Mythscapes: A Living Landscape of Narratives
Mythscape explores how cultural narratives and collective memory can reveal hidden ecological conditions within landscapes and shape public understanding of environmental risk. Situated within the River Eden floodplain, the project draws upon the local legend of the Cursing Stone, a narrative that attributes recurring flooding in Carlisle to the placement of a seventeenth-century stone bearing a curse. Folklore is used as an alternative lens through which to examine floodplain dynamics, ecological change, and the ways in which communities interpret natural events.
The proposal reimagines the River Eden floodplain as an adaptive wetland system shaped by seasonal inundation and ecological succession. Sculptural woodland and wetland trails choreograph movement through shifting thresholds between land and water, creating opportunities for engagement with the landscape's changing conditions. The wetland system enhances biodiversity, supports habitat regeneration, and accommodates seasonal floodwaters, demonstrating how ecological resilience can be embedded within culturally meaningful landscapes. Through the integration of ecological processes and cultural narratives, the floodplain is reframed as both a resilient environmental system and a living archive of myth, memory, and change.
