Hello from Quickborne, a think tank for all things design. Our members include a consortium of international design consultants within the confluences and intersections of architecture, interior/industrial design and design psychology. This blog is intended to inform, review and critique great designs as well as design failures – and to showcase an alternative viewpoint. Our premise is that great designs begin with beauty.

Why is beauty so important?
Beauty infuses us with a feeling of comfort, tranquility, contentment and well-being. Most of us instantly recognize beauty in all its iterations, be it landscapes, buildings, interiors, products, objet d’art and people.

On the other hand there has been a considerable amount of causal evidence shown between seeing and experiencing ugliness to increased tension, stress, and depression. If you have ever worked in a Brutalist style building, you know what I mean.

In the current zeitgeist it’s verboten to differentiate between beauty and ugliness – in fact beauty today is usually consigned to the trash bin whereas ugliness is championed, santioned and rewarded.

This topsy-turvy, psychopathic and misanthropic world view originated with the postmodernists whose “Weltanschauung includes the following concepts:

1. there is no objective reality, 2. logic, science and reason are evil constructs of the established power and that, 3. Western values, culture and intellectualism were invented to self-serve the established elite – sounds pretty much like a cult.

Regrettably most of us have been innocently duped to believe this frivolous absurdity from childhood – we have allowed society to dampen and dictate our views for decades. The mantra today is “Everything is beautiful” – except beauty (least you cause offense).

Our Definitive Definition of Beauty
Our thesis is that great design should be beautiful – however as the Bauhaus explained it – beauty without functionality is merely ornamentation. From our perspective, great design consists of three elements: 1. the aesthetic, 2. the functional and, 3. “Is it remarkable” in some manner – and that goes for people as well.

*For a comprehensive overview on the subject of beauty see the video link below by Roger Scruton.

Why Beauty Matters
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/why-beauty-matters/