What makes something feel alive? How do you design it to be so? Christopher Alexander answers in "The Timeless Way of Building":

https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Way-Building-Christopher-Ale...

Need to throw in the mandatory pointer to Christopher Alexanders "Timeless way of building" [1]. The text is also available at Archive.org, see [2]. I originally bought his books because they were mentioned to be behind the software design patterns "movement" that was quite popular some years ago.

Reading his books changed the way I'm looking at houses and apartments. Not from outside, but the layout. I guess (some of) the patterns are quite obvious, but as usual, it helps when somebody points them out. Two example things that stuck to me:

1) Intimacy gradient: Public areas where you host guests, meet people and closer to the front door. The deeper you go, the more private it gets.

2) Parents and children's realms: Separate areas for parents and kids, common area that connect them.

When shopping for apartment and browsing through many different layouts, this kind of simple things help rule out many of them.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Way-Building-Christopher-Ale... [2] https://archive.org/stream/APatternLanguage/A_Pattern_Langua...

I highly recommend the book (it is a quick and funny read) but to give you my short version: post WW2, academic architecture was taken over by anti-traditionalists, and purity spiraling lead to what Wolfe called "The Yale Box". People like Christopher Alexander[1] were ignored or shouted down as fascist, the craftsmen who were able to build the old way all died apprenticeless, and here we are.

[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Timeless-Way-Building-Christopher-Ale...