+
From: "Architexturez." <admin-in@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
+
Date: Sat, 25 Aug 2007 12:31:53 +0530
Architexturez. wrote:
The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton
Hamish Hamilton
£17.99
John Crace
Monday April 17, 2006
The Guardian
1. A grimy terraced house. Not mine, I might add, but one I have driven
past. Quickly. Inside, we find peeling wallpaper, stained carpets and
Ikea furniture, yet somehow people may have found happiness in such
squalor.
Well-meaning professionals have been trying to perfect the art of the
masterplan for a long time, and many have laid down rules in order to
ensure that they succeed. The New Towns Act of 1946, for example, set
into law a government directive that could designate areas suitable for
“new towns”, several of which were implemented immediately.
Milton Keynes, our most infamous new town, is 40 years old this year and
elements of its framework are wonderfully successful. However, it is
precisely because the masterplan is so methodical that you end up aching
for something unplanned, something unusual and surprising. It is the
homogeneity that modernism advocates that undoes its benevolent intent.
Perhaps the real truth is that environments such as cities and
townscapes cannot actually be designed. By their nature they are
transient, evolving through unforeseeable ebbs and flows of culture and
commerce.
It is the fascinating undercurrent of the population, their illicit and
unpredictable activities, that are the true attractors shared by all the
successful cities of the world. And you can’t masterplan for that.
cont'd....
http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=31&storycode=3093653&c=0