Cultural and geographical situations comprise a cultural Landscape where people and human activities are located, why they are located in particular locations, and what significance these observed arrangements represent. Spatial practices within a cultural landscape reveal relationships among history, geography, social patterns, race, class, gender, and power. For 17 days and nights each spring, Spoleto Festival USA fills Charleston, South Carolina’s historic theaters, churches and outdoor spaces with over 120 performances by renowned artists as well as emerging performers in disciplines ranging from opera, theater, music theater, dance, and chamber, symphonic, choral, and jazz music, as well as the visual arts. Spoleto USA and how the festival has been a showcase for the arts and revealed the poetics of the cultural landscape that comprises Charleston.
In the design for this project, the intersection of the cultural landscape and urban landscape provided the opportunity to create an operatic “play-room” for cultural and artistic production on the interior and an “urban room” (or garden) that has become an important civic space contributing to the life of Charleston not only during the festival period but through out the year.