07/31/2026
Monk on Temple, Sketch of Miscellaneous Architecture
The vast majority of cultures across the world have historically attributed spiritual value to landscape features. The list of known deified caves, springs, and peaks spans across every habitable landscape in the world. There is almost certainly an endless list of additional spiritual landscapes lost to history, those which were never codified through archaeological evidence or written accounts. The trend is so pervasive it makes one consider if the deification of landscape is intrinsic to being human. It is relatively recent in human history that people have become distant from the land, a relationship exacerbated by a culture of convenience and urbanity. Design often accommodates accordingly, rejecting what may indeed be essential to the wellbeing of humanity. I propose the landscape architect must consider the spiritual significance imbued in a raw landscape, for its constituents are the same tangible media we design with every day. Whether one agrees that manipulating or preserving land is a spiritual practice is irrelevant, for based on cultures around the world the potential for it to be is definitive. Who would willingly sacrifice that potential? This concept is often lost in the pace of site agnostic development, which swallows the remnants of natural landscapes — landscapes that may offer some sliver of subliminal spiritual assuagement. Although it is quite improbable that landscape architects will start a religious revolution reconnecting humanity to the land, I do believe it is our responsibility to strive to repair this relationship through design. It is our role to weave an obligate exposure of landscape into the built environment, to wield not the hand of erasure for ease of development, but the hand of augmentation, to enhance the visibility of the natural world in daily life.
