'But what’s wrong with ruin?' Traversing inevitable loss in industrial heritage

Abstract

An architect and a cultural geographer meet to visit a vast industrial complex in southern Spain that was gradually abandoned between 1962 and 2012. Despite being formally designated as protected heritage, the practical absence of material intervention, historical interpretation, or control of access turns the act of walking through these ruins into a highly immersive, sensorial, and reflective experience. Drawing from fieldnotes and photo-documentation, this contribution is a creative praise that empirically broadens the generative potential of preserving-by-not-preserving, a novel heritage approach recently tackled in cultural geography literature.

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 891415.