If our interests in buildings and objects is indeed determined as much as what they say to us as to how they perform their material functions, it is worth elaborating on the curious process by which arrangements of stone, steel, concrete, wood, and glass seem able to express themselves - and can on rare occasions leave us under the impression that they are talking to us about significant and touching things.
- Alain de Botton
The internet revolution has been an explosion of technology that aims to cater to our every need, emotion - providing a powerful and fluid medium that can facilitate our security, education, employment, finances, love. --Happiness?
In the second chapter of the book, in What Style Shall We Build?, Botton presents a history of architecture in which the role of the architect before the modern era was an arbiter of the expression of ideals through stylistic choices. Architects in the West drew upon Classicism for both styles and the ideals they embodied. Architects were stylists.
The modern era transformed the profession through the marvels of engineering. The efficiency and power of steel bridges became more important than the stylistic beauty of classical proportions. (He goes on to make the point that the architects of the Modern era couched their language in function and science, while creating buildings whose power resides in their ability to speak - using style )
The rise of information technology is this story in reverse. The internet began as unadorned functionality, the feat of engineers in connecting networks of computers. The marvel of encoding packets and decoding packets with reliability was the original aim. Now it's difficult to imagine that network unadorned with the stylistic proclivities of millions of individuals.
--Happiness?
I'm starting this blog as a way to digest. Restate. Rethink.
What is the architecture of happiness when talking about the vast, sprawling information landscape that in many ways defines how we live. In Botton's view buildings are talking to us and we have the ability to read them with the subtly that we might utilize in reading a lover's face. Our screens are talking to us, through substance and through style. How are they contributing to our happiness?
