CCA 2019: Our Happy Life

Photo by Stefano Graziani, ”Rankings of Happiness 2015–2017”

World Happiness Report 2018. © CCA

Architecture and Well-Being
in the Age of Emotional Capitalism

8 May - 13 October, 2019

Can architecture contribute to general human happiness? Do sleek building designs combined with the equally sleek interior designs and landscaping alter a person’s mood from negative to positive? Does the comfort of plush carpets and bright lights have the power to alter your mood and make you happy?

Can the sense of grounding, freedom, peace, and even unconditional love one feels when being in nature be labelled as a hedonistic pleasure, as if it were something unnatural, superfluous, not really a basic human need to be connected to the source of all that is alive on Earth?

Can an architect or an urban designer create a sense of pleasure and deep satisfaction that has a power to border on a spiritual experience purely by artificial, artistic, and commercially strategic means?

To what an extend a human being becomes a commodity to be studied intensely with surveys and computer algorithms in order to determine how to structure the living environments in such a controlled way as to provide an illusion of a well being while constructing a sustainable, commercially profitable venue?

This new Canadian Center for Architecture (CCA) exhibition is offering its visitors to ask just these types of questions and seek personal answers.

Curator: Francesco Garutti
Curatorial team: Irene Chin, Jacqueline Meyer
Visual identity and design: OK-RM, London 
Exhibition design: Bernard Dubois, Brussels 
Design development: Sébastien Larivière, Anh Truong

To find more about this exhibition and other projects exhibitions, visit the CCA website.