The “temporal limbo” of neoliberal ruins: a contribution from the Portuguese case (original) (raw)
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New abandoned places: side effects of the “Miracle Architecture” in Spain
ArcHistor EXTRA, 2020
This research starts by acknowledging the central role of the idea of "ruins" and "abandoned place" in the contemporary architectural debate related to the future of neglected, degraded or simply not used spaces, which tend to rapidly become underlying ruins of the contemporaneity. This process is in fact often facilitated by a society where building is increasingly harder and the social, cultural and economic development is always unpredictable. The unusual fact, which is basically the central idea of this research, is the juxtaposition, which sounds like an oxymoron, of the two ideas of "ruins" and "contemporaneity" to explain a situation which is common in most of our cities where neglected places or even places which have never been used are abandoned. This situation shows that buildings and structures belonging to a "recent past" need an urgent upgrade and a new definition. A combination of elements sharing the same questions about the preservation and modification of the present heritage, the importance of the past for the future, the cultural and symbolic reference which should be preserved in our global society. Analysing these new circumstances, focusing on methods and strategies to recover or transform the reality is fundamental. It is possible to define two main - and somehow opposite - opinions: on one hand we have the conservation of the past, while on the other hand the past is transformed in order to be progressively "removed" to then regenerate and be reborn. Marc Augé's theory in his "Time in ruins" combines the two positions, identifying a dialectic between the ideas of "remains" and "ruins" which are both important in the process of modification. While normally the ruin is seen in a negative way as a group of objects which cannot be used anymore as they were meant to, the French anthropologist theorises an opinion which is more positive, where these objects can be transformed to take on a new meaning -social as well - for the present as "contemporary ruins". This leads us to reword the question which our research is based on: is a theorisation of "contemporary ruins" possible? Starting from the abandoned structures of the present, is the process of transformation in order to create new places with spatial and social meaning possible? If it is, which methods and strategies can be used?
Ruin and architectural heritage in Brazil: memory and oblivion
Revista Virus, 2018
This article aims to present how Brazilian preservation policies identify architectural remnants in a state of ruin as cultural assets, focusing on the monuments listed by the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN, as the acronym in Portuguese). Such study starts from the question: what can be considered a ruin? We consider a ruin as a condition of decharacterization of architectural assets from any age, affected by degradations for different reasons. Different variables make complex their understanding: cause, degree and time elapsed from the beginning of the process of ruining, age and conditions of the building’s usage. Once combined, such variables direct interpretations, suggesting the organization of this analysis into three groups: ruins of time, ruins of negligence and ruins of the incident. In this structure, we find that there is a major impasse in identifying and assigning values to the ruins within the Brazilian preservation policies: how much is it desired to historicize the ruin status? In the key of memory and oblivion that are the conflicting paths of history, ruins play an essential role because of its dual informative capacity of reminiscence and loss. They are therefore dynamic records to establish a new fruition in the cognitive processes of the construction of memory.
Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2024
Ruins and ruination have long been a source of fascination and speculation, but they hold more relevance than ever in our contemporary moment. As Gareth Williams argues, the current state of contemporary globalization should force us to confront the ongoing ruination "of the inherited modern (bourgeois, and therefore also proletarian) political and cultural formssubject, history, nation-state, 'People', fraternity, equality, liberty, etc." (2021, 65). It is only by facing this cultural and conceptual ruination that we might uncover the crisis of limitations, decontainment, and "modernity's ongoing perishing", which Williams defines as, a continual immanence of mortality, as an ontological challenge that, thanks to the rationalizations of contemporary technocapitalism, comes at us and to us as the living demise of the Enlightenment justifications of a system of guarantees and representation, freedom, rights, citizenship, subjectivity, economic and human development, the legitimacy of the Westphalian interstate system, etc. The list is endless. (2021, 99) With the aim of bearing witness to such varied forms of modern ruination, this monographic issue explores "ruins" as material and conceptual instances of exposure, vulnerability and openness. In a depleted present defined by an overwhelming sense of catastrophe and our inability to envision a/the future, ruins compel us to think. Through an engagement with the conceptual productivity of ruins, this collection of essays attempts to reimagine Iberian cultures and their futures. In particular, we use the untimely character of architectural and economic ruins to challenge the modern teleology of progress, of the assemblage of the past, present and a recovered sense of multiple futures in modern and contemporary Spanish culture. Every ruin is an unwieldy formation of materiality, of the ideological, economic, artistic and community-building programs that brought about that physical reality, and of the historical events and natural forces that have shaped each ruinous space. Unlike a finished building on the day of its dedication, a ruin is not a finished product, but a work in progress. Thus, caught in time between its past and its many undetermined futures, a ruin establishes a strange atemporal juncture of both pessimism and promise. In this sense, ruins are sites of dispossession and absence that also conjure up multiple alternative futures. As Andreas Huyssen argues, "real ruins of different
The aesthetics of ruins: failure, decay, planning and poverty
2018
This research has been sponsored by Portuguese national funds through the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT), I.P. – the Portuguese national agency for science, research and technology – under the Project PTDC/ATP-EUR/1180/2014 (NoVOID – Ruins and vacant lands in the Portuguese cities: Exploring hidden life in urban derelicts and alternative planning proposals for the perforated city).
SEEKING THE CAUSES OF URBAN RUINATION: AN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IN FOUR PORTUGUESE CITIES
Geographia Polonica, 92(1), 2019
Urban ruination is an understudied feature in the life of cities. This article discusses its causes. Based on the study of four shrinking Portuguese cities (Lisbon, Barreiro, Guimarães and Vizela), and using Multiple Linear Regression Analysis as the statistical method, the structure of relationships among ruins, economic change, demographic change, social geography and the characteristics of buildings are discussed. Although the study concludes that ruination is a highly contingent phenomenon, the results show that of all the structural factors , demographic ageing and the obsolescence of buildings (poor housing conditions) are the key causes of ruination in the four cities under study. Links between ruination and socio-spatial processes have also been identified.
Ruination and Non-places in the Neoliberal Suburb
TAG 44, 2023
The shape of recent urban interventions in Spain has often been determined by practices, networks and processes best described as neo-liberal: deregulated development fostered by deficit-averse local governments and a general move towards financialisation, both at the domestic and institutional level. At the same time, the urban built environment has been designed to satisfy some governmentality constraints, including the management of dangerous or uncontrollable groups, ease of policing, and so on. Both these trends are materialised in the design and development of Plans for Urbanistic Action (PAU, in Spanish), areas of closed residential developments characterised by their homogeneity, lack of street activity, and car-centric layout. Yet in the implementation of these interventions, material and social ‘elsewheres’ are created. By taking a housing-bubble-era (1995-2007) PAU in Madrid as a case study, this contribution will examine Marc Auge’s notion of the non-place and its affordances for archaeology and material culture studies. I will make a distinction between built-in non-places, often a a material enactment of social distinction; and those voids arising from ruination and abandonment, and which are quickly reinterpreted and inscribed with novel meanings. I will highlight the roles of phenomenological plurality and ephemerality in constituting non-places in the neoliberal suburb, to then draw some implications about the analytical potential of this framework for archaeology.
Ruins. A Visual Motif of Spanish Real State Crisis
Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema, 2019
Throughout history, ruins have represented the traces of fallen empires and post-battle landscapes. Progressively, with the urbanization of the world, there are more and more ruins which are the result of rapid construction that leaves visible traces: viewed from the air they resemble metastases, or scars. Such ruins become garbage, remains that are derived from intensive exploitation of the territory based on the rationale of the accumulation of capital, rather than the interests of the general public or environmental sustainability. Many television reports, movies and photographic works have addressed the visual motif of ruins in the context of the crisis that began in 2008. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing reflection on the issue, by examining various nonfiction titles that were published after the Auken Report (2009). My objective is to show the abundance of audiovisual representations which, apart from the testimonies, have served as criticisms of the Spanish development model from an environmental perspective and the marked inequality that this model generates.
Heritage, 2023
In Italy, the current geography of abandonment is defined by the classification of the National Strategy of Inner Areas (NSIA). The support measures envisaged by the NSIA could contribute to reducing the marginality of inner areas and promote the protection, conservation, and enhancement of historic centres. In this perspective, actions on historical buildings should be selected based on a cognitive process aimed at specifying the phenomena that have led to the progressive abandonment of historical centres and a process aimed at identifying the values and dis-values. This research proposes a ruination model aimed at highlighting the risks that the built heritage of the inner areas are exposed to. This model was implemented for the case of the historic neighbourhood of Granfonte in Leonforte. The model was developed based on a qualitative–quantitative approach aimed at detecting the preservation state and built heritage use; analysing the building fabric development; identifying the ...
Heritage
Contemporary urbanity is marked by the presence of abandonment, ruins, and voids. Over the last decades, the model of urban development in Portugal allowed a discontinuous city expansion that has left many plots and spaces empty. Due to interrupted urbanization processes, urban developments suspended in time and space have progressively degraded, constituting nowadays new forms of non-historical ruins and a significant part of the urban landscape. However, these semi constructed buildings, are not only structures made of brick and mortar, but commonly the object of several and distinct appropriations and social uses. In order to explore the socio-cultural meanings of these ruinous constructions, their social life and their material and symbolic transformation, this paper puts forward a methodology, based on systematic ethnographic observation and detailed field work. Furthermore, it applies this methodology to a case study—an unfinished project in the city of Vizela, Portugal, for w...