Contamination and conflict serve as productive forces in the generation of the multiplicity of experience, sensation and affect in a monumental and iconic space devoted the spiritual. The cathedral embodies the separation from the urban context and park landscape, mediating between these two dialectical conditions within their interface as a space of communication – communication with the mystery of the spiritual, communication with the intimacy of the self, communication generated through chance interaction within the multitude. The cathedral here does not represent Heaven on earth; it is rather a repository of the human condition, of collective memory, of a democratic plurality of beliefs – a symbol of shared experience and a foil for both secular and spiritual reflection. The multitude yearns for a space where communication with the spiritual and reflection are possible, space that cannot so readily be found in the binary condition of city/park. A multiplicity of spatial conditions is achieved through carefully mediated systems, spaces, forms, structure, enclosure, interaction, spectacle, excess and absence.
A matrix of historical precedent maps variable evolutionary trajectories that operate through space and time, across time, backwards in time or within a singular moment. The acceleration and exaggeration of these trajectories produces conflict and contamination. Within the matrix several basic and general behavioral traits reveal themselves: competitive or supportive interaction between systems in the tempio malatestiano; layering and hybridization of space and connection in the work of guarini; shifting relational hierarchies and material transformations in san stefano al ponte; surface effects and spatial consequences in the religious work of mario botta. What these create is a network of cellular systems [structure, enclosure, ornament] that operate within themselves, through other systems, with other systems, across other systems and against other systems.
The different cells accumulate in various ways – working independently and together, occupying the edge and reclaiming that thickness as not only occupiable but also layered space. The varying connections, overlays, interfaces and transitions create the multiplicity of hybrid conditions that house the multiplicity of reflections. Systems and networks are layered in such a way that they perform through varying strengths of influence, from the dominant to the submissive. Relational hierarchies are challenged and identities [of cathedral, material, cell, and body] are shifted. Simultaneously generated through these operations are mediations of the dialectics of light/dark, heavy/light, fast/slow, large/small, soft/hard, clear/confused, life/death.
The multiplicity of experiences, sensations, reflections and affects is the product of a contamination generated through robust cellular systems based on evolutionary religious material trajectories as vehicles in the production of shifting realities.