http://www.gsd.harvard.

edu/course/the-ruin-aesthetic-episodes-in-the-history-of-an-architectural-
idea-spring-2016/

The Ruin Aesthetic:

Episodes in the History of
an Architectural Idea
Course NumberHIS-04420-00

Hours/LocationMon 10:00 AM 1:00 PM @ Gund - Gropius

Spring 2016

Seminar

4 Credits

Website

Instructor

Erika Naginski

Department
Architecture

One of the arresting images in Michel Serres's Rome: The Book of

Foundations is the idea that history is a knot of different times a
knot rendered visible by the tangible traces of past civilizations. The
knot of which Serres speaks applies as readily to the stratigraphic
realities of Roman urban space as to the composite aesthetics of 18th-
century ruin pictures or Auguste Rodin's Symbolist recasting of
Medieval church portals. Artifacts, fragments, vestiges, rubble, debris,
detritus,wreckage: all this has prompted a venerable body of writings
and objects that work the metaphor of ruin into anything from a
template for the Sublime to a mechanism for iconoclastic violence. We
will begin by thinking about architecture and the vision of the past in
the early modern period, considering a range of examples from the
Hypnerotomachia Poliphili to antiquarian treatises. We will then
consider how the cult of the ruin has shaped nostalgia and dystopia in
modern contexts. Examples might include the Surrealist discovery of
the broken column house at the Desert de Retz, Le Corbusier's
apprehension of columns segments from the north facade of the
Parthenon, Albert Speer's ruin theory of architecture, the Heideggerian
concept of Ruinanz and the reflection of absence in the National
September 11 Memorial. Readings by Arnaldo Momigliano, Alois
Riegl, Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault, Manfredo Tafuri and
Anthony Vidler among others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaEl_c9NUjE

https://issuu.com/gsdharvard/docs/pathssoundsruins_8e364d63de3184

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ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLE Change Over Time

Riegl's "Modern Cult of Monuments" and the Problem

of Value
By Lamprakos, Michele
Read preview
Article excerpt
The Venice Charter (1964) reaffirmed the historicist principles of the Athens Charter (1931),
recasting them in terms of universal values. Since then, critics of the Venice Charter have
attacked many of its premises, in particular, its focus on material authenticity. In response,
some representatives of official discourse have retrenched-defending the objective validity of
the charter, while expanding the range of "values" that guides its application. In essence, they
have attempted to reconcile notions of the monument inherited from the Enlightenment with
the "postmodern" idea of multiple and shifting values. The result has been an ever-expanding
definition of the "monument"-without serious questioning of the underlying principles that
guide its treatment. Ever larger and more complex objects-vernacular building types,
neighborhoods, and landscapes-are treated according to the same museological standards once
reserved for monuments and art objects. This process has, in effect, frozen large swathes of
the built environment in time-a situation that is unsustainable in cultural, social, and economic
terms.1 Even those who are sympathetic to a more inclusive definition of heritage worry
about the "rampant relativism" that may ultimately undermine the project of preservation
itself.2

Alois Riegl's classic essay "The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Origin" (1903)
is often cited as the first and most profound formulation of values-based preservation. This
tremendously influential essay is generally seen as the beginning of the modern approach to
monuments.3 Yet few have analyzed this dense and tremendously influential essay in its
historical context.4 The essay was in fact the introduction to a draft preservation law, which
Riegl wrote soon after his appointment to the Austrian monuments commission. Informed by
his training in law and art history and by his experience as a museum curator, it is a carefully
crafted treatise with a practical aim: to outline a method for managing the growing body of
antiquities in the charge of the state. Some scholars attribute the problems of preservation to
Riegl's successors who, they say, have misread Riegl or failed to assimilate his insights.5 This
essay will argue that, on the contrary, the dilemma of modern preservation theory and practice
was inherent in Riegl's own project.

Riegl's ideas about the monument have been widely discussed, in particular, his grasp of the
sociohistorical dimensions of preservation-that is, how attitudes to monuments have
developed over time.6 Riegl (1858-1905) was a brilliant historian, affiliated with the Vienna
School and its radical rethinking of the history of art. In the nineteenth century, art history had
been told through the lens of universal ideals of beauty and aesthetics: the development of art
was framed in terms of major and minor periods, of conformance to the ideal and deviation
from it. Riegl disputed this view: he argued that both the production and reception of art are,
like other spheres of human endeavor, subject to historical development. They emerge from
the Kunstwollen-a difficult and much-debated term, sometimes translated as the "will to art"
of a particular age.7 Riegl turns the traditional view of the monument on its head, as it were;
he argues that the monument is defined not by fixed, objective criteria, but rather by the
perceptions of the viewing subject. At the end of his life, during his brief association with the
Austrian monuments commission, Riegl applied his ideas to the monument, in draft
legislation and in a number of articles and opinions.

Riegl proposed an evolutionary sequence of these changing perceptions in the essay that we
know as "The Modern Cult of Monuments"-actually the theoretical introduction to his draft
law. He identifies these perceptions with certain stages in human history, which, however,
may coexist in a given period (a key point to which we will return; Fig. 2). A monument may
be seen as the bearer of collective memory (that is, in terms of what Riegl calls its
"commemorative value"), as an historical document ("historical value"), or as testimony to the
endless cycle of life and decay ("age value").

https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-3551453071/riegl-s-modern-cult-of-monuments-and-
the-problem
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