Ruskin's Decay: Architecture, Geology, and Wisdom

Espersen-Peters, Kurt and Tate, Andrew and Donaldson, Christopher (2024) Ruskin's Decay: Architecture, Geology, and Wisdom. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

John Ruskin had a life-long love of architecture, especially old buildings. He valued them for their age and longevity in the face of decay. As much as he loved old buildings, he loved mountains even more. Mountains were the closest thing Ruskin had to tangible evidence of God’s intention. But mountains were also falling apart before his eyes, prompting him to ask if we were witnesses to the “earth’s prime” or the “wreck of Paradise.” In a world Ruskin saw as being divinely ordained, the question was not about how mountains eroded but why they were permitted to do so. His dilemma was reconciling the splendour and beauty of mountain and architectural form with the material and symbolic process of erasure and degradation. The question emerged: how was decay to be understood? This thesis identifies the material and spirito-theological connections between architecture, mountain form, and wisdom through the concept of decay in the works of John Ruskin. It establishes a running cross-dialogue with existing aesthetic, architectural, and wisdom scholarship by Rosenberg, Landow, Hewison, Fitch, Birch, Wheeler, and O’Gorman, and argues a contiguous perspective on decay that is often overlooked. The thesis traces Ruskin’s awareness of decay across his long creative life of observing aging buildings, unsculptured mountain peaks, and personified natural forces, demonstrating a predilection towards organic decay that is creative and beautiful. Ruskin’s aesthetic and geological investigations reveal how divine wisdom governs decay and emerges as a common link in shaping architectural and mountain forms. Wisdom unites the ruling intention of the creative act, a physical force impacting the degradation of material form, and prudential guidance in the activities of humanity. Ruskin visualizes decay not as a destructive act but a creative one—a becoming ordained by the divine mind, affirming that mountains, like buildings, are designed to decay.