{"product_id":"the-architecture-of-happiness-isbn-9780307277244","title":"The Architecture of Happiness","description":"\u003cb\u003eA dazzling and generously illustrated journey through the philosophy and psychology of architecture and the indelible connection between our identities and our locations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings, and streets that surround us. And yet a concern for architecture is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. In \u003ci\u003eThe Architecture of Happiness\u003c\/i\u003e, Alain de Botton starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and argues that it is architecture's task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.“De Botton has a marvelous knack for coming at weighty subjects from entertainingly eccentric angles.” \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Seattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"An elegant book. . . . Unusual . . . full of big ideas. . . . Seldom has there been a more sensitive marriage of words and images.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Sun\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"With originality, verve, and wit, de Botton explains how we find reflections of our own values in the edifices we make. . . . Altogether satisfying.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"De Botton is high falutin' but user friendly. . . . He keeps architecture on a human level.\" \u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003eALAIN DE BOTTON\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of three works of fiction and five of nonfiction, including  \u003ci\u003eHow Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy, \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eThe Art of Travel. \u003c\/i\u003eHe lives in London.\u003cb\u003eI. The Significance of Architecture\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    1.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    A terraced house on a tree-lined street. Earlier today, the house    rang with the sound of children's cries and adult voices, but since    the last occupant took off (with her satchel) a few hours ago, it has    been left to sample the morning by itself. The sun has risen over the    gables of the buildings opposite and now washes through the ground-   floor windows, painting the interior walls a buttery yellow and    warming the grainy-red brick façade. Within shafts of sunlight,    platelets of dust move as if in obedience to the rhythms of a silent    waltz. From the hallway, the low murmur of accelerating traffic can    be detected a few blocks away. Occasionally, the letter-box opens    with a rasp to admit a plaintive leaflet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The house gives signs of enjoying the emptiness. It is rearranging    itself after the night, clearing its pipes and cracking its joints.    This dignified and seasoned creature, with its coppery veins and    wooden feet nestled in a bed of clay, has endured much: balls bounced    against its garden flanks, doors slammed in rage, headstands    attempted along its corridors, the weight and sighs of electrical    equipment and the probings of inexperienced plumbers into its    innards. A family of four shelters in it, joined by a colony of ants    around the foundations and, in spring time, by broods of robins in    the chimney stack. It also lends a shoulder to a frail (or just    indolent) sweet-pea which leans against the garden wall, indulging    the peripatetic courtship of a circle of bees.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The house has grown into a knowledgeable witness. It has been party    to early seductions, it has watched homework being written, it has    observed swaddled babies freshly arrived from hospital, it has been    surprised in the middle of the night by whispered conferences in the    kitchen. It has experienced winter evenings when its windows were as    cold as bags of frozen peas and midsummer dusks when its brick walls    held the warmth of newly baked bread.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It has provided not only physical but also psychological sanctuary.    It has been a guardian of identity. Over the years, its owners have    returned from periods away and, on looking around them, remembered    who they were. The flagstones on the ground floor speak of serenity    and aged grace, while the regularity of the kitchen cabinets offers a    model of unintimidating order and discipline. The dining table, with    its waxy tablecloth printed with large buttercups, suggests a burst    of playfulness which is thrown into relief by a sterner concrete wall    nearby. Along the stairs, small still-lives of eggs and lemons draw    attention to the intricacy and beauty of everyday things. On a ledge    beneath a window, a glass jar of cornflowers helps to resist the pull    towards dejection. On the upper floor, a narrow empty room allows    space for restorative thoughts to hatch, its skylight giving out onto    impatient clouds migrating rapidly over cranes and chimney pots.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Although this house may lack solutions to a great many of its    occupants' ills, its rooms nevertheless give evidence of a happiness    to which architecture has made its distinctive contribution.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    2.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Yet a concern for architecture has never been free from a degree of    suspicion. Doubts have been raised about the subject's seriousness,    its moral worth and its cost. A thought-provoking number of the    world's most intelligent people have disdained any interest in    decoration and design, equating contentment with discarnate and    invisible matters instead.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The Ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus is said to have    demanded of a heart-broken friend whose house had burnt to the    ground, 'If you really understand what governs the universe, how can    you yearn for bits of stone and pretty rock?' (It is unclear how much    longer the friendship lasted.) Legend recounts that after hearing the    voice of God, the Christian hermit Alexandra sold her house, shut    herself in a tomb and never looked at the outside world again, while    her fellow hermit Paul of Scete slept on a blanket on the floor of a    windowless mud hut and recited 300 prayers every day, suffering only    when he heard of another holy man who had managed 700 and slept in a    coffin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Such austerity has been a historical constant. In the spring of 1137    the Cistercian monk St Bernard of Clairvaux travelled all the way    around Lake Geneva without noticing it was even there. Likewise,    after four years in his monastery, St Bernard could not report    whether the dining area had a vaulted ceiling (it does) or how many    windows there were in the sanctuary of his church (three). On a visit    to the Charterhouse of Dauphiné, St Bernard astonished his hosts by    arriving on a magnificent white horse diametrically opposed to the    ascetic values he professed, but he explained that he had borrowed    the animal from a wealthy uncle and had simply failed to register its    appearance on a four-day journey across France.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    3.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Nevertheless, such determined efforts to scorn visual experience have    always been matched by equally persistent attempts to mould the    material world to graceful ends. People have strained their backs    carving flowers into their roof beams and their eyesight embroidering    animals onto their tablecloths. They have given up weekends to hide    unsightly cables behind ledges. They have thought carefully about    appropriate kitchen work-surfaces. They have imagined living in    unattainably expensive houses pictured in magazines and then felt    sad, as one does on passing an attractive stranger in a crowded street.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    We seem divided between an urge to override our senses and numb    ourselves to our settings and a contradictory impulse to acknowledge    the extent to which our identities are indelibly connected to, and    will shift along with, our locations. An ugly room can coagulate any    loose suspicions as to the incompleteness of life, while a sun-lit    one set with honey-coloured limestone tiles can lend support to    whatever is most hopeful within us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Belief in the significance of architecture is premised on the notion    that we are, for better or for worse, different people in different    places - and on the conviction that it is architecture's task to    render vivid to us who we might ideally be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    4.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    We are sometimes eager to celebrate the influence of our    surroundings. In the living room of a house in the Czech Republic, we    see an example of how walls, chairs and floors can combine to create    an atmosphere in which the best sides of us are offered the    opportunity to flourish. We accept with gratitude the power that a    single room can possess.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    But sensitivity to architecture also has its more problematic    aspects. If one room can alter how we feel, if our happiness can hang    on the colour of the walls or the shape of a door, what will happen    to us in most of the places we are forced to look at and inhabit?    What will we experience in a house with prison-like windows, stained    carpet tiles and plastic curtains?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It is to prevent the possibility of permanent anguish that we can be    led to shut our eyes to most of what is around us, for we are never    far from damp stains and cracked ceilings, shattered cities and    rusting dockyards. We can't remain sensitive indefinitely to    environments which we don't have the means to alter for the good -    and end up as conscious as we can afford to be. Echoing the attitude    of Stoic philosophers or St Bernard around Lake Geneva, we may find    ourselves arguing that, ultimately, it doesn't much matter what    buildings look like, what is on the ceiling or how the wall is    treated - professions of detachment that stem not so much from an    insensitivity to beauty as from a desire to deflect the sadness we    would face if we left ourselves open to all of beauty's many absences.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    5.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    There is no shortage of reasons to be suspicious of the ambition to    create great architecture. Buildings rarely make palpable the efforts    that their construction demands. They are coyly silent about the    bankruptcies, the delays, the fear and the dust that they impose. A    nonchalant appearance is a frequent feature of their charm. It is    only when we try our own hand at construction that we are initiated    into the torments associated with persuading materials and other    humans to cooperate with our designs, with ensuring that two pieces    of glass will be joined in a neat line, that a lamp will hang    symmetrically over the stairs, that a boiler will light up when it    should or that concrete pillars will marry a roof without complaint.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Even when we have attained our goals, our buildings have a grievous    tendency to fall apart again with precipitate speed. It can be hard    to walk into a freshly decorated house without feeling preemptively    sad at the decay impatiently waiting to begin: how soon the walls    will crack, the white cupboards will yellow and the carpets stain.    The ruins of the Ancient World offer a mocking lesson for anyone    waiting for builders to finish their work. How proud the householders    of Pompeii must have been.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In his essay 'On Transience' (1916) Sigmund Freud recalled a walk he    took in the Dolomite Mountains with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. It    was an exquisite summer's day; the flowers were in bloom and brightly    coloured butterflies danced above the meadows. The psychoanalyst was    glad to be outdoors (it had been raining all week), but his companion    walked with his head bowed, his eyes fixed on the ground, and    remained taciturn throughout the excursion. It wasn't that Rilke was    oblivious to the beauty around him; he simply could not overlook how    impermanent everything was. In Freud's words, he was unable to forget    'that all this beauty was fated to extinction, that it would vanish    when winter came, like all human beauty and all the beauty that men    have created or may create'.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Freud was unsympathetic; for him, the capacity to love anything    attractive, however fragile it might be, was a hallmark of    psychological health. But Rilke's stance, though inconvenient,    helpfully emphasises how it can be those most in thrall to beauty who    will be especially aware of, and saddened by, its ephemeral    character. Such melancholic enthusiasts will see the moth hole    beneath the curtain swatch and the ruin beneath the plan. They may at    the last moment cancel an appointment with an estate agent, having    realised that the house under offer, as well as the city and even    civilisation itself, will soon enough be reduced to fragments of    shattered brick over which cockroaches will triumphantly crawl. They    may prefer to rent a room or live in a barrel out of a reluctance to    contemplate the slow disintegration of the objects of their love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    At its apex, a passion for architecture may turn us into aesthetes,    eccentric figures who must watch over their houses with the vigilance    of museum guards, patrolling their rooms in search of stains, a damp    cloth or sponge in hand. Aesthetes will have no choice but to forgo    the company of small children and, during dinner with friends, will    have to ignore the conversation in order to focus on whether someone    might lean back and inadvertently leave a head-shaped imprint on the    wall.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It would be pleasant to refuse in a muscular spirit to lend stray    blemishes genuine significance. However, aesthetes force us to    consider whether happiness may not sometimes turn on the presence or    absence of a fingerprint, whether in certain situations beauty and    ugliness may not lie only a few millimetres apart, whether a single    mark might not wreck a wall or an errant brush stroke undo a    landscape painting. We should thank these sensitive spirits for    pointing us with theatrical honesty towards the possibility of a    genuine antithesis between competing values: for example, an    attachment to beautiful architecture and the pursuit of an exuberant    and affectionate family life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    How wise were the ancient philosophers in suggesting that we exclude    from our vision of contentment anything that might one day be covered    by lava or blow down in a hurricane, succumb to a chocolate smear or    absorb a wine stain.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    6.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Architecture is perplexing, too, in how inconsistent is its capacity    to generate the happiness on which its claim to our attention is    founded. While an attractive building may on occasion flatter an    ascending mood, there will be times when the most congenial of    locations will be unable to dislodge our sadness or misanthropy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    We can feel anxious and envious even though the floor we're standing    on has been imported from a remote quarry, and finely sculpted window    frames have been painted a soothing grey. Our inner metronome can be    unimpressed by the efforts of workmen to create a fountain or nurture    a symmetrical line of oak trees. We can fall into a petty argument    which ends in threats of divorce in a building by Geoffrey Bawa or    Louis Kahn. Houses can invite us to join them in a mood which we find    ourselves incapable of summoning. The noblest architecture can    sometimes do less for us than a siesta or an aspirin.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Those who have made architectural beauty their life's work know only    too well how futile their efforts can prove. After an exhaustive    study of the buildings of Venice, in a moment of depressive lucidity,    John Ruskin acknowledged that few Venetians in fact seemed elevated    by their city, perhaps the most beautiful urban tapestry in the    world. Alongside St Mark's Church (described by Ruskin in The Stones    of Venice as 'a Book of Common Prayer, a vast illuminated missal,    bound with alabaster instead of parchment, studded with porphyry    pillars instead of jewels, and written within and without in letters    of enamel and gold'), they sat in cafés, read the papers, sunbathed,    bickered and stole from one another as, high on the church's roof,    unobserved, 'the images of Christ and His angels looked down upon them.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Endowed with a power that is as unreliable as it often is    inexpressible, architecture will always compete poorly with    utilitarian demands for humanity's resources. How hard it is to make    a case for the cost of tearing down and rebuilding a mean but    serviceable street. How awkward to have to defend, in the face of    more tangible needs, the benefits of realigning a crooked lamppost or    replacing an ill-matched window frame. Beautiful architecture has    none of the unambiguous advantages of a vaccine or a bowl of rice.    Its construction will hence never be raised to a dominant political    priority, for even if the whole of the man-made world could, through    relentless effort and sacrifice, be modelled to rival St Mark's    Square, even if we could spend the rest of our lives in the Villa    Rotonda or the Glass House, we would still often be in a bad mood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    7.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Not only do beautiful houses falter as guarantors of happiness, they    can also be accused of failing to improve the characters of those who    live in them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It seems reasonable to suppose that people will possess some of the    qualities of the buildings they are drawn to: to expect that if they    are alive to the charm of an ancient farmhouse with walls made of    irregular chiselled stones set in light mortar.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304604881125,"sku":"NP9780307277244","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307277244.jpg?v=1767738125","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-architecture-of-happiness-isbn-9780307277244","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}