Reflection on Nature and Aesthetics of Design reading

The reading excerpt from "The Nature and Aesthetics of Design" by David Pye was about how society has altered nature’s materials to benefit human happiness.  In our economy, it has become the designer’s goal to find the cheapest way to produce a product.  Pye states, “that we often say ‘better’ when we mean ‘cheaper’” in design (43).  To do this, we have found different techniques to alter certain pieces of material.  These techniques can range from processing a material, which is changing its properties, to forming a material, which is changing its shape.  Other techniques include wasting, constructing, and casting.  We have perfected so many of these techniques, that today we are able to essentially create any shape out of anything or join any material to another.  When choosing material for a design, we pick one that holds most of the characteristics we need, and continue to alter them to perfection.  I found it surprising when Pye was describing how we take flat surfaces for granted.  Two flat surfaces that fit perfectly together are almost never found in nature.  Humans perfected these surfaces to create things as important as houses.  This brings Pye to his next topic, which is how design is intended to aide human happiness.  However, Pye states that, “ ‘design’ is the design of devices, but no device, by its objective results, can never add to human happiness” (102).  He goes on to say that all design can actually do is help conditions where happiness becomes reasonable and attainable.  This usually comes into play when we are unhappy.  For example, when we are tired, we use a bed.  When we are cold, we use a coat.  We use these products to aide the needs of humans, which Pye describes as the need to basically continue our species.  As designers, we continue to try to make this desired happiness possible, even though we cannot actually create it.  Pye says that the only way we can create happiness “is by beautifying the environment and constantly enriching it’s visible quality” (104).  In conclusion, Pye brings about the question, does a crisis absolutely have to be challenged and answered?  As designers, we live to find out every possible way to make a humans life easier and more enjoyable.  But how far can we go?  Are we interfering with the natural world?  This problem at hand will probably never be solved.  As long as there are humans running this Earth, there will be designers feeding their needs, and aiding the continuance of our species.