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The Architecture of Happiness

The house has grown into knowledgeable witness. Inside his walls have been kitchen

conversations during the midnight, welcome for a newborn; it has watched homework being

writing. It has experienced every single season; from the coldest winter to hot summer. More

than a physical it is also a psychological temple as De Botton said, It has been a guardian of

identity (11).

True is that the house cannot solve the problems of the occupants, however architecture is

capable to influence in their happiness, markedly.

Architecture has never been free from a degree of suspicion, a great number of the

worlds most intelligent people have rejected any interest in decoration and design. Nevertheless,

such determined efforts to ridicule design and the other visual experiences have been matched

with continual attempts to create a material world full of beauty. They have embroidered

different figures in their tablecloths; theyve carefully chosen a kitchen work-surface, even they

have dreaming living in those stunning houses shown in magazines (De Botton 12).

The conviction of the importance of architecture is notorious because, we are, for better

or for worse, differentpeople in different places, then knowing that one room can alter how we

feel the author stresses, if our happiness can hang on the colour of the walls or the shape of a

door what will we experience in a house with prison-like windows, stained carpet tiles and

plastic curtains? (13).

For sure not always the houses are guarantees of happiness, or that its inhabitants are of

good character. It is clear that even though you live in the most beautiful and calm place, even in

there, can be home to big heartless tyrants, that manifested nothing conveys what their

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environment, in words of the author architecture may well possess moral messages; it simply

has no power to enforce them(20).

When someone really want to appreciate the architecture, life has to show some of its

most tragic colors, so then you can see to the smallest detail on a wall or in the beauty of a hall;

there arent usually loving couples who stop to see a building, but rather those who have learned

to admire and rejoice about the smallest detail, these persons have made and indelible mark in

their life, may be pursued an unfulfilling dream, a huge lost in their life or married the wrong

person before architecture can have an small impact in their life.

The author exposed the case of the German theologian Paul Tillich, who explained that

art had always left him cold, despite the best pedagogical efforts of his parents. It wasnt until

Fist World War that after he left his battalion and found himself inside a museum in Berlin that

he felt what he described as a moment of revelatory ecstasy, when he saw Sandro Botticellis

Madonna and Child with Eight Singing Angels, tears welling un in his eyes at the disjunction

between the exceptionally tender atmosphere of the picture and the barbarous lessons he had

lernt in the trenches(De Botton 25), in other words, we need to be a little sad before art can

properly touch us.

To take serious architecture its necessary to forget about prejudice and open ourselves to

the fact that we are affected by our environment, no matter what the fact that; also means that we

accept that we are vulnerable to the color that surrounds us, whether the walls, ceiling or floor.

Ludwing Wittgenstein (an Australian-British philosopher), left the academia for three years just

to construct a house for his sister, De Botton quote his words when he said you think

philosophy is difficult observed Wittgenstein, but I tell you, it is nothing compared to the

difficulty of being a good architect(26).

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Work Cited

De Botton, The Architecture of Happiness. New York: Pantheon Books,

2006. Print