Our new book Finland: The Happiness Project is now available to order!

MAP6’s Finland: The Happiness Project explores themes around the United Nations’ World Happiness Report, which in March 2022 ranked Finland as the most content nation for the fifth year running.

Although Finland is affluent, the United Nations says it’s not money alone that makes a country happy but six key factors: personal income, social support, life expectancy, freedom, generosity, and levels of corruption. Finland scores well on all of these but particularly so on generosity; the nation’s social safety net combined with personal freedom and a good work–life balance gives it the edge.

With this in mind, MAP6 visited Finland to try to understand why its people are so happy. The resulting nine projects with diverse viewpoints form a collective whole that questions and presents ideas about how we can live healthier, happier and more positive lives:

• Finland’s sustainable timber industry

• sauna as a key aspect of Finnish well-being

• how personal comfort zones relate to social codes and behaviour

• the link between landscape and national identity

• nature reflected in culture, design and organic architecture

• how architecture can promote healthy living

• the sea as a place to gain perspective

• walking as a way of reflecting upon self and society

• a study of a town ranked as the most satisfied in Finland.

  
  Book details:

  128 pages on 170 gsm Silk paper

  254 × 210mm

  Full colour throughout

  Perfect bound softcover with front and rear gatefold flaps

  Essay by Katja Pantzar, author of the The Finnish Way and Finding Sisu

  Text by Danny Dorling and Annika Koljonen from the book Finntopia

  ISBN 978-1-3999-2336-1