This is Philosophy Bites with me David Edmonds and me Nigel Warburton.

Philosophy Bites is available at W.

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Alanda Botan wrote three novels before writing a book, How Proust Can Change Your Life,

which became a bestseller and changed his life.

He has since penned several books, all of them international hits. They're both confessional and essayistic.

His topics range from literature to travel and, as we're about to hear, architecture.

Alan de Botan, welcome to Prossaby Byes. Thank you. architecture. of you quoted that in your book the architecture of happiness now is it

fair to describe that book because an investigation of the idea

encapsulated in Wittgenstein's remark? Yes, I mean partly and partly really it's an attempt to look at the question of what is beautiful in architecture.

What is a beautiful building and how do we know when we see one and what's going on when we describe

something as beautiful it falls I guess quite traditionally in the long line of

books of aesthetics so what is beauty in architecture well I think it's many. The way I look at it is I think that when we describe

buildings as beautiful, really what we're alluding to is material versions of many of the qualities

which we think of as good in other parts of life.

So there's a real correspondence between what you might broadly call

virtue, human virtue, as listed by say Aristotle in his ethics,

different qualities that you might find in a good person.

Many of these things have analogies with things that are going on in a good building.

And you pick this up when people talk about buildings, they'll say that building looks a bit arrogant or that building looks heavy or that building looks elegant.

These are words in which you can both praise and damn humans and buildings.

And really my book is an attempt to identify certain themes

...