it's still raining in my bathroom

More on Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness:

As John Ruskin observed, we don’t want our buildings merely to shelter us; we also want them to speak to us. But of what? De Botton has an answer. Great buildings, he says, “speak of visions of happiness.”

This claim is bolder than it sounds. Architecture, after all, consists mainly of abstract forms. A building by Santiago Calatrava may suggest a dove taking flight, but that’s a far cry from expressing an ideal of the good life. Think of music, though. A movement from a late Beethoven quartet manages to convey a sense of joyous resignation, perhaps because its abstract tonal structures mirror the dynamics of our emotional lives. Mightn’t architecture work the same way?

De Botton thinks so, and he makes the most of this expressionist theme on his jolly (and handsomely illustrated) romp through the world of architecture. He writes eloquently of how different architectural features hint at aspects of human flourishing: how, say, pointed Gothic arches “convey ardor and intensity,” whereas their rounded classical counterparts “embody serenity and poise.” His visions of happiness range from the ordered complexity of the Doge’s Palace in Venice to Richard Neutra’s sleek modernist pavilions in the Hollywood Hills, which speak “of honesty and ease, of a lack of inhibition and a faith in the future.” Wherever he casts his eye, what he sees, in material form, are the lineaments of gratified desire.
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