Dezeen and Black Dog Publishing have teamed up to give away five copies of Building Happiness - Architecture to Make You Smile, edited by Jane Wernick.

The 192-page book is published in collaboration with Building Futures, working alongside the RIBA, and examines the psychological impact of the built environment.

It includes short commentaries and longer essays from contemporary architects, artists, writers and commentators, including newsreader Kirsty Wark, architect Richard Rogers and examples of work by artists including Richard Wentworth and Anthony Gormley. Above: Red Lace Housing Project, Florence, by Odile Decq Benoit Cornette.

This competition has now closed. Above: the Young Vic Theatre auditorium by Haworth Tompkins.

The five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter. Above: ‘Ha-Harchitecture’ by Louis Hellman.

Here's some more information from the publishers:

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Building Happiness
Architecture to Make You Smile
RIBA Building Futures
Editor: Jane Wernick

Building Happiness: Architecture to Make You Smile presents an abundance of views on the nature of happiness within our built environment so as to answer the question whether architectural spaces influence our emotional state and contribute a positive spiritual feeling or are they merely bricks and mortar?

Building Happiness examines how we measure and define our ‘happiness’ and to what extent the space we live in has a significant psychological impact on these evaluations. The nature of how we are conditioned by, and utilise, our environment is considered in detail, particularly as this affects our sense of wellbeing or happiness. Is this a personal feeling or is it how space is used in our community that constructs happiness? Is it green eco-houses, traditional cottages or 1970s modernism that makes you happy?

Published in association with Building Futures, a collaborative group working alongside the RIBA to develop standards in the built environment Building Happiness explores the ideas and debates concerning the built environment, physical wellbeing and how we live in cities.

Building Happiness is given a contemporary relevance through inclusion of the work of contemporary architects, artists, writers and commentators, with both short commentaries and longer essays concerned with the impact of our built environment. Contributions from social commentators include: newsreader Kirsty Wark; the prestigious architect Lord Richard Rogers and examples of artists’ work, such as that by Richard Wentworth and Anthony Gormley.

Other contributors include: Jeremy Till, Dean of Architecture at Westminster University; Max Fordham; and, Odile Decq.

Building Happiness: Architecture to Make You Smile brings new light to discussions on contemporary architecture and is an ideal title for architects, students and anyone with an interest in the built environment, urban design, sociology and psychology.

Jane Wernickis a structural engineer who has worked in both Europe and the USA. She was an Associate Director of Ove Arup & Partners during the construction of the London Eye, which she is largely accredited with and is now Director of Jane Wernick Associates.

September 2008
Hardback
192 pages
54b/w and colour illustrations
21 x 15 cm
ISBN: 978 1 906155 46 9

Congratulations to the winners! Amit Kleeman in Israel, Luciano Morina in Italy, Luuc Sonke in the Netherlands, Emily Ehlers in the USA and Adrian Timaru in Romania all won copies of Building Happiness - Architecture to Make You Smile, edited by Jane Wernick.

Didn't win? Buy this book at the Dezeenbooks store
(in association with amazon.co.uk)