ABSTRACT
This chapter presents observations regarding the living nature of built forms and human life and consider what happens when those forms are destroyed, either through willful acts of iconoclasm or violent destruction or through orderly normative cultural practices that destroy buildings. It discusses the issues surrounding the decay of architectural forms and the roles that entropy, ruin, and decay play in the constitution of social life. One of the persistent characteristics of decaying forms is that they represent a challenge to existing stabilities of built form. Tim Edensor’s work similarly speaks to the political implications of decay and its effects for the production of a political consciousness. The presence of decaying, unfinished and empty buildings on the territory of the former Soviet Union provides another view into the social effects of the materiality of ruination.
