Places
An ongoing collection
A journal for the people, places and ideas that shape architecture.
Some places stay with us. Through essays, photographs and personal encounters, our contributors explore the buildings, landscapes and everyday spaces that shape how we see and experience architecture.
Places began with the Journal’s inaugural issue in 2017 and continues to grow. Discover the latest additions below, or explore the earlier stories in the collection.
Have a place to share? Submit a story.
Latest additions
More Than a Library: A Journey Through Beige Brick, Water, and Landscape
Katia Perez Mendez visits Rogelio Salmona’s Virgilio Barco Library in Bogotá, where beige brick, water, landscape and movement create an architecture to experience.
Taj Mahal: Architecture of Love
Rita Devgan reflects on her journey to the Taj Mahal and the architecture, gardens and enduring expression of love that draw visitors to Agra.
Queen Anne in Canada
Ian Ellingham explores the character of Queen Anne houses in Canada, their historical roots, and what their enduring appeal can teach designers today.
Introduction to: The Right Angle Journal
Raymond Moriyama on the launch of The Right Angle Journal: what a quarterly can do that a magazine cannot, and what he hopes it becomes.
Introduction: Places
What makes a place special is rarely what architects control: an introduction to an issue on genius loci, memory, light, and the spirit of place.
The Grey Lady
Nantucket’s fog, shingles and strict design rules offer an architect both an escape from practice and a lesson in putting context before ego.
The Horse Palace
Toronto’s Horse Palace is a museum you experience through your nose: on smell, memory, and what the city may scent like a century from now.
The Micro-Village
A morning walk past a 1911 county jail, a land registry office and a church spire: what a small Ontario city’s old buildings still know about authenticity.
Memorial School, Niagara Falls
Decades after grade six, the author walks back into his old Niagara Falls school, now a Legion Hall, and finds that memory, not architecture, is what makes a place beloved.
Those Were the Days
A childhood in Hong Kong, where an unremarkable alley between apartment blocks became the best playground in the world through sheer imagination.
Light-Colour-Darkness
Hospital birth rooms are designed as clinical machines, but light, colour and darkness shape the birthing body: a researcher on reinventing birthspace.
Locations: Trinity Square Park, Toronto ON
Tucked between a shopping centre, an office tower, and a church, Trinity Square Park is downtown Toronto’s secret walled garden: on labyrinths, buried creeks, and the architecture of calm.