Does your home make you happy? Alain de Botton can tell you why with his book The Architecture of Happiness. It’s a familiar theme, check out Apartment Therapy, the book. Whereas AT is about less is more (convincingly I might add), The Architecture of Happiness is about the architecture and design of your home, it “examines the ways architecture speaks to us, evoking associations that, if we are alive to them, can put us in touch with our true selves and influence how we conduct our lives… he suggests some of the virtues a building should have (illustrated by pictures on almost every spread): order combined with complexity; balance between contrasting elements; elegance that appears effortless; a coherent relationship among the parts; and self-knowledge, which entails an understanding of human psychology, something that architects all too often overlook.”. More than just an exercise in philosophy, the book includes examples of the happy and not-so-happy, “of buildings that either incorporate or ignore these qualities, discussing them in ways that make obvious their virtues or failings.”. It’s also more than a book; it’s a website, an audiobook (listen to an excerpt here) and a three-part PBS TV series starting this Fall (watch video here). Hardcover, 288 pages, well illustrated, $15.75 at Amazon. Via Behind the Curtains.

+ The Architecture of Happiness at Amazon