Somewhere in Japan there is another Muirhead course where there's a par-3 hole shaped like a guitar, with the green (body) built up by rock walls all around it.
I never met Mr. Muirhead, and he might well have been a great guy ... certainly you would expect interesting company, anyway. But when he got back into golf design in the early 1980's, it seemed that he almost had a contempt for golf architecture as practiced by the pros [or by anyone else]. He rejected completely the idea that golf was about shot values, and threw all of this weird symbolism into the mix as the basis for his designs. Was it that he thought the Japanese would appreciate symbolism more, or that he thought they didn't know any better and he could do whatever he wanted? He must have had clients who backed his ideas, and there have certainly been many golf developers over the years who really didn't give a hoot about golf.
I am not one to reject the idea of different takes on the game; I am intrigued by someone who tries to go beyond just golf in their designs, AS LONG AS THEY DESIGN THE HOLES SO THEY CAN BE APPRECIATED BY THE GOLFER. I could never tell if Desmond really cared about golf and golfers, or not.