Architecture News & Views A Beautiful House Makes You Happy

Date Published:

27/05/2008

In the first of his series on architecture, Alain de Botton, presenter of Channel 4's The Perfect Home, gives us an insight into two extraordinary houses.

By Alain de Botton

We're a nation obsessed with home decoration, DIY and property prices. And yet most of the houses being built in this country at present are repetitive, unimaginative and patronising. British housing is rather like British cooking was around 1975. But it's only when you step inside a beautiful house that it strikes you how much we're missing out on. Good architecture can change our lives for the better.

Credit: Mark Luscombe-Whyte/Interior Archive

I've spent the last year travelling the world making a documentary for Channel 4 and writing a book - both of which ask 'What makes a building beautiful?' as well as 'How could we build more beautifully ourselves?' Two houses stand out in particular from my journeys: a house in Suffolk by the English architect James Gorst and another by a Japanese architect, Makoto Yamaguchi, in the countryside outside Tokyo. They're the starting point for some reflections on a passion for architecture.

Credit: Lorenzo-Nencioni/Vega MC

When we call a chair or a house beautiful, really what we're saying is that we like the way of life it's suggesting to us. It has an attitude we're attracted to: if it was magically turned into a person, we'd like who it was. It would be convenient if we could remain in much the same mood wherever we happened to be, in a cheap motel or a palace (think of how much money we'd save on redecorating our houses), but unfortunately we're highly vulnerable to the coded messages that emanate from our surroundings. This helps to explain our passionate feelings towards matters of architecture and home decoration: these things help to decide who we are.