Review: A Year of Constant Movement

This text is written in dialogue with Jenny Holzer’s TRUISMS, letting fragments of borrowed certainty interrupt a year of lived uncertainty.

2025 was the year of movement.
Fourteen cities, each carrying a different version of me—some unfinished, some already nostalgic. I lived actively between Istanbul and Munich, while a part of me remained unmistakably homesick for Rome. That was why the final journey had to return there.
A SOLID HOME BASE BUILDS A SENSE OF SELF.
I was learning what it means to live without one.

The year began on the first of January in the South of France, with someone who had once been central to my life and was already slipping out of my reality. He had been my closest companion during my time in Rome, and when I left the city, I left him behind too. We moved between Nice and Cannes for a week, like tides, both of us quietly aware—painfully so—that this would likely be the last time we would see each other. There are trips that are not about discovery but about closure; this was one of them.
A SINGLE EVENT CAN HAVE INFINITELY MANY INTERPRETATIONS.

From there, I went to Tbilisi, where my personal heritage lives and thrives—without me fully belonging to it.

A week later, I met someone who would become both my greatest happiness and my deepest heartache, almost simultaneously, as if the two were inseparable.
AMBIVALENCE CAN RUIN YOUR LIFE.

Then came Vienna. I went to see Ben, my dearest—someone whose presence always lightens my heart—and to apply for my Canadian visa. The visa was declined. A small administrative sentence with a disproportionately large emotional aftermath. Trauma, in its quiet bureaucratic form.
A LOT OF PROFESSIONALS ARE CRACKPOTS.

Milan came next, and with it the best weekend of the year. Klara and I giggled our way through the city without pause, and to this day those memories remain untouched by irony or sadness—pure joy, rare and intact.
BEING HAPPY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING ELSE.

Paris followed. As a child, I believed I should only ever visit Paris with the person I loved, because it was the city of love. A naïve wish, perhaps—but this year I went with love nonetheless. The love did not last, but the memory did: hands held, crisp hotel sheets. Some memories refuse to fade, and I have learned not to fight that.
A POSITIVE ATTITUDE MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD.

Then came Athens—the perfect city to fall in love, to break up, or to mistake one for the other.
ANGER OR HATE CAN BE A USEFUL MOTIVATING FORCE.

With that confusion still lingering, I went to Venice to celebrate myself and my work. I found myself in a city of collective dreams with a group of people who had been complete strangers a week before and somehow became dear to my heart. I could not have designed that experience better if I tried.
ALL THINGS ARE DELICATELY INTERCONNECTED.

Rome, of course, had to be my birthday city. Home on your birthday feels correct, almost necessary. That night, I had dinner next to a childhood idol and laughed my way through the evening—until it was time to take the train to Naples. There he was. Exactly as I remembered. No more comments are needed.
A SENSE OF TIMING IS THE MARK OF GENIUS.

Summer meant returning to Istanbul, briefly interrupted by yet another trip to Naples—the highlight and the lowest point of the year, coexisting uncomfortably. Everything was going well until I started reading Until August by García Márquez. And, inevitably, it was until August.
ACTION CAUSES MORE TROUBLE THAN THOUGHT.

Amsterdam followed, this time with my little sister. I carried heartbreak in my carry-on, tried to make new memories, but everything felt vague, slightly unfinished. I should have allowed myself to be more present with her. Some regrets arrive gently.
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE CAN GO A LONG WAY.

Then came Tbilisi again—and this time, it was a revelation. Feet on the ground. Unexpectedly, we went to Kazbegi, and suddenly everything aligned. The scale of the mountain rearranged my internal hierarchies. I wrote what might be my strongest prose there. For the first time in a long while, I felt like I belonged.
AT TIMES YOUR UNCONSCIOUS IS TRUER THAN YOUR CONSCIOUS MIND.

Returning to Tbilisi afterward was about digestion—accepting that my problems were smaller than I had assumed. Mount Kazbek teaches humility without cruelty.
AT TIMES INACTIVITY IS PREFERABLE TO MINDLESS FUNCTIONING.

The months that followed were quieter: back and forth between Istanbul and Munich, thinking mostly about myself.
BEING ALONE WITH YOURSELF IS INCREASINGLY UNPOPULAR.

Until Paris returned. Facing the memory of love hurt more than I expected. I tried to overwrite it with new souvenirs, new rituals. It did not work. Paris, I learned, requires time before it forgives.
A RELAXED MAN IS NOT NECESSARILY A BETTER MAN.

Vienna appeared once more—excellent Chinese food, warmth, familiarity—and then, unexpectedly, ex-Yugoslavia entered the story. A journey with an unplanned crew, proof that even late in the year, surprise was still possible.
ALIENATION PRODUCES ECCENTRICS OR REVOLUTIONARIES.

After ex-Yugoslavia, I returned home—though by then I had lost track of what home meant. For that moment, at least, Istanbul felt like it.
A NAME MEANS A LOT JUST BY ITSELF.

I wandered the city with only one thing on my mind: my master studio. Everything I saw became part of my project. Windows, faces, homes, doors—each found its way into my renovation of a 1970s housing unit. For years, I had believed that form follows function. But this year came a different realization:

“Form follows fiction.
Form follows profit.
Form follows the fastest route to planning permission—at which point it is most likely to be square-ish.
Form follows fashion.
Form follows an algorithm.
Form follows the competition brief.
Form wanders the streets in search of a local vernacular, then follows pastiche.
Form follows light.
Form follows style.
Form follows passive strategies—solar gain, water use, airflow.
Form follows technology.
Form follows security protocols.
Form follows what is buildable with local materials and available labour.
Form follows human behavioural studies.
Form follows friction.
Form follows beauty.
Form follows branding.
Form follows the whims of an architect working for a politician with deep pockets, seeking the regenerative power of an icon.
Form follows a three-martini lunch and a napkin sketch.
Form follows emotion.
Form follows the negative space between programme and context.
Form follows the maximum envelope of the site.
Form follows zoning.
Form follows the budget.
Form takes a line for a walk.
Form follows failure.
Form follows decay.
Form begins where engineering ends.
Form frames fixtures.
Form encloses space.
Form fixes context.
Form forges landscape.
Form follows freedom.
Form does not follow.”

That realization confused me—and liberated me.
ABSOLUTE SUBMISSION CAN BE A FORM OF FREEDOM.
For the first time, architecture felt less like a rulebook and more like a language I was finally allowed to bend.

To finish the year, I couldn’t think of a better way than going back to Rome. I packed my bags and found myself there alone, but emotionally rich beyond measure. I reached out to my friends and asked if they would join me for a day trip to Naples—to close circles I hadn’t even realized I was still tracing.

And yet, I have to admit: those streets still carried a sense of emptiness. There I was, standing in front of the hotel where we had stayed, in the exact place where I had last seen him. I think I already felt it that day in August, when I filmed him leaving on his Vespa from the balcony. That was the final glance I caught of him. When I returned, it was gone.
ANY SURPLUS IS IMMORAL.

And still—somehow—the place of my heartbreak became the place of pure joy. It taught me that it is not the city to blame, but the people you surround yourself with. It felt important to end the year on a good note, with Naples too. Who would have thought I’d be there for the third time—this time full of laughter, glasses of wine, two incredible friends, and mozzarella as big as our heads, being called “tre stelle” of the city by none other than the owner of his favorite restaurant.

Now I am sitting in my apartment in Istanbul, with the most unexpected lore of my life—but that is a story for another time.

2025, I loved you and I hated you, and I loved in you.

If this year taught me anything, it is that movement does not always mean escape. Sometimes it is education. Sometimes it is mourning. And sometimes, if you are lucky, it is belonging—brief, fragile, and still enough to carry forward.
ALL THINGS ARE DELICATELY INTERCONNECTED.

*Side effects of constant movement may include: romanticizing train stations, overinterpreting conversations, and believing that a new city will fix everything. It won’t. But it helps.

*Postscript: structural failure may occur when theory is strong but maintenance is emotional.