Abstract

Translations across symbolic forms necessarily involve shifts and transformations of meaning due to the logic of the medium. 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. In this paper, Terragni's unrealized design for a monument to Dante, which projects The Divine Comedy into an architectural schema is 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. The paper draws a distinction between transformations of meaning that arise of necessity due to the internal logic of symbolic forms and transformations which manifest specific design intentions. The Divine Comedy with its compositional, numerological, and descriptive attributes forms the program for the architectural project. Nevertheless, as in any project, the program does not, in itself, generate architecture. This paper shows that in the Danteum project three major operations are involved in design synthesis. The first inflects the familiar metaphor of the column as a body. The second uses 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 squares 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.