The role of architecture in producing happiness in life?
Beauty in architecture has great power, but only to a certain point, Mr. de Botton had explained. The glory of Venice would not assuage the emotional pain in an extreme moment of grief, just as the dreariness of an alleyway wouldn’t dampen the euphoria of the first kiss at 16. But for most of our lives, “we’re balanced between hope and despair … and it’s in that state when the built environment can have an influence on our mood.” It’s an environment we can control, he pointed out, unlike that other one called the weather.
If architecture is a tool for mental health, then why isn’t there more of the happiness-producing kind? Well, that is a modern dilemma. In the private realm, wealth often simply “allows bad taste its full expression,” Mr. de Botton lamented. In the public sphere, “good architecture has a hard time advocating its role,” he said, adding that Toronto “is a great city inhabiting a substandard urban core.” (One of his favourite places to hang out is in the airy, light-filled space of London Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5, opened in 2008.) Architecture is “considered a luxury. And everyone’s idea of what’s beautiful is different,” he said. To make matters worse – and to explain many of the developments of modern cities – most architects are not trained to negotiate and “are helpless before the power of politicians and financiers.” The age of the great patron is long gone.