Mr. Twist’s Theory of
How To Not Ruin a Ruin
The Enemies of Ruins
A ruin to one person can be very different from a ruin to another.
To some, it is something to be ignored, to be left to die. It may be of no use at all if the aesthetic is ignored and there are plenty of people who don’t have any aesthetic sense at all. These I call the ‘Ruin Ostriches’.
RUIN ENEMY #1
Ruin
Ostrich
RUIN ENEMY #2
Ruin
Rhino
To others still, a ruin is a call to action, something to correct, remake, make good. These are often good people, do-gooders. They wake up in the morning with the intention of improving the world and think they know how to do it. They are convinced that a ruin is a sad and terrible thing, evidence of the destruction caused by the passage of time. They don’t like to see this sadness and want to make everything happy again. Well-intentioned, they may not have any more aesthetic sense than the others. To them, a ruin is like an old man in the street who they’d like to make young again. And they are always using expressions like ‘former glory’. They are as eager as beavers, and have a Pavlovian tendency to start re-building at the mere mention of the word ruin. These I call the ‘Ruin Beavers’.
RUIN ENEMY #3
Ruin
Beaver
When you argue with them, they often say it is authentic to return a ruin to its original state for no other reason than it was never intended to look the way it does now. Sure, the architect or patron certainly didn’t plan it to look this way. But do we need to be slaves to historical intention? Architecture is something to respect but time also deserves a bit of respect, and the passage of time, even devoid of intention, can be an artist too.
The ruin beavers don’t realise, for structures that have lost most of themselves, the goal of returning them to their original state is unlikely to be possible anyway – unless the building had been intact after the invention of photography or unless there happens to be a painting or etching from the right time. If they are not careful, they will find themselves following in the footsteps of the 19th century architect Viollet-le-Duc who recreated Carcassonne, with an emphasis on the word ‘recreated’ because he used more creativity than accuracy in his role as restorer . At least if the beavers are going to rebuild, they should realise they are operating in fantasy land rather than authenticity.
"Like a wine, a ruin improves with age. Don't convert it back into grape juice."
Mr. Twist, 1st January 2016
The reality of ruins is that we don’t have a choice not to make a choice because time is making the choice for us. The beavers understand this and see the situation as a battle between time’s destruction and their own intervention, which only propels them into action with double energy.
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In short, those who leave ruins by the wayside to die, and even the good samaritans who resuscitate them, are, one and all, ruin eradicators. The first eradicate by letting the bulldozers do the bulldozing or by letting time do the bulldozing while they are dozing. The second eradicate by rebuilding a ruin and polishing it so that it ceases to look anything like the ruin it once was. It is a sad world in which we find ourselves having to coin expressions like, ‘the ruin it once was’.
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The Friends of Ruins
The Ruin as a Ruin
But instead of letting people leap into action or others lapse into inaction, we can of course quite simply keep a ruin as a ruin, hence the same of this movement. It can be stabilised in its present state, frozen in time in its moment of decay.
What has been lost is not always a loss. It can indeed be a gain because the parts that remain become a new structure in their own right. People sometimes wonder what the missing parts looked like when they could better be enjoying what remains. It’s a clear case of the old adage of whether someone sees the glass half empty or half full. Or perhaps ruin appreciators can have their own expression, ‘half empty is fully full’. At least, that’s what I like to say.
The people who take this positive view of a deteriorated structure are the ‘ruin lovers’. For them, a ruin is a finished work and often a masterpiece – art made by a partnership between architect and time. True ruin lovers don’t apologise for a ruin by saying that it still retains the beauty of the original structure. Also, they don’t like a ruin just because its condition proves its age. They like it in its own right. Former glory is irrelevant– they appreciate the present glory and want to do something to bottle that.
RUIN FRIEND #1
Ruin
Koala
When to stop the clock?
Once we accept the notion that a building that has been made incomplete by time can be more beautiful than if it were rebuilt, we also logically need to accept that the current moment in time isn’t necessarily the perfect one to stop the clock. It would indeed be arrogant to assume that it should be frozen precisely now simply because we happen to be appreciating it precisely now.
So, there is a further option – intentionally letting a ruin deteriorate further if you believe that it isn’t yet ripe. This is the most sophisticated form of ruin respect because you are respecting its potential to become a ‘better’ ruin. Such people I call the ‘ruin connoisseurs’. They take their connoisseurship so seriously that they’ll wait for the right moment to pick the grapes and make the wine. That said, to qualify for the title, a ruin connoisseur doesn’t always have to let the ruin deteriorate further if convinced that now is the optimal time to pick the fruit.
RUIN FRIEND #2
Ruin
Owl
The Spectrum of Decay
To start with the obvious, a structure that is mostly complete is unlikely to ‘work’ as a ruin. The most simple example is a building that has lost its roof. It is better to see such structures as in need of repair and often the right thing to do is simply to repair them, not to mention the economic arguments in favour of that. We ruin lovers can be reasonable! Of course, a ruin connoisseur will point out that one could theoretically take the opposite view and let the almost-complete structure ripen over the centuries to become a beautiful ruin. Again, reasonableness should be the order of the day.
On the other hand, a structure that is more ruined than not is certainly going to be ‘ruin material’. Its remaining parts will have a new form and the missing parts will be so many that they won’t look like gaps – what we see when we look at it is the positive matter instead of the negative non-matter.
But how much of a structure needs to have disappeared before we reach the tipping point where the glass becomes half full and we’re in ruin country. Hint: the answer is not half. For my quick rule of thumb, see Mr. Twist’s “Theory of Eighths”.​
A Living Ruin
The ultimate experience as a viewer is to come across a ruin in the forest tangled in vegetation but not so tangled that you can’t make it out. Ideally there would be a natural clearing in the trees that allows the ruin to be viewed more easily but with enough decay and vegetation to persuade you that you are the first person to have seen it for a long time. It could equally be lost in the desert or in the mountains.
I remember as a child coming across a farmhouse in the woods in Tuscany near where we used to live. Roots were starting to crawl through the windows. The combination of architecture and vegetation, of man-made and non-man-made, made it a much more special place than any building or tree could ever be on its own. Since then, I have made three ruin pilgrimages to Ta Prohm in Cambodia’s Angkor region where the sense of abandonment is delicious. Another time as children, driving in the woods near Laurium in Greece, we came across some ancient marble cisterns filled with pine cones and needles.
I was once thinking about buying a ruin in Umbria. It was very much a living ruin, even to the extent that a branch knocked off my glasses. The sellers used to visit once a year and have a picnic in this magical place. They never wanted to do anything else. They were true ruin lovers. Perhaps the branches and stones were unhappy with the idea of a change in ownership, though that wasn’t the reason why I didn’t become its keeper.
Arriving at a Normandy ruin for sale, ruin agent Alain Lecornu, in a matter-of-fact way, pointed to a rope that ran from the ground up to the top of the cliff with the words, “this is the way in.” The vegetation offered me a hand and pulled me over the crest. I responded by becoming its keeper.
This feeling that you have discovered a place that has been forgotten adds to the magic of a ruin that may already be magical. Another element of magic is the feeling that it is a living ruin or more precisely a dying ruin. This sense of decay and its probably eventual disappearance, coupled with the sense that no one else is sensing it, make you feel privileged. Nothing to do with ruins, I had the same feeling when I saw a huge white owl sitting on a window ledge with only a window pane between us. For about half a second, he looked at me and I looked at him, and then it was over.
The presence of vegetation is critical to reassure you that others haven’t been standing in your shoes and also to make the point about eventual disappearance, to stress its fragility.
A ruin should look both undiscovered and fragile. The definition of a living ruin is a ruin that looks like its dying.
Living in a Living Ruin
But we can go one step further. The ultimate experience for the owner of a ruin is to live in it. To wake up each morning as part of the ruin, and to gaze out of the window upon it. To be in harmony with it but in sufficient comfort to enjoy it as a home.
RUIN FRIEND #3
Ruin
Stork
So, to deliver joy both to the visitor and the owner, the ultimate ruin is therefore one that looks like it has never been visited since it was abandoned and is declining and overrun by vegetation, and yet, in ways the visitor can’t see, it has been discreetly stabilised and made into a home.
My dream is to live in such a living ruin by creating a home that is perfectly hidden: the windows will be made a non-reflective glass and recessed behind rusted bars. The roof line will be under the ruin line – because we all need a roof but a ruin certainly doesn’t.
I am cooking dinner in the comfort of my kitchen on a stormy winter’s night – forgive me painting a dramatic picture. My car is hidden in a place where neither it nor its tracks can be seen. Then, as my guests’ car crosses the bridge a sensor brings down the lightproof blinds on all the windows.
The visitors are visible in the night vision camera as they trudge through the long grass wondering where I might be or if they’ve come to the wrong address. They see no signs of a garden, because the courtyard is overgrown with exactly what would be there if it had been left to rot. The broken gate is open and its broken condition adds further to the sense of doubt. They are by now almost certain they’ve arrived at the wrong address as a bolt of lightning lights up the whole spectacle and proves there’s nothing there but a ruin dissolving in the rain. Meanwhile I am putting the final touches to the meal in that toasty kitchen, opening a bottle of Thorrenc wine, and knowing from experience that it’s going to take them awhile to figure out where I actually live.
The guests are finally standing in front of a wooden door that might have been considered an entrance a few centuries before, and they are only standing there because there’s no more promising place to stand. Although the door is rotting, someone suggests opening it. The other guests laugh at the idea that someone could live behind it. But the enterprising guest – perhaps a ruin lover – pushes it open to find a second strong door with a bell beside it labelled “Congratulations!”
"My dream is to live in a living ruin."
Mr. Twist, 16th January 2016
The trick is over. But the guests have been tricked for a good cause. They enjoyed the sensation of discovering an undiscovered ruin and will for an evening live in a living ruin and dine where only wild animals might dine.
The ruin has passed the ultimate test as both a living and lived-in ruin. It has given the impression of being in a state of living decay and undisturbed vegetation. Even the birds nesting on the architecture were part of the game, though they didn’t know it themselves.
We, who are able to live comfortably in ruins without our presence ruining the look of the ruin, are ‘Ruin Storks’. We are living our dream.
This is my personal taste. I am not intellectually against the idea of a visible home being added in a creative way. If so, it is better for the new structure to be totally modern in look and materials and for the contrast to be exaggerated to the point where the ruin doesn’t merge with the new structure. If the language is different enough, the ruin will still be heard.