RUINS
visionary ruins
Starting with the work of François De Nomé (Metz 1593, Naples ca. 1624), this text aims to develop the intertwining of the spatial and temporal dimensions in the visionary artistic representation of the landscape of ruins at the dawn of the contemporary age, beginning with the Age of Enlightenment. The theme of the ruin as an artistic experience had already been defined as a genre in the 16th century, especially with the work of Herman Posthumus. But above all it was with François De Nomé that, at the dawn of the 17th century, the first visions of architectural ruins were developed from an imaginary point of view. These visions allowed him to articulate and construct his own architectural lexicon from assemblages of fragmentary, vestigial and multifaceted styles in a timeless dimension, which characterises much of the French artist’s work
You can also read my PhD in Spanish: MONSÙ DESIDERIO: LOS ALBORES DE LA VISIÓN ARQUITECTÓNICA CONTEMPORÁNEA.
Imaginary Landscapes of Time
In Theatrum Mundi | Ruins, architecture becomes reverie—where ruins are not remains, but remainders of time imagined. Drawing on the visionary legacy of François De Nomé (Monsù Desiderio) and echoing the shadowed engravings of Piranesi, we enter a phantasmal topography where destruction reveals possibility.
These imaginary ruins do not reproduce historical places but evoke a timeless dimension—a suspension between presence and absence. As Marc Augé wrote, ruins embody spatialized temporality: they are not just about what was, but about what persists through the hollow of what is no longer.
Here, the architecture of ruins becomes a site of haunting imagination, a mirror of lost worlds and future dreams, collapsing linear time into layered fragments. Theatrum Mundi proposes a shift: from ruin as end to ruin as beginning—a threshold for thinking other forms, other futures, other memories.
This project is not a nostalgic return but a speculative act. It’s an invitation to inhabit the fissure between decay and emergence, to sense how architecture, even in its absence, continues to imagine us.
.
Credits
Type: AI Architecture
Year: 2022-2024
Architect: Cesare Battelli
AI Labs: MidJourney. Alter (Chat GPT)
