Season 1

Alain de Botton went in search of answers to our housing crisis, and came up with some suggestions for the perfect home: a kind of architecture that can make us happy as our environments determine how we feel.

Alain de Botton suggests that most new houses are built in appalling taste - and that, with a housing deficit of around a million homes, this country urgently needs to wake up to the merits of good design.

In the final programme, Alain de Botton travels to Holland and Japan, to see how different our homes could look. He argues for houses that help us to see the world as a place to feel at home in, rather than to fear.