Built to fall: ruin value from romanticist ideal to materials design philosophy

Ruin value is an architectural principle endorsing the use of designs and materials that would allow buildings to age beautifully and retain their aesthetics even when transformed into ruins. Here, the principle is extracted from the political context in which its proponent, Albert Speer, proposed it and discussed as a continuation of a longer Romanticist tradition of appreciation of weathering and the melancholy beauty of things in decline. Noting its reach well beyond architecture and across other artistic genres, the principle is brought here into the context of natural sciences and the following question is analyzed: Is there room for ruin value in today’s materials science and engineering? The ensuing analysis charts the chronological appearance of a number of categories of materials where intrinsic degradation represents the key aspect of their functionality. These include biodegradable tissue engineering constructs, metallic implants designed to corrode, self-healing polymers, stimuli-responsive drug and gene delivery carriers, and intelligent, bioinspired and “living” materials whose dissipative character extends beyond energy loss to encompass their material structure as well. Common to all these materials is the embodiment of the principle that order, in some, if not all, aspects of their structure, must be ruined, and symmetries broken for matter to be brought closer to functioning as an animate, intrinsically smart, environmentally responsive system. The expositions of the ruin value doctrine articulated by Walter Benjamin, Albert Speer, and Speer’s teacher and intellectual predecessor, Heinrich Tessenow are juxtaposed throughout the discussion with the physicochemical principles underlying the structural transformations documented across each category of materials surveyed. It is concluded that the continued pursuit of viewing materials not as static objects whose properties are to be optimized at a single point in time, but as temporal processes whose value is inseparable from their aging and dissolution, will prove fruitful in the effort to endow inert matter with the adaptive, responsive and self-regulating features characteristic of living systems.