Revealing a contemporary ruin : toward understanding the ruin, landscape, and change

Abstract

An approach toward understanding the ruin in relation to a design intervention. In an important way, this thesis asks the question of how a new form can be built or introduced as the survival of the previous form. The first part describes the ruin generally, and in terms of a formal arrangement of relations undergoing change in a landscape and within the context of culture. The second part describes an approach to seeing the ruin which is singular, absolute and rooted in the romantic experience. The third part describes a relational and more relativistic approach. It is one which directs toward an understanding of design. The fourth part reveals a specific ruin of a contemporary nature that exists outside Lausanne, Switzerland. It describes, through design, a relational bridge between what exists and what is made to exist, or those "facts" which reveal temporal and spatial relationships between older and newer forms. The fifth part describes comparable references as the survival of the design, or as relational facts through which to describe the design further.