George Simmel’s Ruin, Death and Immortality of Architecture

DOI

10.2991/icassee-19.2019.124How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Simmel; architecture and nature; work of art; ruin; death; immortality; material; dwelling

Abstract

The main distinction in the conceptualization of space in George Simmel’s work is the opposition between the activity of the spirit and nature. Nevertheless, the work of art, as the result of the activity of the spirit, uses the material borrowed from nature, but in most cases makes it indistinguishable in itself. Architecture, on the other hand, is a special kind of art, in the sense that the material in it begins to act according to its essence. As a result of this fight between nature and the spirit, nature prevails and the building collapses and turns into a ruin. The Simmel’s ruin is a turning over of the relationship that is familiar to the aesthetic object: nature, not a man, is endowed with creative power. The tragedy of Simmel's ruin shows that the aesthetic dimension of architecture reveals itself to us in the absence of human dwelling, which invariably turns out to be finite, opposing the infinite and immortal nature.

Copyright

© 2019, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.

Open Access

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Marat Nevlyutov
PY  - 2019/11
DA  - 2019/11
TI  - George Simmel’s Ruin, Death and Immortality of Architecture
BT  - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Art Studies: Science, Experience, Education (ICASSEE 2019)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 588
EP  - 592
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/icassee-19.2019.124
DO  - 10.2991/icassee-19.2019.124
ID  - Nevlyutov2019/11
ER  -