THE ARCHITECTURE OF WELL-BEING

Words Jonathan Bell

Just behind Abbot Kinney Boulevard and close to the beach, Cabrillo Avenue II, LA, disregards its parameters, its walls a stencil of geometric shapes

Wallpaper* architecture editor Jonathan Bell believes your living space makes an enormous difference to your state of mind. Here he muses on the architecture of well-being, while above he picks his top spaces for mind and body from the onefinestay portfolio.

Making space is a very personal act. Just as we shape where we live, however consciously or unconsciously, the spaces we live in shape us, for better or for worse.

One of architecture’s roles is to make the intangible real, to order our relationship with space, light and function in such a way as to make our lives easier and more pleasurable.

In one of Manhattan’s most cutting-edge neighbourhoods, Forsyth Street, on the Lower East Side is a slice of design heaven

You might not realise it, but these little interactions are happening all the time. Can you recall a particular view or alignment through a house, or a favourite spot warmed by a shaft of light, or even the tactile delight of a smooth banister or door latch? A great building is an accumulation of hundreds of these little moments, whereas a bad one has very few. Our well-being is intimately linked to a combination of delight in the new and the reassurance of the familiar, and without these details, our homes and lives would be much hollower.

Next time you pause at the foot of some stairs, a curved balustrade in your hand, or catch a view through an open door to a distant window, remember the decisions and skills that put them there, and how they made you feel.

There are many apocryphal tales about the arrogance of architects. Half of them are no doubt slung about by detractors, for whom overrun budgets, leaking roofs, wobbling bridges and car-melting death rays are all grist in the mill of reactionary thinking. But I suspect a fair few are put about by architects themselves, who rather like their public image as world-changing demigods, providers of all the answers. For at the crux of this self-belief lies a simple truth; your living space really does make an enormous difference on your well-being.

Lose yourself in the spectacular maze-like layout of Camden Road, London — all metal railings, spiral staircases and angular beams

The human body responds well to certain proportions and dimensions, and we express delight or dismay when confronted with a particular sequence of spaces, arrangement of views, or the way light cascades over a surface, or the interplay between different planes or the sheer delight in craft. Next time you pause at the foot of some stairs, a curved balustrade in your hand, or catch a view through an open door to a distant window, remember the decisions and skills that put them there, and how they made you feel.