TY - BOOK

T1 - Ruskin's Decay

T2 - Architecture, Geology, and Wisdom

AU - Espersen-Peters, Kurt

PY - 2025/4/16

Y1 - 2025/4/16

N2 - John Ruskin had a life-long love of architecture, especially old buildings. He valued them for their age and longevity in the face of decay. As much as he loved old buildings, he loved mountains even more. Mountains were the closest thing Ruskin had to tangibleevidence of God’s intention. But mountains were also falling apart before his eyes, prompting him to ask if we were witnesses to the ‘earth’s prime’ or the ‘wreck of Paradise’. In a world Ruskin saw as being divinely ordained, the question was not about how mountains eroded but why they were permitted to do so. His dilemma was reconciling the splendour and beauty of mountain and architectural form with the material and symbolic process of erasure and degradation. The question emerged: how was decay to beunderstood?This dissertation identifies the material and spirito-theological connections between architecture, mountain form, and wisdom through the concept of decay in the works of John Ruskin. It establishes a running cross-dialogue with existing aesthetic, architectural,and wisdom scholarship by Rosenberg, Landow, Hewison, Fitch, Birch, Wheeler, and O’Gorman, and argues a contiguous perspective on decay that is often overlooked. The thesis traces Ruskin’s awareness of decay across his long creative life of observing aging buildings, unsculptured mountain peaks, and personified natural forces, demonstrating a predilection towards organic decay that is creative and beautiful. Ruskin’s aesthetic and geological investigations reveal how divine wisdom governs decay and emerges as a common link in shaping architectural and mountain forms. Wisdom unites the rulingintention of the creative act, a physical force impacting the degradation of material form, and prudential guidance in the activities of humanity. Ruskin visualizes decay not as a destructive act but a creative one—a becoming ordained by the divine mind, affirmingthat mountains, like buildings, are designed to decay.

AB - John Ruskin had a life-long love of architecture, especially old buildings. He valued them for their age and longevity in the face of decay. As much as he loved old buildings, he loved mountains even more. Mountains were the closest thing Ruskin had to tangibleevidence of God’s intention. But mountains were also falling apart before his eyes, prompting him to ask if we were witnesses to the ‘earth’s prime’ or the ‘wreck of Paradise’. In a world Ruskin saw as being divinely ordained, the question was not about how mountains eroded but why they were permitted to do so. His dilemma was reconciling the splendour and beauty of mountain and architectural form with the material and symbolic process of erasure and degradation. The question emerged: how was decay to beunderstood?This dissertation identifies the material and spirito-theological connections between architecture, mountain form, and wisdom through the concept of decay in the works of John Ruskin. It establishes a running cross-dialogue with existing aesthetic, architectural,and wisdom scholarship by Rosenberg, Landow, Hewison, Fitch, Birch, Wheeler, and O’Gorman, and argues a contiguous perspective on decay that is often overlooked. The thesis traces Ruskin’s awareness of decay across his long creative life of observing aging buildings, unsculptured mountain peaks, and personified natural forces, demonstrating a predilection towards organic decay that is creative and beautiful. Ruskin’s aesthetic and geological investigations reveal how divine wisdom governs decay and emerges as a common link in shaping architectural and mountain forms. Wisdom unites the rulingintention of the creative act, a physical force impacting the degradation of material form, and prudential guidance in the activities of humanity. Ruskin visualizes decay not as a destructive act but a creative one—a becoming ordained by the divine mind, affirmingthat mountains, like buildings, are designed to decay.

KW - Ruskin

KW - Decay

KW - Architecture

KW - Geology

KW - Wisdom

U2 - 10.17635/lancaster/thesis/2726

DO - 10.17635/lancaster/thesis/2726

M3 - Doctoral Thesis

PB - Lancaster University

ER -