Wrecking Ball

Miley Cyrus in her video Wrecking Ball. Destruction seems to be fun.

God when will you come?

Two desperate children amid ruins. "God when will you come?". Looks like... maybe never.
Nice artwork by Kokecit.

Disaster Architecture

The Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pasadena, California was designed by the Californian firm of architects Morphosis and finished in 2009.

The terra cotta facade is fragmented and reminds of buildings after earthquakes. To me it looks like the quotation of disasters like that in Chile 2010 – in this case more a kind of anticipation.

World Trade Center

"Rebel" is A graphic novel by the Spanish comic book artist Pepe Moreno. Rebel was first published in Heavy Metal magazine in 1985 and then in the following year as a graphic novel.


So it was done long before 9/11. And though Moreno left great parts of the Twin Towers standing he converted other parts of Manhattan in ruins. Anyway his illustrations seem really prophetic compared to later photos.

Lust for Destruction

I don’t like the film and I neither like Roland Emmerich as a director. But because I’m writing here about ruins, decay and destruction and the iconographic interpretation of it, I cannot prevent to write at least some few words about this nuisance.



First I’m annoyed with what great delight Emmerich celebrates (once more) the destruction of the world. Now it’s not only Godzilla (1998) trampling down New York or wicked aliens blasting away the capitals of the world like in Independence Day (1996). Neither the destruction of half of the world like in The Day After Tomorrow (2004) is enough. All this is kid’s stuff compared to the new apocalypse. Now Emmerich is tearing continents apart and engulfing the Himalayas. And nobody should think that all these disasters are a kind of warnings, how Emmerich sells them sometimes, it’s pure lust of destruction, always more, bigger and faster. Maybe he will trample down the whole universe in his next movie.

But what bothers me most, is that all these films have lost the good old grace of narration. There’s no time for a global warming or freezing, for the continental drift, all has to happen like Mission Impossible in some hours, maybe some days or weeks. Means that there is no story, there is only a hollow spectacle. Maybe that’s the real apocalypse which Emmerich is showing us.

Skyscrapers coming down

In modern architecture there is a kind of trend – at least it seems so to me – to construct buildings which look like ruins or remind of destruction. I don’t know if that is a reaction to the destruction of the World Trade Center or if it is only a kind of postmodern joke playing with its own hubris.




One of the best examples is the MahaNakhon tower, which shall be build in Bangkok. The project is headed by Ole Scheeren, one of the leading architects of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) and also the lead architect on Beijing’s CCTV headquarters.

The Bust of a Dictator

In the 1970s a bust of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos was erected near the City of Baguio in Luzon in the northern Philippines. Somehow this ugly monument survived the fall of Marcos in 1986. Finally it was badly damaged by a explosion in 2002.



I count this among my favourite ruins.