Lily Gavin

An Opportunity to Redefine The Geopark

At a strategic scale, this proposal presents Petra Nostos, a new geopark in southeast Scotland that merges the scientific exploration of Earth’s geological history with artistic and poetic interpretation, offering visitors a deeply immersive and multidimensional experience of the landscape. Drawing from the movement of geopoetics, the park encourages creative engagement with landforms, inviting individuals to connect emotionally and intellectually with the Earth’s dynamic processes.

The name Petra Nostos comes from the Greek words petra, meaning “stone,” and nostos, meaning “homecoming.” It captures the essence of a return to the land, a rediscovery of nature’s vast temporal scales and raw beauty through both geological knowledge and artistic expression. 

My vision for Petra Nostos is to redefine what a geopark can be, transforming it into a poetic, immersive experience where visitors engage with the more-than-human world and encounter moments of the sublime.

The proposed geopark spans a geologically diverse region, marked by fossil-rich Carboniferous limestones, ancient Devonian Old Red Sandstone, volcanic intrusions, glacial features, and dramatic coastal exposures. Together, these formations reflect a long and complex history shaped by tropical seas, tectonic upheavals, erosion, and human intervention through quarrying and land use. These overlapping stories of natural process and cultural practice provide fertile ground for interpretation through both scientific and creative lenses.

Among the many notable sites within the proposed boundary is Siccar Point, internationally recognised as the place where James Hutton observed the unconformity that helped him formulate the concept of deep geological time. It adds value as an iconic site alongside others in the region, reinforcing southeast Scotland’s historical importance to the development of geological science.

Stellae Scriptorium Constellations

Geopoetics seeks to reveal the more than human, encouraging a way of seeing that transcends the human scale. In thinking about geology through this lens, I began to expand the definition beyond Earth, considering how geological processes and rock formations exist not only on our planet but across the universe. This includes extraterrestrial features such as lunar basalt plains, Martian sedimentary layers, asteroid surfaces scattered with regolith, and icy crusts on moons like Europa.

This constellation concept became a central driver for the project’s name, Stellae Scriptorium—Latin for “a place where the stars are written.” The name reflects both the astronomical inspiration behind the design and the poetic invitation for visitors to interpret their own meaning within the space. The connection is implicit and open-ended, encouraging a deeply personal experience. Rather than prescribing a single narrative, the landscape becomes a canvas for reflection, allowing each visitor to form their own sense of wonder, belonging, and connection to the cosmos.

The Geopoetic Lens

For me as a designer, geopoetics has unlocked an experimental, site-specific, informed, and multidisciplinary way of working. It has given me permission to explore boldly through model-making, poem-writing, painting, and decisive design gestures. Geopoetics invites us to embrace the more-than-human. It is grounded in planetary belonging, something that stretches beyond the limits of bodily experience. That’s why my design is monolithic, geometric, and unapologetically bold. It is human, and it is more-than-human.

A Call For Geopoetic Practice

Landscape architecture is still a relatively young profession, but it is deeply tied to ancient, poetic ways of knowing. The more we embrace multidisciplinary thought, the more radical and revolutionary we can become. We can become more than us, more than landscape, more than human.

That is what Petra Nostos stands for. It is a provocation. And that’s exactly what I want. That’s what the geopoets want. As landscape architects, we hold the rare skill to balance between logic and intuition. We already feel the planet poetically, so let’s use that poetic sensitivity to create unique, bold, and grounded designs.