The human habitat is shaped by two inseparable dimensions. On the one hand, there is the material world: buildings, streets, trees, and the objects that make up our everyday surroundings. On the other, there is a less visible dimension, shaped by stories, memories, emotions, and meanings that connect people to places.
This relationship works both ways. We inhabit and transform spaces, but spaces also transform us: they shape our experiences, create memories, and play a part in how we see ourselves. We are, in many ways, the places we inhabit.
At certain points in the city, this relationship takes on a particular intensity. These are places we recognize and distinguish from countless others. They become reference points, meeting places, destinations. Landmarks.
Their significance lies not only in their physical presence. A landmark can carry stories from the past and keep them alive, while also becoming the setting for new ones. Its meaning continues to evolve as people incorporate it into their everyday lives.
This is where architecture, memory, and identity begin to converge.
Urban icons have been part of cities since the dawn of civilization. What is less evident is how they come to acquire that status. Is it possible to design an icon? Can a project aspire to transcend its condition as a building and become embedded in a city’s collective imagination? And, as cities become increasingly expansive and complex, what role can these new urban reference points play?
Some contemporary projects offer a way into these questions.
In 1992, Farshid Moussavi and Alejandro Zaera-Polo won the competition to design the Yokohama International Passenger Terminal in Japan. As a piece of transportation infrastructure, the project already possessed some of the attributes often associated with a landmark: a strategic location, a significant scale, and a constant flow of people.
But the proposal sought to go further.
Rather than conceiving the terminal simply as a building for receiving and moving passengers, the architects envisioned a vast, continuous horizontal surface that folds onto itself, extending public space toward the landscape of the bay. In a sprawling, densely populated city, the terminal emerged as a distinctive presence while remaining deeply integrated into the urban experience.
There was innovation, disruption, and a powerful relationship with the landscape. Yet something was still missing: a meaningful connection to the place itself.
Faced with the initial uncertainty surrounding the proposal, the architects turned to an image deeply rooted in Japanese culture: Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The folds of the project could then be read as a reference to the sea and to an identity historically connected to it.
Architecture thus took on another dimension. It was no longer simply about creating a recognizable form, but about establishing connections between landscape, culture, memory, and the future.
Perhaps this offers a first clue to understanding how contemporary architectural icons are created.
It is no coincidence that a project of this nature emerged in Yokohama, within one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas. As cities expand and their boundaries become increasingly blurred, so too does the need for reference points capable of giving identity to new territories.
In these contexts, landmarks can play a role that goes beyond orientation or visual recognition. They can help create a sense of place, distinctiveness, and belonging.
But even when a building brings together all these qualities, it does not necessarily become a landmark. Architecture can propose symbols, create public spaces, and generate memorable experiences. What happens next depends on something far more difficult to design: the relationship people build with that place over time.
Perhaps this is also why a landmark need not be defined by monumentality or extraordinary scale. It can be a project that reshapes the perception of a neighborhood, becomes a point of reference for a community or, quite simply, finds a recognizable place in people’s everyday lives. From this perspective, any project has the potential to become a landmark when it responds meaningfully to its context, contributes value, and creates connections that allow people to recognize it, embrace it, and make it part of their shared environment.
Recommended reading:
- The Image of the City — Kevin Lynch, 1960, The MIT Press.
- Place and Placelessness — Edward Relph, 1976, Pion.
