Growing up in the shadow of the Adirondack Mountains in rural New York, my sense of beauty was primarily formed by nature. The trees and hills, fields and lakes of the area drew my attention and rewarded my gaze. While I enjoyed visiting cities like Ottawa, Cornwall, and Boston, I was rather overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the buildings, to say nothing of their often jarring appearance. Nearby Montreal has done an admirable job maintaining its distinctive architectural heritage, but even its cityscape has been damaged by the last century’s foolishness.
Over time, I internalized certain biases about the built environment and the people who develop it. As a general rule, newer buildings were ugly and their designers foolish, while older buildings were beautiful (or at least inoffensive) and their makers humane. While there is obviously some truth to this, I drew a further conclusion that was unjustified: the only way to maintain beauty is by protecting nature and preserving old buildings while opposing new construction.
Now, while it is certainly true that we should work to preserve the treasures of our architectural heritage, I unintentionally went too far. The protectionist stance I took was partially correct, but it ultimately fell into a dangerous—and sadly quite common—error: declinism. Declinism, as I use the term, is the view (conscious or not) that society is in a necessary decline and there is nothing we can do to stop it. At best, we may be able to slow it down, but substantial improvement is simply impossible. In essence, declinism is held by conservatives who believe that progressives are correct in claiming that society is bending to their views, and that the future will be centered around the atomized, sexually perverted individual. However, declinism is mistaken. World history is far from simple. Christians like me hold that God will win out at the end of time, but until then this ‘vale of tears’ promises both evil and goodness, pain and pleasure, ugliness and beauty.
I was recently taken to task for my declinist tendencies by an unexpected source: Alain de Botton’s 2006 book The Architecture of Happiness. De Botton, a Swiss transplant to the United Kingdom, is a contemporary popular philosopher who has written a number of books and founded The School of Life. Despite being an atheist, de Botton has a healthy respect for certain aspects of the legacy of Christendom, and he has enough humility to recognize that the West’s abandonment of Christianity has been accompanied by the loss of many humane aspects of our civilization.
What I take to be most valuable about de Botton’s slim little book is the sense that we can and should regain hope about the future of our homes and cities. Architecture has been in a sad state in the West for many decades, but there are also glimmers of promise.
Architecture and anthropology
The central claim of the book is that every work of architecture, every decision made in constructing and decorating a building, is undergirded by notions of the nature of the human person and our fulfillment. These span from simple questions about what kind of stairs are physically comfortable for the average person to climb to more penetrating questions such as how we become happy. Think, for instance, of the implicit claims that are made about the family and its relationship to the wider society when a home has a large dining room distinct from the kitchen, or when architects do not include any kind of space for entertaining. A city with a church at its center presents us with a different idea of our purpose than one in which shopping malls crowd the public arena.
De Botton admirably balances philosophical questions with concrete examples. The book boasts a wealth of black-and-white images of architectural designs. On virtually every other page, the author ties his higher-order questions about human flourishing to particular buildings and architects, ensuring that readers can follow the connections between the philosophical and the everyday. As Victor Hugo famously put it, the cathedrals of Europe serve as “books of stone” in which man reads accounts of everything that matters. De Botton illustrates this point magnificently.
Much contemporary architecture, sadly, expresses atomistic, a-traditional notions of the human person that cannot but lead to isolation. Man is simply not meant to live in a postage-stamp apartment in a building devoid of beauty. However, de Botton argues, the solution is not to re-create old buildings. Instead, an architect should interiorize the ineffable properties that make classical works of architecture beautiful. By doing so, he will develop the ability to construct buildings that enable full, happy lives without falling into slavish re-creation.
While de Botton’s discussion here is very helpful, his modern presuppositions do reveal themselves here. Healthy conservatism, I hope we would all agree, recognizes the need for our heritage to grow and develop; medieval gothic architecture is quite different from its older cousin the Romanesque, and yet we recognize both as beautiful expressions of human life. But de Botton’s anti-hierarchical prejudices sometimes force him to advocate for avoiding aspects of traditional architecture that are, in my view, an important part of a flourishing society. He argues that certain aspects of many traditional works of architecture are designed in such a way as to emphasize the inequality of man and ‘put the rabble in their place.’ While I think his basic observation is correct, I disagree that the very idea of hierarchy is objectionable. Regardless of any equality God grants or the state recognizes, hierarchy is an inevitability of life; the only question is whether you have healthy hierarchy or an abusive one, and one of the best ways to ensure you end up with a hierarchy that is abusive is to pretend it doesn’t exist. De Botton’s comments decrying what he sees as hierarchical architecture are a weak point in his argument, but they do little to harm an otherwise excellent book.
How then should we build?
In addition to the book’s habit of drawing connections between particular architectural decisions and larger philosophical questions, it also allows readers to find ways of living out the truths we recognize. True, we may not be able to instantly fire the armies of architects who make the world an uglier place. We may not even be able to provide funding to the few schools (like the University of Notre Dame) possessing architecture programs that actually encourage students to construct and preserve beautiful buildings. However, there are actions within every person’s power that can make our built environments more humane.
This point is made wonderfully when the author discusses the seemingly simple subject of domestic architecture. ‘Home’ is a humble idea, but it is also deeply powerful. De Botton writes, “what we call a home is merely any place that succeeds in making more consistently available to us the important truths which the wider world ignores, or which our distracted and irresolute selves have trouble holding on to.” Our homes, at their best, incarnate our values and encourage us to live them out. We can make choices every day to make our homes more beautiful and truthful places, places that remind us of who we are and how we want to spend our lives.
These choices need not take the form of dramatic renovations; they are open even to those with small budgets or who live in apartments. If you want to be a writer, it isn’t necessarily vanity to find a desk that encourages you to practice your craft. If you want to eat out less and cook more, it isn’t mere acquisitiveness to buy a reproduction of a painting of a chef at work by a great master. If you want to be holy, it isn’t showy to buy an old-style kneeler and a beautiful crucifix.
This isn’t a retreat into quietism, though. Our homes have social and political impacts. By cultivating beauty through ordering your home around truths about human nature, you may well develop the courage to speak out when local building projects are announced that you find unacceptable. Some of the battles turn out to be quixotic, but many do not, provided you can muster support for your cause.
De Botton’s book is a joy to read. On finishing it, you will be left with a sense that the beauty of the past is not lost. Take hope! We can, as individuals and communities, work to build a more ordered and beautiful world.
