Sensing the Ruin

Abstract

After identifying the processes that have produced an increasingly sterile urban environment in which only a restricted range of sensory experience may be experienced, this article will explore the the multiple and contrasting sensual experiences that can be provoked by moving through an industrial ruin. In derelict spaces the body is generally liberated from the usual self-conscious performative constraints of the city and may move in a non-linear, improvisatory fashion across a variety of textures, comport and weave the body in expressive ways, confront powerfully unpleasant but also pleasurable and surprising smells and sounds, and behold sights which disrupt normative urban aesthetic conventions. Acquaintance with the rich and varied affordances of all sorts of materialities in ruins, where playful, experimental and unhindered interaction with objects and matter is not prohibited, can provoke a realization that the conventional urban encounter with materiality is highly ordered and restrictive, and minimizes sensual contact with the world. It is therefore proposed that the ruin can highlight the sensory deprivation inherent in contemporary cities and act as a space from which a critical perspective towards much urban planning and design might stimulate policies which multiply urban sensual experience and open up the city to multiple interpretation.

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