small pieces of history in suspension

As part of our rather regular weekly trip to Chapters/Starbucks after church, Crys and I were looking through the magazines for free (if only the coffee was free). I was flipping through MARK magazine, and I came across this engaging photo exposition by Yves Marchand & Roman Meffre. The one shown in the magazine was entitled "The Ruins of Detroit," but they have two other similar expositions available on their website.

It enthralled me because it depicts an aspect of architecture that I have always been fascinated with, but more in a morbid way than in an inspiring way. That is, the decay of architecture.We see plenty of it in rural Saskatchewan in old abandoned farmhouses and dying towns. We see it in the semi-preserved ruins of Greece and Italy and Egypt. But this photo series is smack-dab in the middle of one of the (formerly) great cities of North America. They cite de-urbanization and the subsequent plummeting population of downtown cores as the cause. I buy it. We are seeing it everywhere thanks to urban-sprawl. At least Regina and Saskatoon can be given credit for having a semblance of a plan to fight this, and to retain people downtown. We'll see how well it goes, but I want to have hope.

The historian in me is conflicted, because I find these old places so visually compelling, yet they are slightly depressing, and the carpenter/architect in me wants to restore them to some sort of usefulness. Sometimes I think I should be going into urban-planning rather than into architecture.