Late in 2021 the Escuela Superior de Agricultura Hermanos Escobar fell into ruins at the Colonia La Plata, Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The school served as the first accredited agriculture school outside of Mexico City in a nascent Mexico.Yet, its true lasting significance lies in the decay of its material resources. Because of the dilapidation, true preservation occurred at the site of its material reclamation. The fall of this adobe building begins to shift the perceptions of preservation toward a conversation of elaborate decay.
Historic preservation has hinged on an imperialist context of nostalgic renewal since its inception. In contrast, discussions of ruinous architecture centers on how structures fit into an idealized Western definition of stagnant decay. Those too decrepit to fit into this narrative are excluded from further investigation. There is a need for a middle ground. Somewhere where cultural values are equally as valid as needs for the decay. Preservation, as Rem Koolhaas has described “has almost no idea how to negotiate the coexistence of radical change and radical stasis that is our future.” An acknowledgement of the shifting perceptions towards our landscapes is vital in this conversation. We must look into the processes surrounding ruination within cities; those aspects of structures within landscapes amassing manual and natural decay, separate from their inherent or perceived cultural value.
Vernacular architectures, like the one seen in the Escuela Superior de Agricultura Hermanos Escobar, show the process by which ruination can help negotiate the need for preservation and the continuous forward movement within our landscapes.
How can designers be inclusive of the processes of decay as a way to facilitate colloquial interventions of these deserted landscapes? We must think beyond our transient occupation of these structures, and begin to acknowledge the informal activities by the disadvantaged and marginalized in communities that are often overlooked. Ruins can be utilized as a lens that expands the current scope of architecture, underlining the informal changes while enabling local participation.
Informal interventions have made the city of Juarez a model for how designers can begin to think of ruination as part of the design process. What if the school was reimagined through the lens of its ruination? This re-imagines the ideals put forth by preservation + adaptive reuse as a starting point rather than an end point. Sites like this show the vibrancy of urban ruins, still giving opportunity for the local communities during and after their decay. In order to further sustain these spaces utilized by the communities, a more cohesive approach must be made to allow for development, while incorporating the importance of evolutions within culture. Ruination can be seen as a way to give autonomy in spaces often governed and designed by agencies without context.
“Crucially, all ruins are ruins of something: a ruin is tangible proof of something missing. Moreover, the eventuality of ruin is knitted into the very being of every building.” Jason Rhys Perry illustrates the reality of natural and calculated decay, an eventuality worth learning and working alongside.
Extended decay within the city can become a generator of space. Urban decay in communities like Juarez often take advantage of the states of decay, looking for resources, and even reutilizing ruins as spaces for new activities. The significance of the ruin has preceded the use of its form. By putting forth the romanticization of the object itself, the true use for ruins is often put down.Illicit activities within ruins are as valid as those utilized for the obscene display of what was. Allowing for distinct parts of our buildings to decay beyond repair, a new framework is created for local intervention.
This gives the opportunity for new ideas to be cemented into the urban fabric, constituting their own sensibilities of their related time. Rather than solely working with issues of the building’s onset, ruination gives the opportunity to reinterpret space as a generator of social policy.
Ruins then become more of a ruinous state once preserved, dismantling any possibilities for retribution. Stagnation becomes its death. Here lies a deficit in its categorization. These structures disallow further contextualization toward a changing city, stagnating in their momentous period. Viollet-Le Duc begins to explain the misapprehension of these categorizations, “Restoration ... Both the word and the thing are modern. To restore an edifice means neither to maintain it, nor to repair it, nor to rebuild it; it means to reestablish it in a finished state, which may in fact never have actually existed at any given time.” Additive evolution is what has driven the urban landscape, while instances of preservation immobilize cultural shifts. Through the application of preservationist’s interventions, vernacular structures dematerialize into objects rather than true living places. This leads to an unavailing stasis of the built heritage cities offer.
There is a contradiction between the preservation of a city and it becoming a prisoner to its own history. The dilemmas of preservation have set an off-limits area of the city, those frozen in time for preservation of ideal architectures. While those ‘inferior’ architectures are subjugated into extermination. The larger and more important conversation has to follow what is valuable to a current society. What matters in this context becomes what is preserved.
There is a misappropriation of information within these forgotten landscapes. Gathered through weathering, climactic change, and vernacular interventions, these ecologies hold histories and data that can be utilized to better interpret extant situations. These sites have the ability to better explain the ruination process happening locally. With their validation, these new vernaculars will allow emerged ecologies to evolve away from the Western Ruin. At times spaces can divulge in totality towards ruination, and for these moments an acceleration of decay is necessary. Incorporating elements into our building design that would traditionally be considered detrimental in the preservation of a space, now allow flexibility for future interventions.
Spatial changes to the floorplan as part of its ruination aids in reconfiguration through the building’s lifespan. Spanish colonial ideals found at the Escuela Superior de Agricultura Hermanos Escobar give a sense of place for those part of the higher classes allowed to study at the school, while its courtyard is introspective in the context. The ruin process then allows for this courtyard to be opened for community usage, long after its original program delays this process. “Seeing ‘destruction’ and ‘production’ not only as part of a cycle that begins anew with production…but also as moments that reveal that space is a malleable plastic.” Gastón Gordillo poses the thought of destruction as a moment of production, which can afford a space tractility. The passage of time deconstructs the original intent of separation, while retaining the ideals of education to be preserved.
Careful considerations to reprogram the school then allows for spatial design to lead in ways that the school might evolve into a more outwardly driven space. Considering the reconstruction of certain cultural elements such as the corner condition that drove the original Spanish colonial narrative, can then be reactivated as an opportunity for community bridging through its total decay.
Cataloging the longevity of materials gives limited ideas to what these materials are able to do besides their primary function. By incorporating competing lifespans, i.e. those lifespans that might hinder or decay further materials, then a more dynamic approach to design can be achieved. Encasing steel rebar at the onset of design within adobe walls enlarges the opportunity for fracture within the adobe, effectively decaying the wall more quickly. This idea of programmed decay gives the opportunity for interventions led by its vernacular context.
The decay process then has an exponential effect. Controlling the decay as a way to reclaim material, as is often done in these urban vernacular contexts, extends the intended use of the building. In this phase of a building’s lifespan, usages not often associated with the architect’s duties are then brought into our purview. Non-traditional usages can be planned for through decay, giving a broader use to the urban fabric.
The remnants of the decay begin a new framework for development. Concrete plinths, steel rebar, and brick columns survive as both an ode to the past, and as a base for new construction. Gordillo further elaborates on the cultural influences we’ve been programmed towards. “…each of us had been socialized under culturally specific habits that predisposed us to engage with material debris from the past in strikingly disparate way.”4 Particular elements that are of importance to the citizenry of the time are allowed to be preserved in the traditional values of historic preservation, yet yield their totality of stagnation.
Construction over the elements left through ruin respect the preservationist sensibilities as a layering of histories, never succumbing to a singular narrative. Rather, buildings are then reflective of the changing typologies of its context. Ruination is an opportunity for buildings to become local reflections of social and design movements within a singular building.
Assessment beyond preservation and adaptive reuse brings a wider narrative to what the building might become. Cyclical typologies often found in the urban fabric can be considered as part of the natural order of a structure’s lifespan. These typologies then inform both aesthetic and spatial properties for the site. Decay here is informed through the reclamation cycles found in Juarez, due to security issues, political pressures, or neighborhood shifts.
Architectural elements are more easily reconsidered through decay processes. Here an adobe wall decayed through the insertion of steel rebar bridges two previously disconnected spaces. By imagining these spaces to be retrofitted, a new urban typology is created, giving greater agency to local interventions. Even elements like a window can be reclaimed as passageways or sitting areas once ruination is allowed to become part of the design process. The ideas given through decay are not ones of totality, rather of selective release of design gestalt. The reclamation of materials and space are highlighted through the ruination of the original design.
Mitigation attempts toward ruin and decay have stagnated the perceptions of historic preservation and reuse within drastically changing cities. Allowing structures to decay is a natural eventuality all parts succumb to. Yet by further instigating this decay, purposeful reuse can be achieved more readily, allowing growth and participation from the communities surrounding these areas of current blight. Living with decay allows for a more accurate grasp of what naturally occurs without the involvement of a designer. By giving a place of discourse, ruination can become a space generator at the hands of both designers and non-designers. Rather than formulating the narratives proposed by historic preservation where spaces are stagnated, ruins are able to evolve along with the city. And in contrast with adaptive reuse, the reprogramming comes at the onset of a design, not only after it has yielded to its decay. Ruination that allows a democratic conveyance of values over the materials circulating our landscapes is achievable through recontextualization of preservationist values.
