Happy - Creating Joyous living spaces through design

by Amanda Talbot

Stylist and design consultant Amanda Talbot shows how, at their best, architecture and design can make us safer, healthier, more efficient, enlightened and productive—all contributing to a fundamental sense of wellbeing and happiness. She reveals how architecture and interior design at their best can make us safer, healthier, more efficient, enlightened and productive—all contributing to a fundamental sense of wellbeing. Designers accomplish this with strategic planning and execution and by using carefully chosen colors, textures, quality of materials and finishes. Each chapter incorporates case studies from homes around the world with the book divided into sections on Colour, Communal, Down time, Edit, Flow, Humour, Light, Location, Memories, Nature, Order, Pets, Play, Senses and Spontaneity. A cutting edge contemporary design and photography showcase, Happy captures the explosion of interest in "social" design and explores how designers are interpreting happiness through aesthetic and tactile means.

Genres: Nonfiction

335 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Wendelle]

This book offers some practical tips to make interior spaces into happiness-inducing home spaces, such as: incorporating reviving smells such as lavender or citrus; encouraging play and interaction such as board games or video games or puzzles; integrating creativity such as sketch pad areas, photography, cooking, or raising herb gardens; including sounds such as stereo music or musical instrument practice; encouraging children's play areas through cushions and textiles; having communal spaces for exercises, such as gymnasiums or pools; ensuring urban design allows for nature in the vicinity of urban environments; removing objects of chaos that disrupt flow and organization, such as unneeded furniture or terrible artificial lighting; scattered personal mementos that bring up happy memories; and decluttering.
These all seemed simple but doable elements to elevate mood and wellbeing at homes.

[Jacki (Julia Flyte) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Amanda Talbot has written this book to explain how good design can play a part in making us feel happier. She explores various aspects of interior design and how we interact with it, among them: colour, lighting, bringing nature into homes, humour, playfulness and a sense of flow. There are a lot of photographs and inspirational quotes.

The book is trying to straddle the divide between a coffee table book and a "how to" manual and ultimately this means that it doesn't quite succeed in either role. It's large and heavy and many of the photographs are arty rather than informative. But where it really fails for me is that the advice that it gives is so generic - it feels like reading a series of magazine articles peppered with trite suggestions rather than giving you any meat to get your teeth into.

As an example, here are some of the tips that the author shares with us - these are basic COMMON SENSE people!:
- To get rid of clutter: "Immediately throw away any boxes filled with unimportant things that haven't seen the light of day for years".
- To relax more: "Read, walk your dog after dinner, listen to music and have conversations with friends and loved ones. The likelihood is you will sleep better and feel more refreshed and energised for the next day".
- To bring light into your home: "If your space is lacking daylight, add more windows"
- To avoid getting stuck in a rut: "Have toast for breakfast instead of cereal".

A great concept, but I can't really imagine who would read any of these suggestions and go "oh wow, never thought of that". At this price point in particular, I would hope for more than this book delivers.

[Bree · Rating 3 out of 5]

We did a chapter of this book every week at book club. It was enjoyable, but not amazing. We discussed colour, light, fun, community spaces, etc. I’m not sure who her target audience was. The text was maybe too basic for designers, but the photos were mostly minimalistic, concrete, spacey, or just weird (which is not most people’s homes), so it wasn’t really for the Everyman, either. I guess the pictures explained what the text was referencing, but I didn’t feel they were relatable to the general public. I got more out of the text than the pics. It’s worth a flip through, but I doubt you’ll find any inspiration for your mood board. It’s just a bit too out there.

[Joshua Andersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This book is so great it changed the way I look at the world, how I act and it made me Happy.