What If Architecture Doesn’t Matter as Much as We Think?
Learning to live in spaces without asking them to save us
I picked up The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton again recently and found myself underlining like I was still in school. I graduated from architecture a year ago after five long years of learning to talk about buildings like they’re sacred texts. But this time, reading Botton felt different. Like someone finally said the quiet part out loud.
There’s a line I keep coming back to. “We can’t remain sensitive indefinitely to environments which we don’t have the means to alter for the good. We end up as conscious as we can afford to be.” Now that got me thinking. Not just because it’s true, but because it gave me something I didn’t realize I needed. Permission.
Permission to stop pretending that every space I enter has to move me. That I have to care so deeply, constantly, about design. Because after five years of being taught that buildings can save lives, shift behavior, change the way people feel — I was exhausted. And honestly, a little skeptical.
The Emotional Burden of Design
In architecture school, you’re taught to treat space like medicine. If the project is good enough, thoughtful enough, sustainable and expressive enough, it will make people better. Happier. Healthier. More themselves.
And sure, design matters. Of course it does. But I’ve also lived long enough to know that a good building won’t make you fall in love. It won’t fix your anxiety. It won’t prevent a breakup or bring someone back.
Botton puts it bluntly. “Even if we could spend the rest of our lives in the Villa Rotonda or the Glass House, we would still often be in a bad mood.” And that’s the part no one really talks about in school. That architecture can support your life, but it can’t carry it for you.
The Glass House by Philip Johnson in New Canaan, Connecticut.
I’ve scrolled through enough perfect apartments on Instagram to know how easy it is to mistake good lighting for a good life. But real life happens off-camera. And most of the time, it’s messy.
When Simple Stays With You
Some of the hardest designs I’ve ever worked on were the simplest. A blank room. A quiet form. A clean line. Minimalism forces you to be precise. You can’t hide behind noise. You have to make every decision count.
And maybe that’s why the spaces I remember most are rarely the showy ones. They’re the ones that didn’t try too hard. The ones that made space for stillness. That didn’t demand attention, but offered something softer. Something steadier.
I think about that a lot when I hear people say “Ignorance is bliss.” It sounds dismissive at first, but maybe it’s not. Maybe it just means we have to protect our attention. That caring about everything all the time is a fast way to burn out. Maybe being a little ignorant — or rather, a little selective — is the only way to stay human in the middle of all this noise.
A Question That Lingers
When I was in school, no one ever asked me what I actually expected architecture to do. Not in a real way. Not in a way that allowed for complexity or contradiction. We were too busy trying to make it matter.
But I think Botton asks that question in his own quiet way. Not by telling us what buildings should be. But by inviting us to reflect on how we live inside them. And how much, or how little, we expect from them.
Now that I’ve graduated, that’s the question I keep coming back to. Not what makes a building beautiful. But what makes a building enough.
And sometimes, enough is more than it seems.
Looking at design as more than just buildings — reflections on space, identity, and everything in between. Subscribe to follow the conversation.