Cult Landscapes
hearing a piece of a conversation and taking it totally out of context earlier i started thinking about cult landscapes…not cultural landscapes…cult landscapes. how do communities based on a cult of personality, religion or whatever organize space? what could precedents to modern cult landscapes be…? hmmm. Can you imagine a landscape project where your client is a commune in the middle of nowhere…The leader gives you the ‘program elements’ and you have to design spaces to fulfill their objectives.
The cultural landscapes of cult landscapes seem perhaps predictable. The coercion of people is common in most cultures including our own. Think of the way our government and media build momentum to wars. Then the typical historical examples of cults of personality…stalin and hitler immediatley come to mind.
anyway, just wanted to put those ideas out there as a way for me to think more broadly about landscape. if we can expand our constructed notions of landscape, perhaps our landscapes can change cultural constructs.
