In praise of dis-ordered space

"...ruins, as particular spaces for disorder, can critique the highly regulated spaces which surround them. My argument is not that spatial order is unnecessary, but that disciplinary, performative , aestheticised urban praxis demanded by commercial and bureaucratic regimes which are refashioning cities into realms of surveillance, consumption, and dwelling - characterised by an increase in single-purpose spaces - is becoming too dominant. These orderings are violated in the ruin which, once an exemplary space of regulation, has become deliciously disordered. Ruins confound the normative spacings of things, practices and people. They open up possibilities for regulated urban bodies to escape their shackles in expressive and sensual experience, foreground alternative aesthetics about where and how things should be situated and transgress boundaries between outside and inside, human and non-human spaces. Accordingly, ruins act as spaces which address the power embodied in ordering space."

Tim Edensor in Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality p19