from being a monument and waste. The aim is to find modes of operation in these new anthropogenic atmospheres that are exemplified by the industrial cities of the North American 'Rust Belt'; modes which are capable of establishing a new equilibrium between human and non-human agents and between technical, cultural and biological systems.