Seven Floors
Dino Buzzati, 1958
Giovanni Corte is admitted to a hospital with a slight illness. He learns that the patients are housed on each floor of the seven-story building according to the gravity of their state. The top floor is for mild cases, with the serious patients below, going all the way down to the hopeless cases on the first floor. Against his will, Giovanni is moved down the floors one by one due to a series of mistakes and logistical matters. As the barriers between him and the world of ordinary healthy people increase, his medical state starts to deteriorate. Finally, Giovanni is moved to the first floor, his last resting place. The story ends as the blinds drop slowly, shutting out the light. To represent Giovanni’s fading life, I burned typography through a stack of paper seven layers high. The type on the top few layers is dark and legible, but it slowly disintegrates layer by layer until the last sheet where hardly any trace of the burn is visible. The process, material, and typography embody Giovanni’s health and energy – the visual form is a manifestation of the essence of the story.
