The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 5 January 2007
by Alain de Botton
We like to think that taste is a personal thing, and that there are broad economic and cultural reasons that things look the way they do. This is especially true in America, where vast housing developments are based upon the assumption that certain qualities are desired by the largest possible proportion of the population. And yet why did this reader, at least, feel deeply depressed when a patch of rolling green California hills was bulldozed for a group of new "executive homes"? Perhaps because the result is unlikely to do any justice to the destruction of the pretty countryside. Is a house, or any building, beautiful because it graces the cover of Country Living, Architectural Digest or the pages of Architectural Record? These are just some of the questions Alain de Botton brings up in his sensitive, entertaining and searching book. He engages the reader in a thought-experiment about what constitutes beauty and elegance in our built environment. And, with a couple of notable examples, he points out that it isn't necessarily that a building is designed by a "brilliant" architect like Le Corbusier or Wright. He argues for a more democratic idea of architectural beauty, buildings that aspire less to be eye-catching monuments, and more to be truly sensitive to the needs, desires and requirements for everyday living. He writes of the ways buildings speak to us, as does art of any type, but with the requirements of function and emotional aspirations. Buildings of beauty speak to us, they fill the gaps in our spiritual lives, they offer comfort and shelter, and they offer peace and tranquillity. Or not. That, too, may be subjective. And the landscape plays a crucial role as well. The author misses, a bit, that one may live in a beautifully balanced palace, but if it is located in a slum, it may yet fail to be beautiful. And, yet, he can't be expected to catch every point in an insanely variegated global landscape. Alain de Botton's exploration is philosophical, aesthetic and critical. It is sensitively written, both personal an intellectual. It is an engrossing book.
Also by Alain de Botton: [How Proust Can Change Your Life]