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kazen 's review for:
The Architecture of Happiness
by Alain de Botton
I kind of wanted to throw this book against the wall but it was on my e-reader, so I didn't. Lucky book.
Read this review by Zanna for a reasoned look at why I didn't like it. All I can articulate now is "whaa... wait... but..." so I'll go to bullets:
- The first part of this book only looks at Western architecture which I thought was sad, but whatevs, we all have our blind spots. (Over half the world is a damn big blind spot, but okay.) Then...
- He went to Japan and didn't like the skyscrapers in Tokyo. 'Why can't they make more Japanese-y skyscrapers? How boring.' Because the river you liked sleeping next to in the ryokan doesn't translate into a skyscraper, that's why! Because the entire city was razed to the ground in WWII with little ability to rebuild! When you look at the central Tokyo skyline nearly every building, every little thing you see was built in the last 60 years. It's amazing that they were able to do that, period. Give 'em a little time to make it pretty, k?
- The book rambles and is very opinionated though it may not seem so.
- "There should be no need to focus our energies on preservation and restoration... we should have the confidence to surrender the aristocratic palaces to the sea, knowing that we could at any point create new edifices that would rival the old stones in beauty." People like you, de Botton, are why we lost historic Penn Station. (If you've never seen it, google it now. No really, go do it. Your mouth will drop.) Money and "progress" trump beauty, and often the only time we can have pretty things is by preserving them.
I wish I had more brain to be coherent right now (see that review I linked) but yeah, not a fan.
Read this review by Zanna for a reasoned look at why I didn't like it. All I can articulate now is "whaa... wait... but..." so I'll go to bullets:
- The first part of this book only looks at Western architecture which I thought was sad, but whatevs, we all have our blind spots. (Over half the world is a damn big blind spot, but okay.) Then...
- He went to Japan and didn't like the skyscrapers in Tokyo. 'Why can't they make more Japanese-y skyscrapers? How boring.' Because the river you liked sleeping next to in the ryokan doesn't translate into a skyscraper, that's why! Because the entire city was razed to the ground in WWII with little ability to rebuild! When you look at the central Tokyo skyline nearly every building, every little thing you see was built in the last 60 years. It's amazing that they were able to do that, period. Give 'em a little time to make it pretty, k?
- The book rambles and is very opinionated though it may not seem so.
- "There should be no need to focus our energies on preservation and restoration... we should have the confidence to surrender the aristocratic palaces to the sea, knowing that we could at any point create new edifices that would rival the old stones in beauty." People like you, de Botton, are why we lost historic Penn Station. (If you've never seen it, google it now. No really, go do it. Your mouth will drop.) Money and "progress" trump beauty, and often the only time we can have pretty things is by preserving them.
I wish I had more brain to be coherent right now (see that review I linked) but yeah, not a fan.