@dynamicduo. Your response seems to deny that architecture is a legitimate art and technology for achieving human happiness. We spend our entire lives in places, and I think it worthwhile to think about what makes them good or bad places. Please note the architecture tag. I am looking for a discussion of an architectural character. Feel free to get imaginative.
Place yourself in a place that means something to you, and describe it. Or describe a realistic fantasy home. How do the architectural qualities of the place make doing whatever you do there that much more natural and immanent? For instance, take this passage from Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu, in which he describes the room of his house that served as his greatest refuge of solitude:
”...in my cowardice I became at once a man, and did what all we grown men do when face to face with suffering and injustice; I preferred not to see them; I ran up to the top of the house to cry alone in a little room beside the schoolroom under the eaves, which smelt of orris-root, and was scented also by a wild currant-bush which had climbed up between the stones of the outer wall and thrust a flowering branch in through the half-opened window. Intended for a baser and more specific use, this room, from which, in the daytime, I could see as far as the keep of Roussainville-le-Pin, was for a long time my place of refuge, doubtless because it was the only room whose door Ï was allowed to lock, whenever my occupation was such as required an inviolable solitude; reading or dreaming, secret tears or paroxysms of desire.”
(Yes, he mentions that he can lock the door, but there are other details as well.) Let’s try to figure out what makes our enjoyment of home tick. An answer doesn’t have to be THE final answer, and in a way it is rather naive to think that is would be. I look forward to a great discussion!