Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc was a French architect who became known for restoring France’s best-known medieval landmarks: Notre-Dame, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, and the walls of Carcassonne, to name a few. But Viollet-le-Duc’s most enduring legacy is his influence on entire movements of architecture and design, such as art nouveau, arts and crafts, and modernism.

Viollet-le-Duc wrote extensively on the relationship between the way objects and spaces appeared and the way they were used. In his words: “A rationally designed structure may not necessarily be beautiful but no building can be beautiful that does not have a rationally designed structure.”

American architect Louis Sullivan, himself a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, was known as “the father of modernism” and the “father of skyscrapers.” Sullivan famously paraphrased Viollet-le-Duc this way:

Form follows function.

Ornamentation can be beautiful, but the modernist followers of Viollet-le-Duc and Sullivan inquired of any decoration: “Does it work?” The breeze block walls in my backyard are beautiful examples of mid-century modern design. As their name implies, they provide structure, shade, privacy, spatial division, and strong material resistance to harsh weather and seismic events while simultaneously allowing airflow. And they look swank.

Industrial design, product design, and even software engineering have incorporated elements of “form follows function” in their development processes. In today’s world, what is most aesthetically pleasing is often the thing that exceeds expectation by working the way it’s supposed to.

It makes you wonder why so many schools, public housing, and other buildings are so butt ugly. Is it a bug? Inattention? Lack of care or funding? Or is it a feature: “Please interact with this space briefly, in a well-behaved manner, and then promptly f*ck off.”

In the end, design that functions effectively is its own kind of beauty. While beauty may still be in the eye of the beholder, no rational person I know wants a residential/commercial space, vehicle, appliance, tool, article of clothing, or anything else (including – especially! – a person) that is “dysfunctional but good-looking.”

Of course, that isn’t the end. Beyond the design of inhabitable spaces and usable things, there is a much larger conversation to be had about the sense of beauty that informs the process of using materials to bring ideas to life. Aesthetics – the philosophical inquiry into beauty – is the application of our inner world to the outer world. In Miuccia Prada’s words, “I always loved aesthetics. Not particularly fashion, but an idea of beauty.” Steve Jobs said, “For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” At the highest levels of expression, it’s rarely the thing that is important to the creator. It is the underlying idea that drives people to create the thing. So while all design may be the manifestation of beauty, there is much more to beauty than design. Mystical, alluring, even erotic qualities of beauty that reside somewhere else altogether in the imaginings of our experience, somewhere more desirous and wondrous, and far more irrational. 

If beauty is the amplifier of our envisioned reality, the mediums in which we express the message are like stereo speakers – they are not all created equally, and some seem more suited than others for the task. You can have great music, and even a great signal, but it still sounds like crap when you play it on cheap speakers. Maybe that’s why some of us see beauty in the same places others see ugliness. Plato made beauty sound like the greatest good but then he got all pissed off at poetry and called art dangerous. If that’s true, what are we supposed to do with different artistic mediums, or the idea that poetry is the “painting that speaks”? Plato liked painting and sculpture because he appreciated the skill involved in their creation – which the Greeks called techne, the professionalism and cleverness at the root of the modern word technology.

What is beautiful to you? Art? A space you inhabit? An object with which you engage in your daily life? A person, or a human ideal? A sensory experience like a color or a sound, or music that makes you feel a certain way? An article of clothing? A tool that makes your life easier or better, or – what? I’m curious.

Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m reading, watching, and thinking about.

Beautiful technology I’m appreciating –

One of my favorite lines from comedian Steven Wright described his seashell collection: “I keep it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you’ve seen it.” Sadly, that’s the way many of us feel about our data storage. I have photos, documents, websites, and who knows what else (I don’t) strewn around multiple hard drives, old laptops, the cloud, and several online platforms and domains. It’s a mess. And I don’t trust cloud providers, some of whom I pay to trust. Which feels like a very dysfunctional statement as I type it. So I was excited to see the DataToaster 3000 (which you can make yourself!): “With toast slots compatible with 3.5-inch hard disks, the DataToaster 3000 instantly shares files across your network without subscription fees or the uncertainties of sending your data to the "cloud". With the DataToaster 3000, all your precious data stays crisp and ready, stored safely on your kitchen counter.

“You’re probably already thinking that this is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but wait there’s more! The DataToaster 3000 also features a MoodGlow Knob, letting you change the color of the power LED for a personalized touch. Feeling energized? Set it to a bold red. In the zone and ready to focus? Cool blue has you covered. Ready to unwind after a long day? A calming green sets the perfect tone. There are endless possibilities!”

What I’m Reading –

The other day my good friend (and mastermind behind Video For Entrepreneurs) Dan Bennett brought up the topic of infinity. (Our conversations tend to be like that.) At that moment, I turned to my bookcase but couldn’t find what I was looking for (see above note about data). Later I rediscovered Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity by David Foster Wallace. It’s an intellectual stretch, which is why I recommend it to anyone who aspires to understand the topic. Even the introduction by Neal Stephenson is awesome. From the New York Times back in 2003, when the book was published: ''’Everything and More’'' offers a great deal to anybody who is able to read it. Even expert mathematicians normally know little about the history of their subject, and they are worse off for it. Wallace offers a gripping guide to the modern taming of the infinite. If you want to know about this fascinating slice of intellectual history, do have a go at this book. But be warned that you will need more than your native wits to make it to the end.” 

What I’m Reading (Aloud) –

I produce a podcast called LIT AF, where I read through the classics like you’ve never heard them before. Each season of this podcast is an audiobook with a twist – I comment as I go, to give you the stories between the lines.

As we run up to Halloween, I've been reading and thinking about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

In Chapter 5, we realize there’s nothing like a letter to let us into someone’s thoughts and feelings as Victor gets news from home. Join me in my dread at the end of the episode – how could everything be this damn happy in a book about monsters and madness??

What I’m Listening to – 

On a recent road trip my wife and I suddenly realized how much we missed the surprise of the next song on FM radio. She tried to pick random things – we went from Korean metal to Willie Nelson’s recent cover of the Flaming Lips “Do You Realize??” – but in the end we just missed real radio. Enter independent Polish developer Krystian Kozerawski’s Eter: “Eter uses radio-browser.info API and gives access to more than 20K streams of radio stations from all over the world. They are all available through the built-in search engine. The app also offers a list of recommended radio stations for specific countries, including: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland-Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia, Ukraine, United Kingdom and United States. Listings for additional countries are added periodically.

“Currently Eter is available in English, French, German and Polish.

“Eter is free in the freemium model. Users can, without any additional charges, listen to the recommended stations, switch between the countries (in the application settings), use the search engine and listen to any stream from the over 20K offered by radio-browser.info API.” 

Quote I’m pondering —

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

– Leonardo da Vinci

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David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: Agostino Ramelli’s The Theatre of Machines, via publicdomainreview.org.