Life House by John Pawson for Alain de Botton's Living Architecture

John Pawson designs Alain de Botton holiday home

Life House in Wales is the latest addition in the Art as Therapy philosopher's Living Architecture initiative

 While the UK viewing public is inundated with TV programmes on house-building, few of the population actually live in anything as innovative. Philosopher and author Alain de Botton has been trying to redress this through his Living Architecture initiative.

He’s been inviting some of the world’s hottest contemporary architects to design holiday rentals, so that anyone can spend a week or a weekend in an aesthetically stimulating environment.

The latest property on Living Architecture’s books is the Life House by godfather of minimalism John Pawson. It sits amid rolling hills in mid Wales, near the small town of Llanbister.

Life House by John Pawson for Alain de Botton's Living Architecture

“The (three-bedroomed) house has been designed to reflect the surrounding undulating landscape,” says de Botton. “It is a series of ‘rooms’ set along two long corridors, at right angles to one another. Each corridor leads to two separate spaces of contemplation, one semi-submerged in the ground, the other set in the wider landscape.”

Pawson, who is known for the restrained beauty of his designs, is making Life House out of black Dutch bricks for the outside, and white ones – also Dutch – for the inside.

De Botton has been choosing his collaborators carefully, and Pawson joins a respectable roll-call in Dutchmen MVRDV – who designed the first property – Hopkins, NORD, Jarmund/Vigsnæs and David Kohn.

Life House by John Pawson for Alain de Botton's Living Architecture

Pawson’s will be followed by yet more retreats over the next couple of years, by German legend Peter Zumthor, and FAT with artist and potter Grayson Perry, bringing the total to eight.

If you want to know more about the life and work of one of Britain's greatest minimalist architects - that's Pawson - take a look at his books in our store. And if you'd like to know more about Alain de Botton's fascinating new title, Art as Therapy you'll find a whole host of content around it here.

Art as TherapyAlain de Botton and John Armstrong

There is widespread agreement that art is 'very important' - but it can be remarkably hard to say quite why. Yet if art is to enjoy its privileges, it has to be able to demonstrate its relevance in understandable ways to the widest possible audience. Alain de Botton and John Armstrong have a firm belief that art can help us with our most intimate and ordinary dilemmas, asking: What can I do about the difficulties in my relationships? Why is my work not more satisfying? Why do other people seem to have a more glamorous life? Why is politics so depressing?

The purpose of this book is to introduce a new method of interpreting art: art as a form of therapy. It's the authors' contention that certain art works provide powerful solutions to our problems, but that in order for this potential to be released, the audience's attention has to be directed towards it in a new way (which they demonstrate), rather than towards the more normal historical or stylistic concerns with which art books and museum captions are traditionally associated.

The authors propose that the squeamish belief that art should be 'for art's sake' has unnecessarily held back art from revealing its latent therapeutic potential. This book involves reframing and recontextualising a series of art works from across the ages and genres, so that they can be approached as tools for the resolution of difficult issues in individual life. Specifications:

Format: Hardback
Size: 270 × 205 mm (10 5/8 × 8 1/8 in)
Pages: 240 pp
Illustrations: 150 illustrations
ISBN: 9780714865911

Alain de Botton (b.1969) is the author of bestselling books in more than 30 countries, including The Consolations of Philosophy, How Proust Can Change Your Life, Status Anxiety, and, most recently, Religion for Atheists. He founded The School of Life in London in 2008, which supplies good ideas for everyday life in the form of courses, classes, workshops and talks. In 2009 he founded Living Architecture, which aims to make high-quality architecture accessible to everyone.

John Armstrong (b.1966) is a British philosopher and art historian based at Melbourne University. He is the author of five well-received books, including The Intimate Philosophy of Art, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy, and In Search of Civilisation: Remaking a Tarnished Idea.

"A highly optimistic vision... Roams widely through subjects as immense as love, nature, money and politics. De Botton and Armstrong's examination of love is most rewarding."—Royal Academy of Arts

"Asking the questions that always swirl through your mind when striding around Tate Modern [...] Art as Therapy [...] massages the mind in all the right places."—Vanity Fair on Art

"...Like going back to college, but in a good way... A little bit like dipping in to a modern day Gombrich albeit through the eyes of Oprah... A really entertaining and thought-provoking look at the role that art plays – or could play – in our lives. [...] Part philosophy, part art history, the book takes work that is considered by many to be lofty and rarified, and relates it to our everyday lives. [Art as Therapy] makes the reader consider the work far more intensely and deeply than perhaps we otherwise would."—A Little Bird

"A true meditation on the power art has to transform our lives."—The Mayfair Magazine<

"The beautifully designed and illustrated book, Art as Therapy argues for a new way of using art to help us with a variety of psychological ills."—The School of Life

"A cultural cure for what ails you."—Elle