Farzana Hossain B’arch 2022
Acknowledgement / First I would like to thank all my family members and friends for encouraging me to keep going even when everyone was affected personally by the Novel Coronavirus. Second, I would like to thank Professor Ruben Alcolea for believing in my willingness to do this and for the hundreds of Zoom calls during a very unconventional time. I couldn’t have finished this without your guidance. Thank you for always believing in your students and helping them through their challenges. I would like to give shoutouts to my mom for telling me to take a walk every time I got frustrated, my dad for bringing snacks to my desk for my 5 min break time in between drawings and my little sister for being super understanding and mature.
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Acknowledgements..................................................................................................................................................................3 Abstract ...................................................................................................................................................................................6 Inferno .....................................................................................................................................................................................7 Site through the text ................................................................................................................................................................8 Text through the site ...............................................................................................................................................................10 Personal Interpretation of the text ..........................................................................................................................................12 Collage ...................................................................................................................................................................................14 Site Plan .................................................................................................................................................................................16 Plan ........................................................................................................................................................................................18 Limbo ......................................................................................................................................................................................20 Minos.......................................................................................................................................................................................24 Cerberus .................................................................................................................................................................................28
Plutus..........................................................................................................................................................................32 Phlegyas.....................................................................................................................................................................36 Dis ..............................................................................................................................................................................40 Minotaur .....................................................................................................................................................................44 Malebolge...................................................................................................................................................................48 Cocytus.......................................................................................................................................................................52 Purgatorio ..................................................................................................................................................................56
The Divine Comedy with its compositional, numerological, and descriptive attributes forms the program for the architectural project. This project will explore major operations as involved in design synthesis. The first reflects the understanding of the body translated into architectural space. The second will use recursive ‘extreme to mean ratio’ proportions to establish nesting, repetition and scaling, and through these a sense of unity. The third uses a pattern of overlapping geometry so as to create a dialogue between strongly differentiated interiors and transitional zones. These operations in conjunction with the compositional and narrative aspects of the poem interpreted as program make the translation from linguistic space to architectural space possible. Thus, in this case, design formulation is not based on a single metaphor, but rather on a system of metaphors working together to bring physical elements, spatial relationships and design operations within a coherent framework of design reasoning.
Translations across symbolic forms and architectural shifts require meaning necessary to create logic. They challenge us to examine fundamental metaphors as an aspect of design reasoning, particularly in relation to the construction of spatial relationships and meanings. They also involve the exploration of diagrams as a way of moving from the space of linguistic description to architectural space where topology and visual image are tightly interfaced. This project will explore The Divine Comedy into an architectural schema and will be examined as a case study. The Divine Comedy is treated as an expanded body of work that includes; in addition to the original text, a multitude of paintings, as well as Terragni’s project. Although the Divine Comedy is composed of Inferno, purgatorio and Paradiso, We will be Exploring the stages of Inferno and we will form our own understanding of afterlife and curate architectural spaces from linguistic description.
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Inferno In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno (hell) is composed of 9 circles that is described as a space of darkness. Dante starts off the chapter by saying “ I woke up to find myself in a wood so dark that straight and honest ways were gone and light was lost. O, how hard to tell the harsh horror of that wild and brutal forest! The very thought brings back a fear so stark that bitter death itself seems not much worse”. Canto 1, page 1. In this paragraph Dante’s depiction of Hell is in 9 circles and each circle captures people who committed different levels of crime. Architecturally, the spaced described in Inferno using the following words:
Cold Disorder Endless
Track Dark Dense
Forest Walls Ditches
Site through the text / The text offers an understanding of a journey of Afterlife based on Dante’s imagination. The Epic Poem gives a description of spaces that can be attributed to designing architectural Spaces. Similarly the site provides a similar way of reading The Divine Comedy. The book provides the location and physical format of Inferno. Dante walks along the poem, observing that he “goes down” when he enters in hell and “goes up” to the Mount of Purgatorio which is up to the sky, located on the opposite side of Earth crossing the river of Styx. The site provides a mountain adjacent to the main highway next to three hot Springs. Trees are planted from the bottom of the mountain and up. The Site used to be an abandoned gold and silver mine in rural Utah but has since been disregarded due to the discovery of lead and arsenal. This offered the possibility of many excavated ditches and tunnels made previously but left abandoned. The abandoned site also illustrates its ability to conform to architecture of different stages, the perfect form of rectangle and circles pertains to the perfect form of the body referred to in Dante’s reference. The isolated nature of the site allows for the creation of a world that pays homage to Dante and TheDivine Comedy and his notion of the ‘the afterlife’ -- a philosophy that explores resurrecting the dead through literature and imagination.
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Reading the text through the site/The site, Tintic Mill, offers a clear reading of the text, The Divine Comdy’s Inferno. The text offers the 9 stages of hell that can be allocated throughout the site. For Instance, the poem provides allegorical figures, symbols and meaning of each stage of hell that dictate the reasoning for this site. The site terraces up allowing for different stages to take place moving up as indicated in the 9 circles of hell ////////////////////////////////////////////. Limbo : Dark Forest Minos : Slope up Cerberus : 3rd circle ( Gate entering Hell) Plutus : Underworld Phlegyas : High Tower Dis : Tombs : Lids lifted Minotaur : 3 Inner circles, trees of sinners Malebolge : Inner path Cocytus : A well of frozen river The site allows for a transition from one stage to another through different ditches, axis and excavations. The existing hollow circles of gold mills allow for much experience of Inferno underneath.
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Personal Interpretation of the text / The text and the site both give opportunities for an unique design challenge. Dante’s world is mythological but there is a very clear structure and logic that is applied and the site mimics the same language. The design for this project needed to relate to the book, site and interpretations of the text in prints, images or architectural projects. The spaces needed to be loose in experience but geometrical based on shape, proportion and hierarchy. Although these were important, compositional understanding of different stages based on circulation was also taken into account. Using the proportion of the perfect body, pure forms of rectangle and circles, and the experience of a one person journey ( Dante) from the bottom of a mountain to the top laid the foundation of the design synthesis. The appreciation of the naked body into architecture ( no ornamentation, color, accessories) creates an architecture that is appreciated for the pure forms of the space and monolithic in nature. Like the journey of the book experienced by Dante himself, the project also only allows one person to visit at a time. This is achieved through the usage of strict dimensions, scale and time//////////////.
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This site plan is following the axis of the top of the mountain to the agricultural mounts that are on the other side of the site. The composition is based on dimensions that correspond to each element. The dotted lines show the relation between each element to the existing conditions of the site. The stages begin as you enter the first stage, Limbo, from the road that’s next to the site. You can see the relationship between the site, interventions and existing conditions /////////////////////////////////////////////////.
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The plan shows the different stages of the project starting with the columns. The walls use the existing walls and contract and expand as it moves. The third stage uses the dimension of the perfect circle translated into a square and enters from underneath into a track. Stage 4 and 5 are connected to allow for lights and air to enter. Stage 6 used the planes and cut them for entrance at different locations. Stage 7 used the existing walls and columns on top and planted trees in a geometric fashion. Stage 8 cuts the earth into a path that brings one up the hill to stage 9, a well of prisoners ////////////////////////////////////.
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In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell It were no easy task, how savage wild That forest, how robust and rough its growth, Which to remember only, my dismay Renews, in bitterness not far from death. Yet to discourse of what there good befell
Gustave Dore Print, Canto I
Columns as a body and a void.
Repetitive elements made of glass
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Grinning with ghastly feature: he, of all Who enter, strict examining the crimes, Now ‘gin the rueful wailings to be heard. Now am I come where many a plaining voice Smites on mine ear. Into a place I came Where light was silent all. Bellowing there groan’d A noise as of a sea in tempest torn //////////////////
Gustave Dore Print, Canto III
Walls contracting and expanding
Dante’s angel guide him through his journey
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“The devil is not as black as he is painted.�
“All hope abandon, ye who enter here.�
We the circle cross’d /////////////////////////////////////. To the next steep, arriving at a well, That boiling pours itself down to a foss Sluic’d from its source. Far murkier was the wave Than sablest grain: and we in company Of the inky waters, journeying by their side, Enter’d, though by a different track, beneath. Into a lake, the Stygian nam’d, expands The dismal stream, when it hath reach’d the foot
Gustave Dore Print, Canto V
Well of water
A track that continues to well of lights
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Fix’d in the slime they say: ‘Sad once were we In the sweet air made gladsome by the sun, Carrying a foul and lazy mist within: Now in these murky settlings are we sad.’ Such dolorous strain they gurgle in their throats. But word distinct can utter none.” Our route Thus compass’d we, a segment widely stretch’d Between the dry embankment, and the core
Gustave Dore Print, Canto IX
Well of lights
Ceramic pots into light wells
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We came within the fosses deep, that moat This region comfortless. The walls appear’d As they were fram’d of iron. We had made Wide circuit, ere a place we reach’d, where loud The mariner cried vehement: “Go forth! The entrance is here!” Upon the gates I spied More than a thousand, who of old from heaven
Gustave Dore Print, Canto VIII
Tower of view
Highest point of the city.
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NOW by a secret pathway we proceed, Between the walls, that hem the region round, And the tormented souls: mAy master first, I close behind his steps. “Virtue supreme!” I thus began; “who through these ample orbs In circuit lead’st me, even as thou will’st, Speak thou, and satisfy my wish. May those, Who lie within these sepulchres, be seen?
Gustave Dore Print, Canto X
Planes of tombs
The dead between the earth.
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We enter’d on a forest, where no track Of steps had worn a way. Not verdant there The foliage, but of dusky hue; not light The boughs and tapering, but with knares deform’d And matted thick: fruits there were none, but thorns Instead, with venom fill’d. Less sharp than these, Less intricate the brakes, wherein abide Those animals, that hate the cultur’d fields,
Gustave Dore Print, Canto XIII
Geometrical Trees
Trees in relationship to column to bodies.
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As where to guard the walls, full many a foss Begirds some stately castle, sure defence Affording to the space within, so here Were model’d these; and as like fortresses E’en from their threshold to the brink without, Are flank’d with bridges; from the rock’s low base Thus flinty paths advanc’d, that ‘cross the moles
Gustave Dore Print, Canto XXVI
A secret Path
A path to the top of the hill.
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Not e’en its rim had creak’d. As peeps the frog Croaking above the wave, what time in dreams The village gleaner oft pursues her toil, So, to where modest shame appears, thus low Blue pinch’d and shrin’d in ice the spirits stood, Moving their teeth in shrill note like the stork. His face each downward held; their mouth the cold, Their eyes express’d the dolour of their heart. How frozen and how faint I then became, Ask me not, reader! for I write it not, Since words would fail to tell thee of my state.
Gustave Dore Print, Canto XXIX
A well of Prisoners
A void at the top of the mountain.
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E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.
We could see the stars again.