Doctoral Thesis
This theoretical-argumentative research seeks to broaden the understanding of the study field of ruins culture and ambiances, that is, of ruinology, which develops within the field of architectural theory, through analyses that consider not only the historiographical character of ruins but also advance to a broader, phenomenological framework that considers the experience of the body in examining their ambiances and tones. The culture of ruined architecture has undergone a rupture in meaning in recent decades. While initially, in the 18th and 19th centuries, its nostalgic character was tied to the idyllic, sublime, and picturesque images that surrounded reinterpretations of buildings and cities in architectural books, over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, drastic changes in the architectural configuration of cities, coupled with the revolution in optical lenses, have indelibly impacted the culture of ruins. To conduct this thesis, a phenomenological method of investigation was chosen, where the aesthetics and lived experience of architecture lead to an action of infiltration into ruins in the cities of Petrópolis, Brazil, and Aarhus, Denmark, defined as spaces of interest through their abandoned sites. Developed along the lines of the urban exploration experience of the urbex movement (urban exploration), the infiltration into ruins is operated through corpographies, in the on-site experience of climbing and crossing apexes, shattered windows, walls, ceilings, and misshapen masonry. The phenomenological premises, therefore, serve as a framework for investigating the experience of contemporary ruin, which undergoes a distinct perspective from the centuries preceding the Great Wars. In contemporary urban architecture, the apprehension of the meanings of ruin can be catapulted by the phenomenon of multisensory perception, operated from a repertoire of imagery records situated in urban corpographies. Above all, through the use of photography as a medium for communicating ambiances, tones, and atmospheres, and along subsequent découpage, by way of chromatic shifts, as an inducer of diffuse temporality, the ethos of the ontological essence of ruined architecture, ultimately revealing subjective elements that structure the aura of its ghostly images. This paradigm shif as a result of the developed research, points to a new visual culture of ruins. Thus indicating a move from ruinology to ruinophilia, dethroning the picturesque and patrimonialist conception prevalent in theoretical-historical approaches and thus refocusing the discussion in the field of architecture and urbanism from a theoretical-cultural perspective that verbalizes the imagery power of temporality to understand the value of ruins.
LINK DA TESE
Date: 30/10/2025
Person
- Bernardo da Silva Vieira
- Daniella Martins Costa
- Ethel Pinheiro Santana [contributor]
- Niels Albertsen [contributor]
- Octávio Carvalho Aragão Júnior
- Rafael Ferreira de Souza [author]
- Rubens de Andrade
ResearchLine
- Culture, Landscape and Built Environment
Course
- Doctor of Architecture PROARQ