de botton - architecture of happiness

8/2/2019 De Botton - Architecture of Happiness

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The Architecture of HappinessA lain d e B otton

VINTAGE ITER "ATTONALVintage Books

A Division of Random House, Inc.New York


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I.If ou r in terest in buildings and object s is indeed determined as much bywha t they say to us asby how they perform thei r mate rial functions, it isworth elaborating on the curious process by which arrangements of stone,steel, concrete, wood and glass seem able to express themselves - and canon rare occasions leave us under the impress ion that they are talking to usabout significant and touching things.

2.We will, of course, run a r isk if wespend extended per iods analysing themeanings tha t emana te from pract ical ob jec ts. To be preoccup ied withdeciphering the message encoded in a light switch or a tap is to leaveourselves more than usually vulnerable to the commonsensical scorn ofthose who seek lit tle f rom such f itrings beyond a means of i lluminatingtheir bedroom or r insing their teeth .To inoculate ourselves against this der is ion, and to gain confidence in

cultivating a contrary, more meditative attitude towards objects, we mightprofitably pay a visit to a museum of modern art . In whitewashed galler-ies housing collect ions of twentieth-century abs tract sculpture, we areoffered a rare perspective on how exactly three-dimensional masses canassume and convey meaning - a perspective that may in turn enable us toregard our f it tings and houses in a new way.

3 .I t was in the first ha lf of the twentieth cen tury that sculptors began e li c-i tiog equal measures of awe and opprobr ium for exhibi ting pieces towhich it seemed hard to pur a name, works tha t both lacked an inte rest inthe mimet ic ambi tions tha t had domina ted Western sculpture since theAncient Greeks and, despite a cer tain resemblance to domestic furnish-ings, had no practical capacities either.

78 The Ar ch it ect ur e o fH appi ness

f . i . ' h at a b st r ac t o b jt : ct s c a n my :I fen r y ; \toore, T w a F o rm s ; t 9 3 -+


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Yet,notwithstanding these limitations, abstract artists argued that theirsculptures were capable of articulating the grea test of themes. Manycritics agreed. Herbert Read described Henry Moore's work as a treatiseon human kindness and crue lty in a world from which God had recentlydepar ted, while for David Sylves ter, Alber to Giacometti 's sculpturesexpressed the loneliness and desire of man alienated from his authenticself in industrial society.It may be easy to laugh at the grandi loquence of claims direc ted at

objects which on 0 casion resemble giant earplugs or upturned lawn-mowers. Bur,instead of accusing critics of reading too much into too little,we should allow abstract sculptures to demonstrate to us the range ofthoughts and emotions that every kind of non-representational object canconvey. The gift of the most talented sculptors has been to teach us thatlarge ideas , for example, about intel ligence or kindness, youth or seren-i ty, can be communicated in chunks of wood and s tr ing, or in plaster andmetal contraptions, as well a s they can in words or in human or animall ikenesses. The great abstract sculptures have succeeded in speaking tous, in their peculiar dissociated language, of the important themes of ourlives.In turn, these sculptures afford us an opportunity to focus with unac-

customed intensity all the communicative powers of ail objects, includingour buildings and their furnishings. Inspired by a museum visi t, we mayscold ourselves for our previous prosaic belief that a salad bowl isonly asalad bowl, rather than, in truth, an objec t over which there linger faintbur meaningful associations of wholeness , the feminine and the inf inite.We can look at a practi cal entity l ike a desk, a column or an ent ire apart-merit building and here, too, locate abs tract art iculat ions of some of theimportant themes of our l ives .

Top: Alberto Giacomcrri, Houroftl Traces, 19JO;Jasper \\orrison, ATy! Tobie , 2003.\l iddle: Anthony Cora, Wbirpl'rillg, 196'1; \!ies vall der Rolle , column, Barcelona Pavilion, 1929Bottom: Donaldjudd, L ' u t i t l t Y ! , 1 l) t- l9 ; D ie n er a n d D ie n er , Migros, Lucerne , 1000


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4.A bright morning in the Tate Gallery, S[ lves, Cornwall On a pl inth sit s amarble sculpture by Barbara Hepworth, first exhibited in 1936. Althoughit isunclear what exactly these three stories might mean or represent - amystery ref lected in their ret icent t it le , T w o S eg m en t. r a nd a S ph er e - theynevertheless manage to arrest and reward our gaze. Their interest centreson the oppos it ion between the ball and the semicircular wedge on whichit rests. The bal l looks unstable and energeti c; we sense how keenly itwant. to rol l down the segment 's leading edge and bowl across the room.By Contrast with this impulsiveness , the accompanying wedge conveysmaturi ty and s tabili ty : i t seems content to nurse gently from side to side,taming the recklessness of i ts charge. In viewing the piece, we are witnessto a tender and playful relat ionship, rendered majest ic through the pri-mordial medium of polished white marble.In an essay on Hepworth, the psychoanalytic critic Adrian Stokes

attempted to analyse the power ofthis apparently simple work. He arrivedat a compell ing conc lusion. If the sculpture touches us, he ventured, itmay be because we unconscious ly understand it asa family por trai t. Themobili ty and chubby fullness of the sphere subtIy suggest to us a wrig-gl ing fat-cheeked baby, whi le the rocking ample forms of the segmenthave echoes of a calm, indulgent, broad-hipped mother. We dimly appre-hend in the whole a central theme ofour l ives .vVesense a parable ins toneabout motherly love.Stokes's argument di rects us to two ideas. First, that it doesn't take

much for us to inte rpret anobjec t as a human or animal figure. A piece ofs tone can have no legs, eyes, ears or almost any of the features associatedwi th a l iving thing; it need have only the merest hint of a maternal thighor a babyish cheek and we will start to read it as a character. Than ks tothis project ive proclivity, we can end up as moved by a Hepworth sculp-ture as we are by a more li teral picture of maternal tenderness, for to our

The Archirecrure o r Happiness


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inner eyes, there need be no difference between the expressive capacityof a representational painting and that of an arrangement of stones,Secondly, our reasons for liking abstract sculptures, and by extension

tables and columns, are not in the end sofar removed from our reasons forhonouring representational scenes, We call works in both genres beautifulwhen they succeed in evoking what seem to lIS the most attractive, signifi-cant attributes of human beings and animals.

5.Once we starr to look, we will f ind no shortage of suggestions of livingforms in the furni ture and houses around us. There are penguins in ourwater jugs and stout and self-important personages in our kettles, gracefuldeer in our desks and oxen in our dining-room tablesA weary, sceptical ey e gazes om at us from the roof of Alfred Messel 's

Wertheim Department Store in Berlin, while upturned insect legs guardthe Caste l Beranger in Paris , An aggressive beetle lurks in Malaysia 'sPutrajaya Convention Centre and a warmer, hedgehog-related creaturein the Sage Arts Centre in Gateshead.

1 ':4 The Archi te ctur e of Happine ssfJ" t!Kehog.,~ b e e t l e s , e Y C J an d l e g . rClo~k\\~se f rom top lef t: Fos te r and Par tner s) Sage Art s CCIHTt\ Gateshead, 2005Hijjas Kasruri, Convcnrinn Centre, Purra java , 2003Alf red X ie ss el , Wer theim Depor tment S tore , Ber lin, 190+Hec tor Cuima rd , Cas te l Bcrange r; Par -i .. IR96


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Even 111 something as diminutive as the let ters of a typeface, we maydetect well-developed personalities, about whose lives and daydreams we

Jcould without great dif ficulty write a short s tory. The s traight back andalert upright bearing of a Helverican 'f' him at a punctual, clean andoptimistic proragornsr, wh reas his Poliphilus cousin, with a droopy headand soft features, strikes a sleepier, more sheepish and more pensive note.The story may not end well for him.

f,In a kitchenware shop may be found an equally vivid as.ortrnent of

types. Stemmed glasses seem generically feminine, though this categorynonetheless encompasses warm-hear ted matrons, nymphets and nervyblue-stockings, while the more masculine rumblers count among theirnumber lumberjacks and stern civil servants.

The tradition of equating fu rniture and bui ldings wi th living beingscan be traced back to the Roman author Virruvius, who pal red each of thethree p rincipal classical o rders wi th a human or divine archetype fromGreek mythology The Doric column, with its plain capital and squatprofi le, had its equ ivalent in the muscu lar, mart ial he ro Hercules; theIonic colum n, with i ts decorated scrolls and base, corresponded with the

86 The Architec. :mfc of Happiness

stol id , middle-aged goddess Hera; and the Corinthian column, the mostIntricately embellished of the three and the one with the tal lest , s lender-est profile, found its model in the beautiful adolescent deity Aphrodite.

T n homage to Vitruvius , we might pass the t ime on car journeys align-ing the pil lars of rnotorway bridges to appropriate bipedal co.unterparrs.A dnve might reveal a sedentary and cheerful woman holding up onebridge, a punctil ious, nervous accountant with an authori tarian air sup-porting another.I fwe can judge the personali ty of objects f rom apparently minuscule

features (a change of a fewdegrees in the angle of the rim can shift a wineglass from modesty to arrogance), i t is because we first acquire this skil lin relation cohumans, whose characters we can impute from microscopicaspects of their skin t issue and muscle, An eye will move from implyingapology to suggest ing self- righteousness by way of a movement that isin a mechanical sense implausibly small. The width of a coin separates abrow tha t we take to be concerned from one that appears concentrated,or a mouth that implies sulkiness from one that suggests grief . Codifyingsuch inf inites imal var iations was the life's work of the Swiss pseudosci-entist Johann Kaspar Lavarer, whose tour-volume Essays on Physiogno1nJl(1783) analysed almost every conceivable connotation of facial featuresand supplied line drawings of an exhaust ive array of chins , eye sockets,foreheads, mouths and noses , with interpretat ive adjectives appended coeach illustration,

Sad and sarcastic C r af ry b u r v u lg ar M i ld a nd f o rg iv in g

H ' b at [ a ce s m e a :Johann Kaspar l.avarcr, Dray., 011 Pbysiof!! ,omy, 1783


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Benevolent a n d r e nd e r Brutal and cvnical

The wea lth of information we are attuned to deducing from livingforms helps to ~xplain the intensi ty of fee lings genera ted by compet-ing architectural s tyles. When only a mill imetre separates a lethargic setof the mouth from a benevolent one, it is understandable that a greatdeal should seem to hang on the dif fering shapes of two windows or rooflines. Itisnatural for us to be asdiscr iminating about the meanings of theobject s we live al llong as we are about the faces of the people we spendtime with.To feel that a building is unappealing may simply be to dislike

the temperament of the creature or human we dimly recognise in itselevation - jus t as to call another edifice beautiful is to sense the presenceof a character we would like jf i t took on a living form. What we search forin a work of architecture is not in the end so far from what we searchfor in a fri end. The object s we describe as beaut iful are versions of thepeople we love.

l l 'h o wou ld 'we tcant to befriends wilv?

S8 The Architecture of Happiness

6.Even when objects don 't look anything like people, we can f indit easy toimagine what kinds of human characters they might have.So ref ined isour skill at detecting paral lels to human beings in forms,

textures and colours that we can interpret a character f rom the humblestshape. A line iseloquent enough. A straight example wil l signal someones table and dull, a wavy one will appear foppish and calm, and a jagged OJ)eangry and confused.

Conside r the strut s on the backs o f two chai rs. Bo th seem to express amood. The curved s truts speak of ease and playfulness, the s traight onesof seriousness and logic. And yet neither set approximates a human shape.Ra ther, the st ruts abst ract ly represent two di fferent temperaments. Astraight piece of wood behaves in i ts own medium asa stable, unimagina-t ive person will act in his or her l ife, while the meanders of a curved piececorrespond, however obliquely, with the casual elegance of an unruffledand dandyish souL

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The ease with which we can connect the psvchological world with theouter, visual and sensory one seeds our language with metaphors. Wecanspeak of someone being twisted or dark, smooth or hard. We can developa steely heart or fall into a blue mood. We can compare a person to amaterial like concrete or a colour like burgundy and be sure thereby toconvey something of his or her personality.The German psychologisr Rudolf Arnheim once asked his students to

describe a good and a bad marriage using only l ine drawings. Althoughwe might be hard pressed, working backwards, to divine Arnheim's brieffrom the ensuing s:!uiggles, we could COmeclose, for they are strik inglvsuccessful at capturing something of the qualities of two different kil:cisof relationship. In one example, smooth curves mirror the peaceable andflowing course of a lm'ing union, while violently gyrating spikes serve asa visual shorthand for sarcastic putdowns and slammed doors.

Two s tori es abour mar ri ed l if e hom RudolfArnhe i r, j ' I J l I t I I ' J ' / J i J l l t i J t g _ , 1 9 6 9

If elen crude scratches on a pIece of paper can speak accurately andfluently of our psychic states, when whole buildings are at stake, expres-s~vepotential is exponentially increased. The pointed arches of BayeuxCathedral convey ardour and intensity, while their rounded counterparts1I1. the courtyard of the Ducal Palace in Urhino embody serenity and poise.Like a person weathering life's challenges, the palace's arches equitablyresist pressure from all sides, avoiding the spiritual crises and emotionaleffusions to which the cathedral's appear ineluctably drawn.

90 The Archirecrure of !-bppiness

Comm st i ng t c mp emm e1 ' l tJ _ Left: Ducal Palace, Urbino, 1479; righc: Bayeux Cathedral, Ion

If, to take Arnheirn's exercise several steps further, we were tasked withproducing metaphoric images of Germany in two periods of her history,as a fascist state and a democratic republic, and if we were aUowedto work with stone, steel and glass rather than with just a pencil, it islikely we could not better the iconic designs of Albert Speer and EgonEiermann, who created national pavilions for World's Fairs on either sideof the Second World War, Speer's offering, for the Paris Fair of 1937,makes use of the quintessential visual metaphors of power: height, massand shadow. Without even laying eyes on the insignia of the governmentwhich sponsored it, we would almost certainly sense something ominous,aggressive and defiant emanating from this SOO-footNeoclassical colos-sus. Twenty-one years and a world war la ter, in his German Pavil ion forthe 1958World Exposition in Brussels, Egon Eiermann would resort to a



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frio of very different metaphors: horizonrality to suggest calm, lightnessto imply gentleness and transparency to evoke democracySo eloquent are mater ials and colours, then, that a facade can be made

to speak of how a cou mry should be ruled and which principles ought togovern its foreign policy . Poli tical and ethica l ideas can be writ ten in towindow frames and door handles . An abs tract glass box on a s tone plinthcan deliver a paean to tranquillity and civilisation.7 .There IS yet a third way In which objec ts and buildings communicatemeaning, one we might begin to get a feel for if wewere invited to dinnerat the German Ambassador's in Washington, DC Si ted on a wooded hil lin the nor th-wes tern section of the capital , the res idence is an imposingstructure with a formal and Classical air,its outer walls clad in white lime-s tone and its inter iors dominated by marble HOOfS, oak doors, and leatherand steel furniture. Ushered out onto the veranda for a preprandial glass ofsparkling Rhine wine and a cocktai l sausage, we would - given a relevanthistor ical awareness - see something so unexpected and shocking that wecould only gasp as our impeccably polit e host s pointed out fea tures ofthe skyline in their flawless English. Itwould not be the s ilhouettes of thecity's landmarks, however, that occasioned our astonishment but rather theportico itself, whispering in our ears of torch-lit parades, military proces-sions and marti al salutes. In bo th it s dimensions and i ts forms, the rea relevation of the German Ambassador 's Res idence bears an uncanny like-ness coAlbert Speer's ambulatory at the Nuremberg Parade Ground.Insofa r as bui ldings speak to us, rhey a lso do so through quota tion -

that is, by referring to, and trigger ing memories of, the contexts in whichwe have previously seen them, their counterparts or rheir models . Theycommunicate by prompting associat ions . We seem incapable of looking

Top: Albert Speer, German Pavilion, World's Fair, Paris . 1 9 . 1 . 7Bot tom. Egon Eie rmann, Pavil ion of the Federal Republi c of Germanv,World Exposition, Brussels, 1958


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i .e fi: Albert Speer, ambulaTOry, Zcppelinfeid, "urember!" 1939R ig h t: O s wa ld \'(l1nhias L,-ngers, Residence o f rh G er ma n A mb as sa do r;\ V as h in g t: () n, D C , 1 1 J9 5

at building- s or meces of furniture . h _ 1 hr WIt our tymg tnern to t e historicaland personal circumstances of our viewing; as a result, architectural anddecorative styles become, for us, ernorional souvenirs of the moments andsettings in which we came across them,So attentive are our eyes and our brains that the tiniest detail can

unleash memories. The swollen-bellied 'B ' or open-jawed 'G' of an ArtDeco font is enough to inspi re reveries of short-haired women with melonhat and posters advertising holidays in Palm Beach and Le Touquer,

AI)CD[fGIIIJ~Lm ~ODODQIlJVWX,{ZJust as a childhood can be released from the odour of a washinz powderf bor cup 0 tea, an entire culture can spring from the angles of a few lines.

A steeply sloping tiled roof can at once engender thoughts of the EnglishArts and Crafts movement, while a gambrel-sbaped One can as rapidlyprompt memories of Swedish history and holidays On the archipelagosouth of Stockholm.

94 The Ar ch it ecr ur e o f Happi ne ss

Left: C. E A . ' -" u ys er , ~!uurcr,'g, Cumbria, I W)9R i gl ir ; S ta ll ar ho lm e n, n c ar \ ta ri cf re d! S\vlden1 ( ,;:':;50

Walking past the Carlton Cinema 01 1 London's Essex Road, we Illayremark something oddly Egyptian about the windows. This stylistic termwill occur tous because at some point in our past - perhaps on an eveningwhen we watched a documentary about Ancient Egypt while eating dinner_ our eyes rook note of the angles of the pylon gateways to the temples atKarnak , Luxor and Philae, That we can now retrieve that half-f (_) rgo ttendetail and apply it to the narrowing of a city window is testament to thesynaptic process by which our subconscious can master information andmake connections that our conscious selves may be wholly incapable ofarriculati ng.

L ef t: T em pl e o f I si s, P hi la e, r. 1-+0 B e _ :Righ!: CeOf1!C C ol e, C a-lr on C in em a, E ss ex R oa d, L on do n, j i no


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Relying on our associative powers , architects can dimple their archesand windows and feel confident that they will be understood asreferencesto Islam. They can line their corridors with unpainted wooden plan ks anddependably allude to the rust ic and the unpretentious. They can ins tallthick white rai lings around balconies and know that their seaside vil laswill speak ofocean liners and the nautical l ife.A more disturbing aspect of associations l ies in their arbi trary nature,

in the way they can lead LIS to pass a verdict on objects or bui ldings forreasons unconnected to their specif ical ly architectural vir tues or vices .We may make a Judgement based on what they symbolise ra ther than onwhat they are.We may decide that we hate nineteenth-century Gothic, for ins tance,

because it characterised a house in which we were unhappy at univer-sity, or revile Neoclassicism (as exemplified by the German Ambassador'sResidence or by the work of the architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel) becauseit had the misfortune to be favoured by the Nazis.For proof of the capriciousness with which architectural and artis-

ti c styles fall vict im ro baleful associations, we need only note that , inmost cases, little besides time isrequired for them to recover their charm.The remove of a few generations or more a llows us to regard objects orbuildings without the biases which enrrarnmel almost every era. With thepassage of t ime, we can gaze at a seventeenth-century statuet te of theVirgin Mary untroubled by images of overzealous Jesuits or the f ires ofthe Inquisition. Wi th time , we can accept and love Rococo de tailing onits own terms, rather than seeing it asa mere symbol of aristocratic deca-dence cut short by revolutionary vengeance. With t ime, we may even beable to s tand on the veranda of the German Ambassador 's Res idence andadmire the proud, bold forms of its portico without being haunted byvisions of storm troopers and rorch-Iit processions.We might def ine genuinely beautiful objects as those endowed with

9 6 The A rc hi te ct ure o f H app in es s

~llff icient innate assets as to withstand our posi tive or negative projec-t ions. They embody good quali ties rather than s imply remind us of them.They can thus outlive their temporal or geographic or igins and cornrnu-mcate their intentions long after their initial audiences have disappeared.They can asse rt then attributes over and above the ebb and flow of ourunfairly generous or damning associations.

8.Despite the express ive potential of objects and buildings, discuss ion ofwhat they talk about remains rare. We appear to feel more comfortablecontemplating historical sources and stylistic tropes (han we do delvinginto anchropomorphic, metaphoric or evocative meanings. Itremains oddto initiate a conversation about what a building is saying.We might find such activities easier if architectural features were more

explici tly connected with their utterances - if there existed a dictionary,for example, which systematically correlated media and forms with emo-tions and ideas . Such a dictionary would most helpfully supply analysesof materials (of aluminium and steel, of rerracorta and concrete) as wella s of styles and dimensions (of every conceivable roof angle and everythickness and type of column).ltwould include paragraphs all the signifi-cance of convex and concave lines, and of ref lect ive and plain glass.The dictionary would resemble the giant catalogues which provide

architects with information on light fittings and ironrnongery, but, ratherthan focus ing as those do on mechanical performance and compliancewith building codes , i t would expound on the express ive implications ofevery element in an architectural composition.In it s comprehensive concern with minutiae , the dictionary would

acknowledge the fact that just asthe alteration of asillgle word can changethe whole sense of a poem, so, too, can OUf impression of a house be trans-formed when a straight l imestone lintel is exchanged for a fract ionally



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curved brick one. 1Xith the aiel of such a resource, we might become morecon scious r eaders, as well as writer s, o f our env ir onmen t.

9.As useful as such a handbook might be, however, in annotating whatarchitecture talks to us about, it would not on its own ever be able toexplain wharit is about certain building s th at makes them appear to speakb r a u t i ji d !y .The buildings we admire are ultimately those which, III a "anety of

ways, extol values we think worthwhile - which refer, that IS whetherthrough their ~aterials, shapes or colours, to such Iegendari ly posi ti vequa li ti es as f ri endlines s, k indnes s, subtl ety, s trength and intell igence . Oursense of beauty and our understanding of the nature of a good Jife areintertwined. We seek associations of peace in our bedrooms, metaphorsfor generosity and harmony in our chairs, and an air of honesty and forth-rightness IIIou r taps. We can he moved by a column that meets a roof withgrace, by worn stone steps that hint at wisdom and by a Georgian doorwaythat demonstrates playfu ln ess and cour tesy in its f an light window.

I t was S tendha l 1. If!JO offered the most crystalline expression of theintimate affiliation between visual taste and our values when he wrote,'Beauty is the promise of happiness.' His aphorism has the virtue of dif-ferentiating Our love of beaury from an academic preoccupation with aes-thetics, and integrating it instead with the qualities we need to prosper aswhole human beings. If the search for happiness is the underlying questof our lives, it seems only natural that it should simultaneously be theessentia I theme towhich beauty a lludes.But because Stendhal was sensitiv e to the complexity of our r equire-

ments tor happiness, he wisely refrained from specifying any particulartype of beauty. As ind ividuals we may , after all, find vanity 110 less attrac-tive than graciousness, or aggression as intriguing as respecr. Through

98 The Ar ch irec nrr e o fH appi ness. - - 1 promise 1) [ p l t{ y /i r !u l 'J J ( w d r o a ne s y :Thomas Levcrrou. fanlight window, Bedford Square, 17H3


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his use of the capacious word 'happiness' , Srendhal allowed for the widerange of goals which people have pursued. Understanding that mankindwould always be as confl icted about i ts visual tas tes as about i ts ethicalones, he noted, 'There are as many styles of beauty as the re ar e visionsof happiness.'To call a work of architecture or design beautiful is to recognise i t asa

rendition of values critical to our flourishing, a transubstantiation of ourindividual ideals in a material medium.

100 The Ar ch it ect ur e o f Happi ne ss


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f'vt>I] ardntecture! J t l ! c ' J p f - n k J " oInu rmdentOi t-di1J .g . ~rb(,ppi,! .ej"s:John Pnrdev, Ducke tt House , New Fores t, 20lH

de botton - architecture of happiness

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