Every human being and every conscious life form on this planet aims to be happy. Happiness is something everyone is after - consciously or unconsciously. People try to ‘achieve’ it through various actions that are meaningful to them. There are many definitions and interpretations of happiness. Gautam Buddha wisely once said- “There is no path to happiness, happiness is the path.” One tends to naturally wonder whether happiness is a journey, a state, a ‘thing’ to be achieved or is it an object of value? It can best be defined as a state for which certain preconditions are necessary. Many scholars have studied how Architecture and Urban spaces influence our state of happiness.
This project aimed to create positive design interventions in the transition space of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft. These interventions will provide moments of happiness and support a positive state of mind during the daily journey of users across the transition space. The project aimed to find out how best to apply the 20 Urban Happiness Ingredients tool set by Samavati and
Desmet (2021)4 to design a transition experience. Insights from Generative Research were used to conduct Research through Design that used a Positive Design Approach. The main insights found were that the users of the IDE transition space needed to feel the fundamental human needs of security, autonomy and stimulation while in transition. A number of ideation iterations led to the conception of an arch that supported those three needs. The arch was chosen as the embodiment of those needs because historically, it has always been a powerful metaphor for communicating and aiding transition. It allows the bi-directional nature of a transition to be a function, it has deep cultural meanings and it has the ability to frame a great view.
The result of this graduation project is a spatial installation (or spatial product) called ‘Waves of Happiness’. It creates several moments of joy through the interactions that have been designed. The meaning created by the design is that the users must choose to take a meaningful pause while in transition to momentarily forget their worries by experiencing pleasure. These moments of pleasure remind one of pleasant memories such as childhood. The design also builds upon the need for users to practice self reflection and fulfil the virtue of self-care. The form and aesthetics of the design played an important role in satisfying the universal need for beauty. Computational Design techniques were used to design the structure depicting the ‘Waves of Happiness’. User feedback indicated that the users would exit the designed transition experience with a positive state of mind after having experienced moments of joy.
‘Compatibility with needs and desires of users’, Interactive and fascinating design’, ‘Multisensory richness experiences’, ‘Place identity, memorability & city image’ and ‘Aesthetic qualities’ were the 5 main Urban Happiness Ingredients used in the design. The project ended with a discussion on how these ingredients can be applied better to transition experience design and what this master thesis project contributed to the domain of transition experience design.