The Rebranding of Happiness

‘Happiness’ is a hot topic. This year the UK government will measure not just our nation’s economic output, but our quality of life and happiness through the ‘wellbeing index’.  It’s encouraging to imagine that how we feel really matters to the powers that be.  But in the face of our present economic, environmental and social crises do we really have reasons to be cheerful?  Or is the present fixation with ‘happiness’ just another distraction from us taking any real collective responsibility for what’s in plain sight?

Behavioural psychology attests that satisfying our subsistence needs depends on having food, shelter and work and where these are limited or absent so are the opportunities of any broader self actualisation (Max-Neef, 1991).   With this in mind I read an article by Stephen Moss in the Guardian recently about the planned demolition of the Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle, London, a modernist social housing development of the era of post war reconstruction (Moss, 2011).  The brutalist slab concrete estate is now all but ‘decanted’ of its mostly local authority tenants and awaiting demolition and redevelopment into a more fashionable and profitable commercial residential development ‘peppered’ with 25%  ‘affordable’ housing.  The writer argued that the vogue for wholesale regeneration of social housing stock is a sop to gentrification and politically driven environmental determinism; and that accordingly the ‘failed’ spaces that speak of an age of long abandoned social idealism and architectural folly must be destroyed to make way for new commercial developments where people can once again ‘live happily’, according to contemporary mores.

If the modernist social housing revolution of the 1960’s and 70’s was as we are led to believe a design failure on a monumental scale, leading to wholesale increased criminality and social deprivation, I wonder why is it that  ex-council flats in Erno Goldfinger’s brutalist concrete Trellick Towers in London W10 (pictured) are currently changing hands for in excess of £450,000?  And how is it possible that the same brutalist style developments in former East Berlin are able to be imaginatively reinvented through renovation and landscaping to successfully house a wide social mix if it is the essential design, not cultural and political perception of it that is askew?

Today the 'happiness' machine is gathering momentum.  Mindfulness meditation is endorsed in schools, ‘happiness apps’ are available for our phones, books on positive thinking fill the shelves and surveys published in popular dailies tell us it is the power of our thoughts not our wealth that determines our sense of personal satisfaction.  Our appetite for understanding and improving our individual wellbeing is growing exponentially.  Noticeably at the same time community wide access to the essentials for self actualisation (affordable housing, gainful employment, quality food, access to education and healthcare, environmental sustainability, economic security, and political stability) are diminishing at varying speeds on a local, national and global scale.  Is this a coincidence?  Or, is the ‘pursuit of happiness’ a convenient pacifier in the face of crises and part of a wider movement nudging us towards greater individualism when we really need to think much bigger?

The Heygate story provides a useful allegory of the muddy confluence of design intentions, cultural perceptions, commercial interests and political fashions set against real social need.  As designers today, embedded in such a confluence of conflicting interests and perceptions, it can be difficult to clearly see when we are operating with full awareness of our world's present needs and likely future scenarios and when we are enthral to the marketeering of a comfortable and positive vision in the now.  One potential effect of  mindfulness is improved clarity of perception, the ability to dissociate with conditioned thought and see reality more objectively.  Design has the potential to revolutionise inter-societal dialogue and engagement and create new models for building a better future.  Hope and happiness for all is central to that brief and central to our ability to execute it is the ability to be dispassionate in the face of the zeitgeist and act exceptionally amongst change.


References
Max-Neef M A, 1991, ‘Human Scale Development, Conception, Application and Further Reflections’, Apex Press, London
Moss S, 2011, 'Homes under the hammer' , The Guardian, 4th March 2011, available at http://bit.ly/fYvG7J
Trellick Tower image © Copyright R Sones and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons License