Classical topomythopoiesis: the origins of some spatial types

Abstract

Defining Classical topomythopoiesisTopomythopoiesis is a term I propose to describe a way of landscape place-making that deliberately evokes myths. 1 To invoke John Dixon Hunt, such places 'allow ourselves to be drawn' into pre-existing 'mythological … languages '. 2 The meaning of the place is thus not authored by the designer, but emanates from a vast, fantastic and polyvalent semiotic system 3 that is disseminated through oral and written stories, and represented visually by artefacts ranging from paintings to sculptures. Both the verbal and visual incarnations of myths form a virtual landscape 4 that can be summoned by symbolic and somatic elements in the material landscape. 5