“A Year of Places” in Review
Closing the 2024 Project
The end of a project arrives with the beginning of the year. Around this time in 2024, I declared and set out on a project to explore the simple question of “why do some places make me feel awesome?” Is that a bizarre question? Yes. I think the “awesome” surprises people, but I want to push back on that sentiment and use that word in the old sense of inspiring awe, the profound.
What have I learned about places since I started this project a year ago? I won’t recap them all to you, but I am thoughtful of a few themes that emerged:
Humans Design for Human Places
There is a level of design that makes a place stand out (obviously) but that also generates a feeling of welcome and aspiration. We want to be surrounded by things that remind us of ourselves. In fact, we depend on our places to remind us who we are and who we can be. The process of making a home or social gathering shows this.
Places Are Infinitely Human as They Are Inanimate
This is a summary of what struck me in Mexico City at Octavio Paz’s crypt. That letter to you is probably one of my best written works, and I hope it goes far. But, we, obviously, infuse place with incredible meaning as both a place of storage and also personal restoration. Places do something. They are a tool as much as a table or car. In this case, we entrust profound care to a place to safeguard important people as a continuing memory and a lighthouse.
All Dreams Depend on Place for Them to Be Real
I saw this while observing the bizarre commercial for the Neom spa project, Xaynor. The place factually does not exist, and it yet is also a destination. It is a palace of dreams as much as “Falling Water” was to Frank Lloyd Wright before he made it. Dream and imagination are powers that we have, and I think it is important to realize “place” in all this for when it is time for you to dream the next dream. At that moment, maybe ask yourself, “where (exactly) does this begin?”
Where Does This Go?
Place will remain interesting to me. I love places. In fact, I hope this project grows. Every letter I write to you is also always a draft of a bigger project. Perhaps there will be a bigger version of this “Year of Places” someday.
For now, here are all the letters in this “Year of Places”
I would also add that place was already something of discussion. A precursor to this year-long series might be my hilarious letter to you about those random chairs you sometimes find in odd places. I still think of this letter. I still find these chairs.
Place goes on. For now, though, I am allowing this letter series to return to wider topics that were at the heart of the year of places, the love of life and art of thought.
Trevor
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