By George Rembrandt Gutlich
(...) all things aim at contemplation and look to it as their one goal; not only rational but also non-rational animals and the nature in plants and the earth which produces them (...) Plotinus, Ennead III. 8[30]
Imagining the landscapes underlying cities, as a critique of space, allows us to reflect on the fate of an encounter between Nature and Artifice and, in this context, to recognize respect for the forces of place in architectural thought.
The design of time on constructions seem to reveal both the significance of the artifacts and the appropriateness of their location. It remains to be believed that one truth persists, or at least that this condition reveals the quality of an agreement between artificer and Nature.
Although fantastical, the recognition of resistance outlines the radical condition of ruins. Sometimes the attitude identifies the testimony in a definite way, at other times it allows speculation about the ephemerality of actions and, even beyond that, a projection. Whether as complete finitude to which all matter is destined, or as a driving force for new undertakings: Rome, even in ruins, teaches us.
In the context of memory articulating itself to generate meaning, ruins allow for the creation of multiple images. What remains allows for the emergence of a myriad of possibilities, fruits of poetic ingenuity. The corrosion of the stonework and its overtaking by vegetation alludes to an irreversible condition of existence, but also allows for unintentional invention, such as the Corinthian order, conceived from the suggestion of an abandoned column taken over by an acanthus bush.
The ruins promise more to the poetic realm than the building in its entirety, for they allow the imagination a possibility of becoming that corroborates time as a sculptor. Furthermore, as an allegory of transience, they endorse the affirmation of the Earth’s survival despite the scars inflicted on it.
George Rembrandt Gutlich, 2025