This thesis proposes islands as a purgatory. By applying Dante’s journey through purgatory in The Divine Comedy, this thesis

proposes the island as a site to visualise modern punishment in a reformed way. Like purgatory, islands are places for the individual to be on a special furlough on earth for a short amount of time. The vicious circle of humanity is being achieved. The thesis identifies three sins of Dante. Situated on the West Coast of Ireland (a place rich in afterlife mythology), and adjacent to the Aran Islands, the islands re-contextualises three sins mentioned by Dante (Avarice, Gluttony, and Pride) into a contemporary phenomenon and problem with excessive consumption and material way. The sins are experienced as three new island settings. The journey through the island of Avarice is motivated by the human experiential transition from greed to generosity. Through exploring, surveying and drawing the island’s ground fabric, new proposals emerged. The second island of Gluttony addresses the sin by visualising the mouth as the conveyor of food and poetry. Hence, the proposal of culinary/poetry studio that also collects and filters waste. 

 

By recompositing found objects at new scales, abstracting parts and overlaying them to create island environments, a newfound architectural language emerged. This exploration of a new architectural language led onto a study of Dali’s depiction of Dante’s purgatory. The project uses Dali’s representations of the sins of Avarice, Gluttony and Pride as tools to design the proposal of the three new islands. This study of deconstructing and reassembling fragments created a new architectural environment – part mythical and part real – that challenges our relationship to waste and a range of modern excesses. Each island has elements of this study in them. The three islands will become a journey during which the individual reflects on past indulgences and make amends to the behaviour.  

 

They operate between conceptual, literary and environmental concerns. The project develops technology to address the environmental issues of open waters. Each island filters waste. This is done by using fragments created in the Dali experiment. The juxtaposition between waste as pollution and waste as a design piece creates a heterotopic atmosphere. This blurs the line between what is hidden in waste and how it becomes architecture.