I don't think you can separate a place from its history. I think a place is much more than the bricks and mortar that go into its construction. I think it's more than the accidental topography of the ground it stands on.
We could not, for example, arrive at a principle like that of entropy without introducing some additional principle, such as randomness, to this topography.
But even physics cannot be defined from an atomic topography.
Topography is one of my chief themes in my poetry..about the country, the suburbs and the seaside... then there come's love... and increasingly; the fear of death.
Architectural features of true democratic ground-freedom would rise naturally from topography, which means that buildings would all take on the nature and character of the ground on which in endless variety they would stand and be component part.
In battle, topography is fate.
Science is the topography of ignorance.