Paying Attention to Place

 

Rue Saint-Sulpice, Montreal, QC (all photos by me)

Places reveal themselves in layers. Some register immediately; others take time, weather, and use to come into focus. Streets, buildings, and public spaces rarely explain themselves all at once. That slow unfolding, often missed in a rush toward first impressions, shapes how cities are understood and how they endure.

Certain places speak right away: a street that feels coherent the moment you step onto it, or a building whose presence seems fully resolved at first glance. Others ask for patience. Their character emerges through shifting light, seasonal changes, and the habits of daily life. I’ve learned to trust both kinds of encounters. Each reveals something different about how places actually work.

Cities depend on a legible fabric, the everyday buildings that give a place its rhythm and make its streets understandable. That fabric grows out of the ground it sits on; geography and topography often shape it outright, bending streets, breaking grids, and steering development in ways no plan can fully override. When the fabric holds together, even loosely, a city feels grounded. When it falls apart, everything around it struggles: landmarks lose their context, public spaces drift, and movement turns confusing. The fabric isn’t just background; it’s what lets a city make sense.

Within that fabric, a few buildings and spaces take on a larger role. They steady their surroundings, give direction to a street, or quietly signal that they belong to everyone. Some call these places monuments, not because they’re necessarily grand, but because they help the city orient itself. Their presence clarifies what’s around them. Without them, a place can feel disoriented; with them, the whole gains coherence. Here in Eugene, the downtown Park Blocks form a central public space that fulfills this role. I also like to think the main branch of the Eugene Public Library—a project I had a hand in shaping—functions as one of the city’s steadying civic anchors.

Piazza Navona, Rome 

History deepens this understanding. Every city carries traces of what came before: old street lines that refuse to disappear, materials that weather in familiar ways, settlement patterns that continue to guide how people move. Even when a place looks new, it rests on earlier decisions. Cities are palimpsests, not in a romantic sense but a practical one. The past sits plainly in the present, whether we notice it or not, and paying attention to those layers helps explain why places feel the way they do.

The rains of the Pacific Northwest test every exposed joint. Low winter light exposes the difference between a generous window and a half-hearted one. Moss softens edges whether it’s invited or not. Climate shows its effects early. Geography and history shape perception too: filtered light, volcanic soils, a layered cultural landscape. Every place has a character that precedes design and outlasts it, and buildings work better when they acknowledge that character rather than resist it.

What matters most is whether a building feels anchored to its purpose. Sometimes that shows up in small choices. Other times it’s broader: a space that gathers people naturally, a form that belongs to its setting, a presence that feels inevitable once you’ve lived with it for a while. The reasons vary, but that sense of rightness is hard to miss when you see and feel it.

None of this happens easily. Budgets, codes, timelines, and competing priorities shape every project. Attention is often the first casualty of speed and efficiency. I’ve been inside enough jobs to know how many compromises hide behind even the simplest building. Still, thoughtful decisions—daylight where it counts, materials that age honestly, plans that anticipate real use—can give a building staying power. These are far from new ideas. 

Times Square, New York.

I keep coming back to how the built environment shapes our expectations of one another. A well-considered public building quietly suggests that a community values its shared life. A neglected streetscape sends the opposite message. Those cues accumulate. They influence how we behave, how we gather, and how we imagine the future. Architecture doesn’t dictate any of it, but it sets the stage for what’s possible.

Over time, my own thinking has settled around a few recurring ideas: the importance of a legible fabric; the pull of geography and history; the honesty of materials; and the authority of well-placed civic buildings. None of these insights is original. They echo through the work of others I’ve learned from along the way. They’ve simply grown clearer the longer I’ve watched them play out in real places.

If there’s an arc here, it’s the arc of looking closely. Buildings reveal themselves in their own time. Cities take longer still. After a lifetime working in and around them, and now watching from a different vantage point, I see my role less as a conclusion than as participation in a long conversation. The best any of us can do is pay attention, make careful choices, and add something worth keeping.