‘What Benjamin’s reading of the Angelus Novus involves can be described in the following words: Once the storm of progress is associated with the myth of ‘paradise’, the task of the historian turns to deconstruction of the ‘chain of events’, and uncovering the catastrophe. A distinction can be made between natural catastrophe, such as flood and earthquake, and the historical catastrophe. The temporality entailed in history necessitates distinguishing the ruins of the past from the wreckage that is left by the storm of progress. The ruin is not just the effect of time; rather, it involves the decay of material and of course a sense of aesthetic appreciation that is bound with that sense of transitoriness that is essential to modernity’
From the essay ‘WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY?’. I found the last sentence of this quote to be a nice illustration to the temporary project name Building Ruins…
