Assessing Function and the Ruin Category

Abstract

This chapter addresses objections that could be raised against the claims I make in Chap. 5. One could argue that industrial or urban ruins are not “real” ruins, because they seem to exhibit markedly different properties from structures like the ruins of antiquity, and because they simply have not been around long enough to earn the designation. One could also claim they upend other normative philosophical ideas about form and function. I dispute these claims, using examples to establish that modern structures are, in fact, ruins, that time need not be the determining factor in their creation, and we need not judge form and function (as well as changes in function) in such narrow terms.