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With Turandot, Giacomo Puccini left an unfinished opera. It was a terrible with the appearance of love, although in truth, it was more about the fascination that power generates and what it means to stare into it. However, what would the beauty of Turandot be without the staging of the cruelty of his power? The first idea was a pyramid, which soon turned into an inverted pyramid because it conveys a more oppressive sensation: the feeling of an enclosed space, where the base represents where the desperate and ragged people huddle. This space is distressingly narrow. A place where power, at the top is as splendid as it is overpowering.

The staircase network that encircles the inverted pyramid helps those who aspire to reach power ascend the walls. The idea fuses together images of Blade Runner, the photographer Sebastiao Salgado’s images of Serra Pelada gold mines, Escher’s infinite staircase, or even the nightmares of The Castle of Kafka’s Trial. No matter whether it is a palace or a spaceship, it is a timeless universe that has both a distant past and a distant future. Turandot is undoubtedly a fantastic tale. One that follows a logic that is different from the one that governs the real world. Turandot’s world is a symbolic one, a closed space from which one cannot escape.

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