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ARCHITECTURE|CULTURE|PSYCHOLOGY

Emotions Drive Your City: How Affect Shapes Our Lives

You don’t understand spaces, you feel them.

Jess the Avocado
Counter Arts
Published in
13 min readJan 11, 2025

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Melbourne is blue, gold, and all in between. All photos by author.

Allow me to start with love: I will soon relocate outside of the city, and won’t be able to call The Library at the Docks ‘my library’ anymore. At least, not in the sense of the local.

If I could embody an atmosphere, it would be that of my library. Its nooks and crannies, open spaces, and warm wood accents. The shelves lined with books, and the soft chairs by the large windows overlooking the harbour. The library carries different moods: tranquil when rain patters outside, vibrant during sunny days. It’s alive with countless sounds, some of which I barely notice, though occasionally, the excessive chatter pulls me away from my book or screen. Some special public libraries are so enchanting they deserve entire poetry collections written in their honour. If I were a better poet, I’d write more about them.

To some extent, I feel the same in museums, galleries, old buildings, cinemas, town centres, harbours, and cities. There’s a sensation, as if each building — or collection of buildings — possesses a soul. But what is it that creates this impression? This elusive quality?

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Counter Arts
Counter Arts

Published in Counter Arts

The (Counter)Cultural One-Stop for Nonfiction on Medium… incorporating categories for: ‘Art’, ‘Culture’, ‘Equality’, ‘Photography’, ‘Film’, ‘Mental Health’, ‘Music’ and ‘Literature’.

Jess the Avocado
Jess the Avocado

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