I recently returned to the University of Notre Dame for the annual reunion of the program, the Inspired Leadership Initiative (ILI), where I was a fellow in 2022-2023. The ILI staff have a distinctive outlook on a reunion event. In addition to drawing together the fellows from the current and previous cohorts of their program, they arrange for two-and-a-half days of intellectual nourishment, speakers from the University and beyond who provide the richness of new ideas for their alumni. For example, this year’s roster included, among others, Ann Thompson from NBC News and Dan Porterfield, the CEO of the Aspen Institute. But it was a Notre Dame administrator who sparked the idea for this column.
Maria McKenna is the Director of the Center for Transformational Leadership, a Notre Dame program to support the success and growth of the students transitioning to college life, many from all corners of the globe. During her presentation on the impact of their program, McKenna dropped a line that snapped my head back, especially because of its relevance to the office workplace arena, though she was referencing an entirely different application. The statement was so profound that it has since sent me searching for the origin of the quote, believing surely that it must be a citation from some well-renowned figure. I could find none. Here’s what she said:
“Spaces become places when you make meaning there.”
Perhaps you have heard this before. I hadn’t heard it so succinctly put. And since that moment on the Notre Dame campus of feverishly capturing this sentence in my notebook I have been pondering why it rings so true for me. Some thoughts emerged.
The foundational truth in the notion of spaces becoming places through the power of meaning is that it identifies, maybe even creates, a fundamental hierarchy between the two. Places are a higher form of spaces, an evolved idea. A place is greater than, more important than, more significant than a mere space. Do they teach it this way in architecture and design schools? Would most architects and designers agree? If so, we seem to have either lost the power of this foundational idea, buried it below everyday consciousness, or we’ve gotten terribly sloppy with our language and word choices. Or all of the above. Recently, there has been some attention in design circles given to “placemaking” as a pivotal concept. IIDA and others have even devoted significant promotion and programming to the importance of placemaking, but I don’t believe any of that work prominently included this hierarchical distinction between space and place, nor did it highlight a primary focus on meaning as the differentiating cause.
If meaning is what distinguishes a place from its lower form, merely a space, it seems there are at least two powerful concepts that emerge as drivers. The first is meaning as an outcome. A space rises to the stature of a place after it becomes associated with a powerful, lasting, and meaningful memory. It matters little whether that memory is positive or negative, only that it was an outcome that occurred in association with that place. Perhaps it is an introduction or interaction, or it might be the birth of a new insight, or it could be simply a repeated occurrence that was part of a specifically memorable period. Those outcomes that are associated with that particular place bestow a degree of meaning that differentiates that place from other mere spaces. Think about the act of returning to those places in your life. The meaning that emerged from your experience there — a setting in nature, a college campus, a former neighborhood, etc. — make that more than a space, but a true place, perhaps a forever place.
The second concept that emerges from this distinction is meaning as an intention. Unlike meaning as an outcome, as the act of remembering, of looking backward, meaning as an intention is rooted in looking forward. A space can become a place when there is deliberate and intentional activity to attach meaning, to permanently fix a meaning to a place, even to make the meaning a foundational component of the place itself. The examples of this are legion… a municipal building, a memorial or museum, a church or temple, even a home. These spaces rise to the higher level of places because there is an intent to make them so, to design and construct a place that has inherent and lasting meaning.
This notion that meaning is the core element that elevates a space to the status of place is fundamentally true for all space and places, but it seems particularly relevant for those of us who focus so much attention on offices and work. There is a reckless imprecision in the usage of the terms workspace and workplace, derivative terms, of course. Sometimes the words are assigned based on number or volume alone… a workspace signifying a setting for one person, a workplace signifying a setting for a group of people. Other times, they are simply used interchangeably. Perhaps it’s time to clean up our vocabulary around space and place based on a hierarchy of meaning.
More importantly, the foundational insight that meaning differentiates these two concepts should empower an additional outlook. Consider for a moment that making meaning might be the most important feature of work itself. At its inner most core, is not work truly all about meaning? Is work significant at a level far deeper than mere performance or productivity or career success? If so, the setting for work should be designed to focus on its very core meaning, and that setting should become a place, not merely a space. Now that seems an aspiration worth pursuing.