Returning the aesthetics to the heart of the design process. On the conflict between social design and product beauty

Abstract

The design research today, massively aimed toward ecology and social inclusion, frees designers from the condition of mere experts of goods, promoting them to that of thinkers and activists of socio-environmental system. Doing this, are designers risking to neglect the product beauty, forgetting the aesthetics purpose in name of the ethic one? The methodology to answer has been mostly qualitative and theoretical, then partially experimental. Studying aesthetics in philosophy and art, it has used a historical-epistemological approach, professional and didactical experiences. Beyond the general extensive literature on design ethics, the method has tended to focus on the less explored conflict between the ethical and aesthetic dimensions in design today, applying an unpublished aesthetics grid analysis. The results confirm a latent tendency in modern education and research, to neglect goods aesthetics, because of a new ‘social-functionalism’, ideologically relegating the design of shapes to the status of an inferior, executive phase.