A place has an Identity

We often think of people when we speak of identity.

Places and spaces also have an identity. Mountains for example. Within the Atlas mountain range, there is a vast array of “identities” and feelings of spaces. All of us have probably experienced arriving in a place and “not feeling it” not connecting to it without being able to pinpoint the why.

They can be vastly different , as different as the roads that lead to them, straight, paved, dirt, smooth or washed away, wide, narrow…..you name it, you have it, you deal with it , you earn the landscape!

The artist Guiseppe Penone speaks of the space of an identity,  and how  space, in an architectural sense is identity. This identity that is not only perceptible through a visual observation, in my opinion, it has to interacted with, seen, sensed, then only can we understand and “get “that identity through a dialogue with the rocks, the trees, the air, the rivers. They all whisper centuries of stories, using a vocabulary we no longer understand fully.

 

From Ouarzazate to Demnate – Morocco