Reddit mentions of The Architecture of Happiness

"Architecture of Happiness" by Alain de Botton
A really great read about the 'humanness' of architecture and how different spaces affect behaviors.

"Finding Form" by Frei Otto. An incredibly unique and artistic exploration of lightweight form and surface geometries. Otto died this year like 2 days before they announced that he had won the Pritzker Prize.

"Citizens of No Place" by Jimenez Lai. An 'architectural graphic novel'. A bunch of semi-sequential short stories speculating the future of urban design and architecture, told through graphic novel. A very very fun read.

"Condemned Building: An Architect's Pre-Text" by Douglas Darden. Darden, a reluctant GSD grad, assembled this book of 'unbuilt architectures' that chronicles a bunch of high-concept projects rooted in a narrative of some kind (novels, poems, or original characters). A cool and different way to look at the act of 'building'.

A classmate did his class project on almost the same thing as you. He focused on healing spaces, and compared and contrasted old style hospitals from the 50s and 60s to newer ones like the Mayo Clinic. It's a bit less "mind control" but there's tons of design theory and colory theory that kinda explore making people feel certain emotions I guess you could call it.

A few books he used: Architecture of Happiness

Healing Spaces

Some others I found that might be helpful: Environmental Psychology for Design

Design Details for Health

Check the library at your local state university if the regular library doesn't have them, or (like some others in my class for their project) contact the Architecture dept of that Uni and go from there.

The question is what is architectural composition? This has a long history, similar to what composition is in painting - from a historical perspective a good book is Theory and Design in the First Machine Age by Reyner Banham - the first few chapters are designated to defining architectural composition at the end of humanism, and how the modern Movement shifted the meaning of the word composition. Pick and choose your chapters.

Especially 80's onwards, the idea of composition is atomized - though it can be roughly understood under two flags - Phenomenology and Formalism. Note, phenomenology in architecture is distinct from its philosophical connotation. In architecture, it refers to the organization and orchestration of experience, memory and perception (plays with light, sound, smell, haptic stuffs etc.).

Formalism, on the other hand, understands Architecture in terms of consituent parts, pieces, wholes, assemblages and doesn't rely on subjective experience or presence. In some forms, it treats Architecture linguistically, in others, geometrically. This camp includes postmodern work like Peter Eisenman, Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown, Charles Moore, long list. I'd throw Frank Gerhy in this category as well, because his buildings emphasize formal composition and objectness.

So - If you are studying sculptors like Richard Serra, for example, then architects that favor phenomenology like Peter Zumpthor will be useful.

On the other side, Jeff Koons and Frank Gerhy would probably be interesting to compare.

In another vein, OMA (Rem Koolhaas) and others are very concerned with composition of populations, systems, flows of movement, intensities of use.

Okay if that wasn't enough, there are some interesting people who directly relate literature and Architecture. See Towards a Minor Architecture by Jill Stoner. See [Architecture of Happiness] (https://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Happiness-Alain-Botton/dp/0307277240) by Alain de Bottom.

TLDR; Composition is a big word with a lot of history, define your frame more rigidly and you will find architectures that are more specially related to your work.

The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton

In Praise of Shadows by Junichiro Tanizaki

The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard