"Dante's Hell sometimes offers an exactness making it the scene of the most unreal, and at the same time the most real, of visits to the other world."

"What sense of the real, and, at the same time, what insight into the visionary and the chimerical!  The to be or not to be, the body and the spectre, the sun and the light"

This was a fourth year studio project, the objective was to create a theme park.  the first part was picking a theme that would be exciting to the public and to me.  I decided to use Dante Alighieri's "Inferno", with the aid of a couple of other sources like Bosch and others.  I chose the hell theme because I thought it would be a new prospective on the way to look at and design buildings.  

Secondly, I had to choose a site for my project.  After a couple of site selections I decided to blend it with the caverns in the Black Hills in North Dakota, a place not to gentle and hot as hell.

The park starts as a lift ride from a car deck (converted cavern), passes over the valley (over-looking the theme park) and into the entrance to the hellish adventures.  From there a person has the option of going to the exterior where they can go to an amphitheater, gallery, numerous shops, mountain climbing or restaurant/ nightclub "Disco Inferno" by night. Or the interior which consists of roller coaster rides, physical/ mental challenges*, mazes and cavern tours.  The interior part of the park ends at the pinnacle of the mountain where one can finally see the light of the sun shining on their face atop of "The Tower of Enlightenment", the finale of the theme park just like Dante's "Inferno".

* The challenge:  puzzles, riddles embedded on walls; physical strength and stamina related obstacles will determine the level a person reaches in an inverted pyramid shaped cavern; working from bottom to top (reach the light).

Warning:  Not for the weak hearted.

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A Hellish Inspiration

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