I feel we don't talk enough about the Emperor's palace in Kaitain.
The palace scenes are set at the Brion tomb, also known as the Brion sanctuary, in San Vito d'Altivole near Treviso, Italy.
It was designed by Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa between 1968–1978 for Onorina Brion, widow of Giuseppe Brion, as a sign of love and affection for her husband. That's why the symbolism recalls the concepts related to conjugal love and indissolubility of a loving bond.
Analyzing this aspect of the tomb, I find it particularly interesting that when Irulan talks about Muad'dib with the Reverend Mother, she is passing by a window shaped as a vesica piscis (a recurring feature of Scarpa's work). This symbol consists of two rings, one with its edges covered with blue mosaics and the other with red mosaics, representing the couple's union in marriage. (A foreshadowing?)
At the same time, I feel we have to remember that this place is, in fact, a sanctuary. A sacred place where life and death connect (it also has a private chapel).
The architect himself explained that: “I have tried to put some poetic imagination into it, though not in order to create poetic architecture but to make a certain kind of architecture that could emanate a sense of formal poetry….The place for the dead is a garden...I wanted to show some ways in which you could approach death in a social and civic way; and further what meaning there was in death, in the ephemerality of life”.
Which i find really meaningful knowing that the palace is also the place where house Atreides's doom was carefully planned.
