By Sherin Wing and Guy Horton
Utah’s red rock country is sublime in a Martian Chronicles sort of way. Its geologic folds, wrinkles, bridges, and domes compose a forbidding yet stunningly beautiful world of rock and sky. It’s the sort of landscape John McPhee would lyrically traverse in his book Basin and Range, in what he refers to as a “physiographic province.” It is also the psychological province of vision quests, the kind of vast and mystical space that Jim Morrison might have experienced. These are just some of the images that emerge from this landscape.
The work of Imbue Design, the Salt Lake City-based, three-person firm made up of Hunter Gundersen, Matt Swindel, and Christopher Talvy, is inserted here to form a meditative retreat that rises out of what McPhee would describe as a “silent world of austere beauty” (1). The project is captivating not merely because of its form or material, but because of its program as a meditation retreat for practicing Buddhists or others seeking to enter a silent world. It’s also a home away from home.
