Nature & Aesthetics of Design Reflection

The shape of things is influenced incredibly by the requirements of use, economy, access, and technique. The latter of those is what this excerpt focuses on, even though in comparison it is of much smaller consideration. We don't have to take characteristics as a piece as we find them, yet we still have to take the characteristics of the material. There are numerous techniques for altering them including processing, wasting, constructing, forming, and casting.

The only technique that really has any technical limitations on it is processing. We still have to take most materials for their natural properties. We can almost always find a material that has the property that we want, but we have no control over all of it's other properties; we must take it as it is. We need more processing techniques in order to adjust these properties to vary more independently. Deficiency is also shown in wasting, constructing, forming, and casting, but only in the respect of size for the most part.

The excerpt then jumps ahead to talk about the beauty of nature, and how we relate it to intimacy - one can feel closer to an artist just through their piece. Design is all about promoting human happiness, yet it's aim can't be determined until the difference between needs and wants is. It is a need of man to break thresholds, which provides little, temporary happiness. Separately, a bed already does everything it needs, and anything there on out in all for convenience, which promotes human happiness. Convenience, therefore, does nothing for need, yet it increases the chance for happiness, the ultimate goal of design.

Design can only promote happiness, but art creates it. Art is said to be healthy for your soul, and it's good to learn about the art of your history and past. Art creates hope, and would therefore be extremely stupid to ban.

Overall, I found this excerpt rather hard to comprehend. I had to read it pretty slowly, and each section multiple times in order to understand what it was saying. Once understood, however, it really does hold many true and powerful facts that I wouldn't otherwise have thought of or considered, such as everything about happiness and convenience. The writer is clearly a scholar and very wise on the topic, and it was very insightful to read this piece.