# Ruin Figures and Ruin Fields of the Contemporary: The Post-Industrial _Parc à fabriques _

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Between “the industrial” and “the ruin” there is both an apparently stark contrast and a less obvious aﬃnity: on the one hand, the industrial is human labour geared towards eﬃcient and prodigious fabrication, consuming energy into the raw material, while ruination is the very return of the outcomes of human industriousness towards the state of prime matter; on the other hand, industry tends to ruin “natural nature” by exploitation and pollution, superseding it by an artiﬁcial, mechanical nature. Thus, ruination and production have nature in common: a reinstalled nature versus a banished nature.

This paper drafts an analogy between the post-industrial site, reinvented as (spontaneous or designed) park, and the romantic parc à fabriques. We outline connections, in terms of spatial conﬁguration and cultural perception, between the fabricated ruins of the romantic aristocratic gardens, and the ruined factories of post-industrial sites. The argument develops in four sequences: (a) introducing the original parc à fabriques and the role of the ruin ﬁgure therein; (b) proposing an extended meaning, detached from the cultural context of its original use, in reading the industrial site as factory “park”; (c) discussing ruination in the context of decommissioned industrial sites, envisaged as both ruin ﬁelds and ruined ﬁelds; (d) proposing a taxonomy of ex-industrial sites, purposefully redeveloped as parks, as contemporary reinterpretations of the parc à fabriques. Besides the tight connection between the picturesque romantic park and painting, throughout the paper, the presentation draws not only on real places, but also on ﬁne art representations. Through their mutual mirroring, in diﬀerent epochs, real places and representations both reﬂect and create a taste for the ruin in natural ﬁeld.

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