Broken buildings

Wherever buildings are broken by the explosion of bombs or artillery shells, by lack of maintenance or repair, by fire or structural collapse, their form must be respected in its integrity, embodying a history that must not be denied. In their damaged state they suggest new forms of thought and comprehension, and new conceptions of space that confirm the potential of the human to integrate with the building, to be whole and free outside of any pre-determined, totalizing system. The new spaces of habitation constructed on the existential remnants of war and natural disaster do not celebrate the destruction of an established order, nor do they symbolize or commemorate it. Rather they accept with pride what has been suffered and lost, but also what has been gained. They build upon the shattered form of the old order a new category of order inherent only in present conditions, within which existence feels its strengths, acknowledges its vulnerabilities and failures, and faces up to the need to invent itself as though for the first time, thus seizing the means to continuously refresh and revitalize itself. There is an ethical and moral commitment in such an existence, and therefore a basis for community.

Lebbeus Woods, Radical Reconstruction (Princeton Architectural Press, 1997) pp. 15-16