Machu Picchu's architectural significance rests on a succession of scales, from its technical virtuosity to its spatial progression to its cosmic calibration. Conceptually, the ruins resemble other royal retreat masterpieces—such as Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli or Katsura Rikyu and Shugakuin Rikyu in Kyoto (see blog posts on February 28, 2007)—whose cognitive and mnemonic capacities carry their phenomenal richness beyond mere solipsism by rooting it referentially and analogically in the larger physical, social, and cosmic landscape. Like Japan’s imperial gardens, Machu Picchu employs borrowed scenery and situates architectural shelters in a modulated landscape. Like Hadrian’s Villa, Machu Picchu cultivates an air of urbanity within an eccentric situational framework.
Machu Picchu is a large-scale architectural model. Its stepped terraces are freshly laminated cardboard that, with perseverance and some sturdy shoes, can be viewed from nearly any angle. From a perch on the surrounding slopes (preferably with water bottle in hand and coca leaves between lip and gum) one can see that the complex cleaves into two major sections: the upper agricultural zone and the lower inhabited zone. The lower zone in turn divides into two sections: sacred and profane. However, upon entry, this clearly graspable organizational logic plays second fiddle to site-specific spatial experience.
In contrast to Teotihuacán (posted on July 20), Machu Picchu takes a subtle but equally impressive approach to asserting man’s importance in the universe. Its makers neither tame nature nor fold to it. Rather, they cavort to lend happenstantial exigencies a flatteringly humanistic raison d’être.
The pervasive phenomenon goes so far as to bestow a masculine profile on adjacent mountains. In the background of the top image one can make out the forehead to the right, chin to the left, and nose at center. I climbed up the snoz—Huanya Picchu—to capture the image at lower left.
In addition to its paranoid critical demonstration, the top photograph documents the affinity between earth and architecture inherent in Machu Picchu’s material tactility (features have been roped off to staunch erosion from millions of inquisitive hands), in its pinnacle-like roofs and serrated terraces, and in the correspondence of ground and enclosure.
Retaining walls elevate the inhabited zone from the slope below. Their dominant vertical down-slope edges suggest that the terraces progress down the slope rather than up. Attuned to the sequence, residences clamber down the slope like lithic slinkies
The building at center conjoins with its retaining walls to play upon volume and mass. First, it tapers and aligns with the uppermost wall to create an enclosure and a threshold that frames a panorama of the complex beyond. Second, it reverses the face of the upper retaining wall so that what meets the earth below presents a façade above. Third, it melds smoothly with the lower retaining wall to blur the construction’s free-standing—vs—earth-retaining distinction. Finally, the building’s offset from the camera-facing terraces creates a patio to the near side, thereby shifting the lower floor’s orientation 90 degrees from the upper floor’s orientation.
Machu Picchu's architectural significance rests on a succession of scales, from its technical virtuosity to its spatial progression to its cosmic calibration. Conceptually, the ruins resemble other royal retreat masterpieces—such as Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli or Katsura Rikyu and Shugakuin Rikyu in Kyoto (see blog posts on February 28, 2007)—whose cognitive and mnemonic capacities carry their phenomenal richness beyond mere solipsism by rooting it referentially and analogically in the larger physical, social, and cosmic landscape. Like 
