Where were you when you fell in love?
Uniquely personal and rarely forgotten, the places where we fall head over heels hold a special place in our memories as well as our hearts
There are few emotions more powerful, more all-encompassing or more human than love.
Running through our lives like a thread, love connects us. Not just to each other, but to the world around us.
The places and spaces where we happen to be when we fall for a person, a city, a building, an idea or simply a moment in time become indelibly etched in our hearts and memories. Visceral, emotionally-charged punctuation marks scattered through the stories of our lives.
While it is no coincidence that I have chosen this particular week in February to ask people about where they found love, this is not a piece about romance in isolation.
It is about love in all its forms - none more intense, significant or meaningful than another.
Valentine’s Day aside, one of the most eye-opening realisations I have had since launching Well-Placed back in June last year is that human-centred design and love are intrinsically linked.
By putting people at the heart (pun very much intended) of how we design and develop our built world and the spaces in between, it is almost impossible to avoid stumbling across love in some shape or form along the way. I would go so far as to say that if you don’t then you have more than likely taken a wrong turn.
From this piece last month on how developing healthy buildings is the most important thing we can do for our families and our children to my interview with architect Daniel Libeskind about the healing power of places that embrace pain, I have found myself writing time and again, post after post about passion, connection and devotion.
So, what better way to mark the neat timing of this Well-Placed release date than with ten snippets from the life, and indeed love, stories of the people at the forefront of design, development and innovation?
Note: This post contains a lot of images so it may appear clipped or truncated in an email. Worry not, just click ‘view entire message’ if instructed to see the whole piece or head over to the online version.
Martyn Evans, Creative Director of LandSec U+I fell in love…at The Royal Opera House
In 2010 I went on a date with a ballet dancer to The Royal Opera House to see the ballet Giselle. From the moment the curtain went up I was transfixed. The most beautiful building, the most beautiful sets, the finest concert orchestra in the world and then there was the dancing. Superhuman in its achievement. The ballet feels like a rarefied, expensive experience. Except it’s not necessarily like that – you can watch a ballet at the Opera House for £10 if you get in there early. It is the finest cultural experience the world has to offer and I love it more than I can say.
Wan Sheong Gardner Yau, Partner at Studio Moren fell in love…in Venice
As a teenager working in a Chinese takeaway, I dreamt of adventure. My first taste of freedom came while interrailing across Europe, leaving the UK for the first time.
Arriving on the overnight sleeper, I crossed the Ponte della Libertà at dawn, rucksack in one hand and a paperback copy of Invisible Cities in the other.
Stepping into the morning sun, I was greeted by the grandeur of the Grand Canal, gondoliers, church spires, and rotundas. The scene was reminiscent of Turner's paintings and the Canaletto postcards I had admired. In that moment, amidst the beauty and history of Venice, I fell in love – not just with the city, but with the endless possibilities that new places and experiences bring.
Kat Hanna, Co-Managing Director of Avison Young’s London office fell in love…in Victoria Park in Tower Hamlets
Even when I’m feeling jaded, or fed up of London (which occasionally happens to me), a walk or run in Victoria Park nearly always makes me feel better. It reminds me of a London I first fell in love with when moving from the suburbs of ‘barely London’ to ‘real London’ in my early 20s.
I remember my flatmate dragging me on runs back when I could hardly manage a lap of the park. It’s a park that has been in staple throughout renting in about half a dozen homes over ten years in Mile End and Hackney Wick. Very often, as with many others who live in the area, it has also been my garden and green space.
Oh, and then there are the parakeets. I know they’re a nuisance, but I love them and the whole urban mythology around them.
Hanif Kara OBE, Design Director and Co-Founder of AKT II and Professor of Architectural Technology at Harvard Graduate School of Design fell in love…at Lahore Fort
Last month I fell in love when I visited the historic Lahore Fort in Pakistan. It is home to the world’s largest ever mural wall. At 150 foot long and 50 foot high it is a mesmerising and remarkable human endeavour. It depicts life as it was lived over several centuries. I intend to draw the world’s attention to this to show how capable humans are and the role that both art and architecture play in the quality of our lives.
Elizabeth Brink, Co-CEO of Gensler fell in love…in Buenos Aires
I fell in head over heels in love in Buenos Aires at Recoleta Cemetery (it was intense but did not last long).
I fall in long lasting love every time I visit Escondido Beach in Malibu.
Damian Wild, Managing Director of ING Media fell in love…at Tuyen Lam Lake in Vietnam
Way before we were married, we gave up our jobs and hit the road. We travelled from East Croydon to Hong Kong by train and continued overland through south-east Asia with hopes of reaching Australia without flying.
We’d seen so many stunning sights by then – hardening our view that flying means you miss everything below – but a walk through the forest and along the shore of Tuyen Lam Lake in Dalat changed our lives. Beautiful places intensify feelings and it’s no coincidence that it was there we decided we would move in together once we were back in the UK.
We didn’t quite make it to Australia without flying – the dream of a boat from the bottom of Indonesia to the top of Australia was replaced by the reality of a flight from Bali to Darwin – but we did make it. And, several months later back in the UK, we began sharing a home.
Jacob Loftus, founder and CEO of General Projects fell in love…in Barcelona
Walking around Barcelona and discovering Gaudi is one of my first memories of falling in love with the idea of buildings. The fusion of nature, geometry and spirituality, all existing in this odd but ordered harmony. It spoke to me as I walked down the street.
Ross Bailey, CEO and Founder of Appear Here falls in love every year…at Glastonbury Festival
I was convinced Glastonbury wasn’t for me. And then I went. Within minutes my jaw was on the floor. There was no hierarchy and, for just a moment, nothing mattered except the music, the mud and the sheer, reckless joy of it all.
People spend decades trying to manufacture something like this. Trying to engineer a way to bring people together, to strip away division, to create a space where people come simply to exist side by side with no other purpose than to feel something real. And here, in the middle of a field, it just happens. Something that can’t be replicated, can’t be coded into an algorithm and can’t exist in the metaverse.
So every year, I bring someone new who, like I was, is convinced it’s not for them. And every year, they leave changed. A little more in love with the music, the strangers, the chaos. But most of all, a little more in love with this ridiculous, rain-soaked island of ours. They leave reminded of that thing that makes us truly human—to belong.
Kelly Canterford, co-Chair of Freehold, fell in love…at Tower Bridge
If there was one place that symbolises my love affair with London it would be the built environment icon that is Tower Bridge. It has been part of my London story since the moment I arrived in this city.
I’ve enjoyed many days and evenings with Tower Bridge providing the perfect backdrop, none more so than in 2017 when my now wife and I were enjoying a quiet moment travelling along the river celebrating a friend’s wedding.
We had been talking about leaving London and starting afresh in a new city. But as we approached Tower Bridge in that soft dusk light surrounded by the beauty and the bustle of London with its diverse mix of people, places, sights and sounds, we knew there was no place on earth we’d rather be.
James Pellatt, CEO and Founder of Digital Trees fell in love (again)…in Central Park
I'm lucky enough to fall in love with Rebecca over and over again in different places and moments (the first was in a student kitchen in Leicester!)
But one of the most striking was on our honeymoon in New York. It was a perfect late spring day - we'd picked up a picnic from Dean & DeLuca and found a spot in Central Park, both slightly hungover but blissfully content.
The sun warmed our faces, the scent of fresh blooms filled the air and the chatter of schoolchildren queuing for the zoo drifted past us. In that moment, watching the world go by, I fell in love all over again.
And finally…
I have fallen in love in many places and spaces but perhaps most notably in an otherwise unremarkable bar on The Strand 10 minutes after walking through the door, in both Kingston and Royal Surrey Hospitals and, last year, in the living room of a house in south west London with my oldest and most treasured school friends who never fail to remind me of what really matters in life.
Emily Wright is a real estate, architecture and design journalist contributing to titles including The Times, Wallpaper*, The Spaces, WIRED and GQ. She is also Head of Content at CREtech.