A couple of days ago, we’ve climbed on top of the Duomo of Milano. One of the most amazing features of Gothic structures like this are really is the way it treats rain water flow.The water, which falls on the vast surface of the roof, is first led to the sides, and then collected in such a way as to flow along the top of the magnificently decorated arc-boutants (flying buttresses), down to the pinnacles. It then flows though each pinnacle and is spat out, on the other side, by a gargoyle, upon the top of a smaller side-roof, and so on, by the mouths of other gargoyles down to the Piazza del Duomo.
Now this is a way to build meaning out of an everyday phenomena: here, rain water is made to participate to the dynamic structure of the gargoyles, which symbolically protect the church (i.e. the christian community) by spitting out God’s wrath on everything evil (doing so, they also accomplish something that the Greeks have called “catharsis“). At the same time, they participate to the simple sheltering function of the cathedral, by limiting the abrasive effect of rain water on its mineral structure.
And there is another thing: the roof of this cathedral is accessible and it obviously has been since it was build. It is difficult to prove this assertion from medieval written sources but the very comfortable stone stairway leading way up to there speaks for itself. Walking on the roof, you can see these gargoyles, and many other things that inspire a bodily sense of meaning, like the statues of many catholic saints, which, from the Piazza del Duomo, seem floating in the sky, but which, from the roof, can be seen as floating over the city of Milan, keeping a caring eye on its inhabitants. Looking at them from way up there, you experience a vertigo which could not be transmitted by written text.
The Duomo, to anyone who has access to its roof, thus works pretty much like a Zen garden: it is a factory of meaning whose every structural detail allows you to make a bodily experience of a transcendental reality. In this, it accomplishes a role similar to that of its interior, of which Yi Fu Tuan (Topophilia, 1974) has said:
“It involves sight, sound, touch and smell. Each sense reinforces the other so that together they clarify the structure and substance of the entire building, revealing its essential character.”
And by letting you experience this, helps you to produce meaning which you can inject into society by your spoken word. And this is precisely how we can imagine medieval priests used structures like these.
But the Duomo (and from here comes its factory status) does not have to be reserved to priests. It is so huge that hundreds of people can climb on the top of it or stroll inside. And while the interior allows for rituals and introspection, its roof allows for reflection on society and its relation with a transcendental meaning (notwithstanding the this-worldedness or other-worldedness of this transcendentality).
The Duomo isn’t the only example of this. The Sagrada Familia in Barcelona produces a much similar effect, only that here, the pervasive element is air, which howls and whistles as you turn round and crawl through corridors and stairways which lead you from tower to tower.
But there is a new element out of which you can build and that Aristotle has somehow omitted from his list: information. If you have ever read Uberto Eco’s “Name of the Rose” or Borgès’ “La biblioteca de Babel” (in Ficciones), chances ares you’ve lived a similar exaltation of knowledge only while walking through the described constructs.
But information isn’t confined to text since twenty years. So now, what about you building such a factory of meaning in cyberspace?
BG
OTL