Beauty must always be rare and exclusive. This is one of the great paradoxes of aesthetics and the quest for beauty : if everything were beautiful, nothing would be.
Design is not one subject, but several. Frank Lloyd Wright thought it was about making the most of contemporary possibilities.
To the architect Le Corbusier, it was “intelligence made visible”. Meanwhile, Apple’s Jony Ive says design is about reaching the “local maximum” where perfection is achieved and you simply cannot make better use of materials.
But design inevitably reflects what philosophers call the spirit-of-the-age.
A Savoia-Marchetti flying boat was a brave aeronautical experiment - on the edge of knowledge - that taught architects a lesson in economy-of-means and functionalism.
Then, during the ricostruzione, Vico Magistretti and Enzo Mari were among the designers who gave artistic value to mere household appliances. Today, the refined minimalism of Apple is a response to our dematerialised culture where intangible data is more valuable than solid objects.