Between Visible and Imagined City. Architecture and Ruins in Oswald Mathias Ungers’ Work
Between Visible and Imagined City. Architecture and Ruins in Oswald Mathias Ungers’ Work

Summary/Abstract: Oswald Mathias Ungers’ position on the relationship between architecture and ruin is based on the same principles as his urban vision: a contradictory, dialectical, and non-homogeneous system. In OMU’s work, historical fragments define a new architectural concept conforming to contemporary urban form. He says: “I am an architect. Not a conservator of architectural assets, who focuses only on maintaining what still exists. And not a restorer, who tries only to recover what was once whole. As an architect, I am interested in realizing personal ideas, though inside the historical and architectural context.” OMU’s attitude to architecture and history clearly distances itself from a design that aims at integral reconstruction, mimesis, and evocation of ancient spaces. This attitude is demonstrated in several of his museum projects in archaeological context. The Wallraf-Richartz-Museum (1996-2000) and the Diözesan-Museum (1997) in Cologne, the Museum of Thermen am Forum (1988-1996) and the Entrance to the Kaiserthermen archeological complex (2003-2007) in Trier are a paradigm of thinking over the relationship between the “project” and “ruins.” Rotations, misalignments, and morphological sequences are, in this context, the autonomy of OMU’s design above the surface of history’s palimpsest.

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