Building the Next Seven Wonders: The Landscape Rhetoric of Large Engineering Projects

Abstract

Engineering projects may seem like the least symbolic parts of our culture – isn’t engineering pure rationality? But they are potent and important symbols. Being engineered, the projects often submerge their symbolism within a rational and instrumental scheme, but the symbols are present and highly legible. As high cost productions of large corporate or state actors, megaengineering projects carry sym- bolic content that is almost always about elaborating and sustaining the authority and power of those actors. The archetypal suite of historic symbols of power and authority is the Hellenistic “Seven Wonders of the World” list, which presents a range of cultural landscape tropes that are easily recognizable today in the political and social messages contained within large scale engineering projects. 2.2