Coccia, Emanuele. (2024). Philosophy of the Home - Domestic Space and Happiness. Penguin Books. 191 s. First published in Italian as Filosofia della casa. Lo spazio domestico e la felicità (2021). Sketches of every building that I personally have lived in: various places in Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Canada. What is a home? What does it mean to feel at home? These are questions which have always deeply interested me, not least because they are inseparable from a further discussion about how we want to live. They constitute the main theme of “Philosophy of the Home – Domestic Space and Happiness”, where philosopher Emanuele Coccia explores the home as an ontological and phenomenological concept and discusses how the home becomes a physical and psychological part of life. Immediately the title reminds me of the book “The Architecture of Happiness”, where Alain de Botton (2006) attempts to find connections between our physical surroundings and a sense of well-being. De Botton claims in t

Juniper, Andrew. (2003). Wabi sabi - The Japanese art of impermanence. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing. This short book by Andrew Juniper offers fantastic and concise insight into Japanese aesthetics, zen philosophy and the concept of wabi sabi. The book offers a history of the concept, demonstrates how it is indelible from Japanese culture as a whole, and describes how wabi sabi has both influenced art through the ages and found expression in design. Juniper gives an excellent description of wabi sabi (page 1): «Wabi sabi embodies the Zen nihilist cosmic view and seeks beauty in the imperfections found as all things, in a constant state of flux, evolve from nothing and devolve back to nothing. Within this perpetual movement nature leaves arbitrary tracks for us to contemplate, and it is these random flaws and irregularities that offer a model for the modest and humble wabi sabi expression of beauty. Rooted firmly in Zen thought, wabi sabi art uses the evanescence of life to convey the sense

Recently I bought "Life-changing Homes": a new collection of some of the many stories documented by independent journalists/writers Kirsten Dirksen and Nicolás Boullosa, founders of the website faircompanies.com and also creators of perhaps the best channel on YouTube right now (https://www.youtube.com/@kirstendirksen). Kirsten and Nicolas travel around the world with their family in search of stories about simple living, natural building, small-scale agriculture, tiny homes, and any other alternatives to the generic modern corporate lifestyle that it is possible to imagine. The book is a type of short-form presentation of many of the people and their home places that they have met in their travels (and often created longer videos about on their channel). At any time in history, there have always been people to whom the mainstream way of doing things in a given society has never appealed. This book documents a whole variety of such people, from all across the world and in all possible

Recently I got my hands on a book called «Contemporary wabi-sabi style» (Artpower International Publishing, 2025). Not the easiest book to find locally, but I managed to order it off of Amazon. This book is a collection of modern projects that are designed in the spirit of the Japanese aesthetic concept of wabi sabi. Wabi (侘び) refers to utter simplicity, or the appreciation of a higher beauty amid apparent lack of beauty. Sabi (寂び) is the appreciation of the patina of use and age. Taken together, wabi sabi is the search for beauty in the imperfect. When you accept things as they are and do not try to improve them, there is more time left to just enjoy these things. Imperfection is not something to be endured. It is an integral part of life we must learn to accept and celebrate, and is perhaps life's truest expression. This is a philosophy that I have always personally been inspired by, and I try to incorporate it into my own projects. The pictures in this book are beautiful, and a usef