BEAUTY AND DECAY

Sierra Joyce

          When traveling in different spaces and areas there can be many different artifacts that can catch one’s eye on an urban exploration and present beauty within what is now destroyed, decayed, or abandoned (WG, 2010). By coming across historic artifacts in modern ruins it can create historical fascination to know more about the object (WG, 2010). Having this encounter with a decaying space or object, “not only allow us to feel an intimate human connection with people immediately before us but also begs us to think about where we are going next.” (WG, 2010). Through previous research of the space or object it can give urban explorers a greater imagination of details, ideas, and the location (WG, 2010). With different visual narratives of decaying present on buildings, nature, landscapes, or objects, it can demonstrate spatial poetry and contrast in architecture and explain spatial poetry (WG, 2010). When urban exploring, an encounter with one of these sites can present “the pathos of the strident certainty of their design juxtaposed against the poetry of their decay is hard to ignore” (WG, 2010). Beauty in an urban exploration site can not only define the space but is described to “be found in nature, in landscapes: human beauty in the ideal form, complete with equations of form that the renaissance artists discovered” (WG, 2010). As decay does not usually correlate to beauty it can be hard to find in items that are destroyed or have lost colour, shape, and size. Our culture rejects decay as it is not prescribed as social success and can cause controversy/debate towards functionality, purpose, and aesthetic functionality (WG, 2010). Although decaying spaces can be challenged aesthetically, “beauty of decay is so uncontested suggests that somewhere along the line something has radically changed in our sense of beauty without us really noticing” (WG, 2010).