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The Architecture of Happiness

By Alain de Botton

(33)

| Hardcover | 9780375424434

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Book Description

One 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 and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. The ArchContinue

Critics

Dream Houses

We can happily live with disagreements of taste when it comes to art, or poetry, or music. I listen to Abba on my iPod, you listen to Brahms on yours, and everybody’s content. But architecture is different. If I build a Zaha Hadid deconstructed-boome ... (read full critics)

nytimes published on Sat, 18 Sep 2010

Beauties and eyesores

To call him a polymath would be a gross slander. Alain de Botton knows everything. Sim- ple as that. He’s just far too modest to admit it. And I’m happy to report that his great mission to turn every facet of civilisation into a coffee-table book con ... (read full critics)

spectator published on Fri, 17 Sep 2010

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1 Review

1 person find this helpful

As always, De Botton writes with flair and elegance on his chosen topic. I was particularly looking forward to this book as I caught an episode of his television series "The Perfect Home", where he visited various locales and offered biting critique on their architecture. The book is quite different ... (continue)

As always, De Botton writes with flair and elegance on his chosen topic. I was particularly looking forward to this book as I caught an episode of his television series "The Perfect Home", where he visited various locales and offered biting critique on their architecture. The book is quite different, however, as he spends most of the time talking about the philosophy of architecture and reserves his critiques to the last chapter.

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s tsui said on Mar 31, 2008 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback