Studio Linda Liukas
Letter

No. 116 — 🧭 Year in Review 2025

Just a small part of the world

“You have to look at the world in small pieces at a time,” Corita Kent said. “Look at it. Just a small part of the world.” Then she passed finders to her students, small pieces of cardboard with rectangular holes in them.

This year I didn’t succeed in a lot of the things I tried. I had thought I could continue my career without missing a beat. I couldn’t. Other things failed too. However, this was also the year when I started to feel at home in Paris, when I finished two major projects, and when I began to think of my work as a studio.

What gave me direction was the idea of an ongoing practice, a body of work that keeps accumulating. Every year contributes in some way. I’m trying to think of each year as one of Corita Kent’s finders, each one small, each one showing a different part of the same work.

This is the twelfth time writing this. Here are 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

And here is 2025:

January

  • I started the year ice skating at the Grand Palais. It felt glamorous, in the way only Paris can be. Then a few days in Spain for sunshine and friends. In January, E. & M. moved an hour away for a year. They were close enough to come visit often, which was lovely. I started the year with a biopsy that luckily came back benign. Still, it was a stressful few weeks.

  • Lots of furious writing with the book manuscript. FIP saved my quiet afternoons again. I did an interview with Bryan about the playground. Sam’s Humanistic Computation List arrived. Later we did a podcast together.

  • We had been looking for a place in Paris since the previous spring and finally, at the end of January, the move-in date arrived. For the first time I felt properly at home in Paris with our own furniture and our own corners (which I never quite managed to measure correctly). I kept thinking about Christopher Alexander’s “Couple’s Realm”: the idea that a home needs a small territory that belongs to the relationship itself, and scrolled through Rohmer interiors.

  • Haptic nostalgia (for me, the metal shutter on the front of a 3.5" disk and how it would spring back with a snick). Ulla Wiggen’s computer work at EMMA Museum. I was quite excited about the launch of Quanta Books.

  • Wrote Year in Review 2024.

Read:

February

Books read:

March

Read

April

Read

May

Read

June

  • French has officially destroyed my Swedish, which is basically gone. It’s starting on my English, too. “Let’s profit of this weather,” I’d say, cheerfully. Paris Saint-Germain won the Champions League final and the whole neighbourhood erupted. I don’t follow football, but this was impossible to miss. Paris, c’est ici!

  • I like this framing from Nick Cammarata: “neural network interpretability is fun both in the way going to the zoo is fun, and also in the way that doing math is fun.”

  • Quick visit to Berlin with my publisher. Always a pleasure! B. was in India. Paris was full of block parties: La Peña, the early childhood party, La Fête de la Musique, and the family festival at Fondation LV. A. came for dinner. We bought bleu de travail for the whole family. L. and family visited, and we got to show them our Paris, including a lovely morning at the Jardin d’Acclimatation. mlaboratori was my favorite Instagram account of the year.

  • I came across a list of what healthy communities tend to have, and it stuck with me. Things like running into people you know without planning it, having a school directory, hosting another family at least once a month, being a guest in someone else’s home at least once a month, and passing along kids’ clothes as hand-me-downs. I don’t have all of that yet. Still, naming what I’m missing makes it feel achievable. Our neighbours in Paris were a big part of why the city started to feel like home this year. Thank you, S. and C and everyone else.

  • Luen tässä was the best interview I did this year, as I got to talk about Lawrence Weschler, Matias Riikonen, Tove Jansson and Ursula M. Franklin in one interview.

  • A big disappointment in how life works. We are just huge weird messes. Went for a biking trip to process .

  • Wrote No. 101 — Language for imagination ⫶ Richelieu’s rotunda in 2048 ⫶ Vous avez trouvé votre bonheur? and No. 102 — True to Life ⫶ Polyester ⫶ All the surfaces of things

Read

July

Read

August

Read

September

  • The fall passed in a blur. A. came over to finish work on the house. (I still want to visit the Féau Boiseries showroom with her). French politics made all of us a little crazy. Spent lots of time with little E. Made arancini with J. The wedding of A. and M. was a joyful opening to the season. - a fox memory, a worm memory, a moss memory.

  • I was genuinely excited about a new work project, for the first time in years. It felt, and still feels, like the project my whole life has been pointing toward. Then the year steamrolled over me. Now I’m gathering the shards, Södergran style, so I can begin again.

  • I finished Benoit Mandelbrot’s biography and went down a rabbit hole on the theory of roughness. I still love how it makes me think of Italo Calvino and Six Memos for the Next Millennium. The best parts were about realizing “roughness” was not formless at all, and then, years later, finally coining a name for the whole terrain: fractal. It makes me excited for how many new words we’ll end up inventing around technology.

  • Visited Ukraine for a memorable week and took part in Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen, organised by the Zelenska foundation. Amid the ongoing war there is also a hopeful message of Ukrainian resilience, beauty and rebuilding I’ve wanted to be a part of.

  • The following week I flew to New York, with a perfect excuse: Ruoholahti Playground had just won a Fast Company Innovation by Design honorable mention. New York brought back early-2010s memories. It often felt like visiting an older version of myself. Liz’s Book Bar, the Brooklyn Library (and Moomins), Viola’s Room, and a run in Central Park with R. New York also gave me a real breakthrough in how I sell the playground work. Thank you, D. Thank you also for my parents for all the help at home with the globetrotting.

  • Dan Hollick’s work with Making Software feels generous, intellectual curiosity that the internet makes possible. Parker Henderson’s Are.na channel, Aesthetic Computers, is a small delight. I also keep a close watch on Ben Barry’s Active Matrix.

  • My favorite X is Diana’s links. Give me an API for just that, as a timeline.

  • Dan in Breakneck gave me a useful definition of technology that I keep returning to. Technology is tools, like pots and pans. It’s recipes, how you assemble them into something coherent. And it’s process, the practice of making and maintaining.

  • Wrote No. 107 — La rentrée rush ⫶ 3books ⫶ the McPhee method, No. 108 — Reading brain ⫶ Rebuilding something new ⫶ The State of the Braid and No. 109 — Paris fall exhibitions ⫶ Pots, pans, and stoves ⫶ What’s in Jane’s bag?

Read

October

Read

November

Read

December

Read