What is Beauty Worth?

I have been reading a new book called “Mexican Contemporary,” by Herbert Ypma (Thames & Hudson). There are wonderful photos of houses by Luis Barragán, among others, and an incisive discussion about what formed his style. But what struck me perhaps most of all is a quotation attributed to Barragán: “life deprived of beauty is not worthy of being called human.”

I am often troubled about what level of importance to place on design. Not the kind of design that solves important problems, such as how to keep people warm and cool without depleting the planet’s resources, or how to make safer cars, elevators or cribs, but the kind of design that creates beauty: Attention to the way light enters a room. The perfect sweep of a roofline. The color of a wall, a fabric, a backsplash. The pattern on a duvet cover, an upholstered chair, a curtain. The shape of a bowl, a drinking glass, a bookcase, a doorway. These things matter, and I often ask myself, should they? With all the terrible problems in the world — starvation, war, illness, environmental disaster — I sometimes wonder if I should give up being the editor of a design publication and go work for an organization committed to helping the unfortunate of this world.

And then I think about the age-old human aspiration towards beauty, to expressing our wonder at the beauty in the world around us, from the earliest cave paintings of the wild animals that roamed the territory of early humans, to the ideals of beauty in Greece and Rome, to the stained glass windows and flying buttresses of the medieval cathedrals, to the tiled, watered courtyards of the Alhambra, to the simple wooden houses of Colonial America. The list is endless, precisely because human beings have aspired to beauty for eons. It seems to be an essential human need or attribute, like hunger or thirst or violence or altruism, and it is surely one of the most powerful. And while we rue and fear the misery in the world, and hope to contribute to assuaging it, it is good to remember that all humans, once they have satisfied their need for food and water, shelter and peace, are eager, finally, for beauty.

-Andrea, Editor in Chief