Ruína histórica e ruína metafísica

Abstract

The article presents a confrontation between different perspectives of architectural ruin. One, dominant in the history of ideas, inserts the ruins into the dimension of time, either as signs of the brevity of human life or as symbols of a Golden Age in which time was fixed as eternity. A different interpretation is due to the philosopher Georg Simmel, in the essay 1911 “Die Ruine” . As a human work, a building stands when consciousness and will have dominated natural materials. When it falls apart, and ends up toppling, there is a reversal of roles: it is the natural powers that play the role of active agent, finally merging the ruins in the surrounding landscape.