The Piscina Mirabilis is located not far from Lake Avernus, where Virgil’s Aeneas found the entrance to the Underworld. Following the path opened by Virgil, Dante utilizes water to establish the boundaries between World and Underworld. By crossing the river Acheron, the wayfarer transits to the Underworld, a space of upside-down. The Inferno is a realm where the physical, societal, and moral rules of the world are reversed.
The above ground and below mirror one another, playing formally, but inherently different. While the exterior, overworld is projected towards the sky, the interior, underworld is projected towards the center of the earth. When one is illuminated, the other is in the dark. While one favors sociability, the other promotes introspection in contemplation of the ruin and of the art exhibited within it.
Coalescence is the merging and combining of droplets to create larger formations of liquid. Water defines the shape of the interior exhibition space and of its upside opposite structures. The spatial defining element of water, reconnects the contemporary to the building’s origins and to the original simultaneity of necessity and sacrality of the underground.
info
/
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
·
