Abstract

The article is devoted to the exploration of the perspective of the ontology of architecture as proposed by the renowned art critic, architect, and thinker John Ruskin. The main focus is on identifying his approach, which can also be applied to the development of contemporary "new ontologies" and/or "flat ontologies" in architecture and possibly in other forms of art. An assessment of Ruskin's approach is provided from the standpoint of experience in interpreting the evolving architectural reality. In summarizing the scientific discourse on the ontology of architecture, several key problematic issues are identified; in particular, it is shown that this concept receives almost no attention in domestic discourse, while among foreign researchers, the emphasis is mainly on identifying specific "manifestations" of ontologies. Additionally, an evaluation is made of Ruskin's search for theoretical and methodological foundations of the ontology of architecture. The main methodological perspective of the study is systems analysis, which allows for embedding John Ruskin's approach into both the theory of architecture and the ontology of architecture. The main conclusions of the conducted research, the primary results of which are presented in this article, include the following points: 1) the heuristic significance of the category of the ontology of architecture is assessed from the perspectives of both domestic academic discourse and foreign discourse; 2) the experience of analyzing architecture by John Ruskin in a traditional or classical key, tracing back to the classical ancient tradition and based on established architectural theory, is summarized, within which, for example, Architecture and Construction are clearly distinguished; 3) the significance of Ruskin's approach for analyzing contemporary architectural phenomena, which are also based on the so-called "new ontologies," is demonstrated; 4) the applicability of Ruskin's approach to the analysis of contemporary architectural phenomena and the changing architectural reality is revealed, and their scientific value is justified.