As a student in the 70s in Minnesota, USA, we were visited by the American painter Alan Gussow. Alan spoke to us of the loss of place values in modern society, pointing to the Holiday Inn’s brand that “the best surprise is no surprise” which suggested that you could travel anywhere in the world, stay in one of their hotels and it would be the same as anywhere else.

Alan expanded on his notion of place saying, “The catalyst that converts a physical location into place is the process of experiencing deeply”. Later, my friend Pete Hay, poet and environmental philosopher added that, “Sense of place arises from the aggregated perceptions of people with a common bond”.

In my life, I often walk through Salamanca Place here in Hobart. As a space, I experience it as topos i.e. having dimension, walls, a floor, etc. But then I think to the many days I have spent there, sharing the space with people who are having deep personal experiences that unite to turn space into place. To create, in the words of the essayist Willie Morris, a “terrain of the heart”. The kind of places we go to that replenish our soul — the kind of places we fight to protect.

As a landscape architect, I recall the words of Lawrence Halprin, one of the greats of my profession. Halprin said the role of the Landscape Architect is to “create the opportunity for events to happen”. In other words, we strive to create spaces wherein people can gather and create a common bond or where an individual can have an experience that transports them beyond their everyday, thereby turning space into place.

In offering these thoughts, I wish you all well in Fremantle in your efforts to care for your sense of place and in your efforts to build new spaces that in time you will inhabit and make the places that become the terrains of your heart.

References:

- Alan Gussow 1974. A Sense of Place – the Artist and the American Land.
- Peter Hay 1994. In Our Common Ground (de Gryse and Sant eds). See also Main Currents in Environmental Thought.
- Willie Morris 1981. Terrains of the Heart: And Other Essays On Home.