A theater of architectural monsters

Abstract

The origins of a spatial dimension to the imagination of art and architecture can be traced to the festival of Dionysus and the appearance of drama in ancient Athens. As the architectural frame for drama, theater buildings were embedded within the earth and under the sky with the cosmic realm as their ceiling. During the Renaissance, dramatic performances in elaborate theater buildings re-emerged and the theater became a commonly used analogical model: the memory theater as a mnemotechnical device to activate the imagination and the architectural treatise as a theater of knowledge. Marco Frascari was devoted to teaching students the rigorous art of proper architectural imagination. One technique to foster this crucial activity is a dream-like form of reverie within which architects can activate the deep mental processes required to imagine meaningful and content-rich buildings. Ceilings and Dreams asks the question, “where is the space for dreaming in architecture today?” In response, this chapter explores Frascari’s references to and theorization of the theater, which he evokes as a means of conjecturing a space within which the architectural imagination can flourish in a setting rich with memories and knowledge.