Jasper Morrison’s Utilism vs. Uselessnism describes what he calls Utilism’s greatest urban triumph: a bus station at Fisch Platz in Graz. He and his collaborators removed travel company stickers from the café windows so passengers could see whether their buses had arrived, then added a couple of speed bumps so they could cross the road safely. That was more or less the project.
I’m drawn to the almost embarrassing obviousness of it. People can’t see the bus. Take the stickers off. It pokes at something I’ve become increasingly suspicious of in design, especially design thinking: we can get so interested in demonstrating that thoughtful design has happened that the evidence of our thoughtfulness starts competing with the thing itself. The research, the workshop, the framework, the strategy, the explanation of why every single decision is meaningful. I’m not against those things; I use them for sure. But sometimes they become a very expensive way of noticing that window with the stickers.
Then I catch myself turning the bus station into a little morality play. Quiet, useful design is good. Visible, expressive design is vain. That would flatter my own taste pretty efficiently. Morrison doesn’t quite stay there either. He goes on to describe successful objects as neither purely aesthetic nor purely functional, but shaped by materials, their surroundings, communication, and the experience of living with them. What got me, I think, isn’t utility alone but the way value appears partly outside the thing, in what changes around it.
The version of functionalism I’m wary of—form serving a named purpose—gets me part of the way. The café windows have a job and do it much better once the stickers are off. But I’m interested in a looser question: what does the design make possible? In that model, the function is named in advance. Possibility may only show up in the encounter, and it may belong as much to the person using the thing as to the person who designed it. Sometimes it’s practical. Sometimes it’s awe, pleasure, curiosity, attention, or skill. I don’t want to smuggle all of those back into function and pretend the distinction has disappeared.
Kenya Hara’s comparison of two kitchen knives gave me a way to feel that difference rather than define it. A German Henckels knife has a fluid, ergonomic handle; the thumb finds its place. The Japanese knife has a flat, unshaped handle that leaves more room for a cook’s skill. Hara is describing different flavors of simplicity. Both can be generous. What becomes possible isn’t always what becomes easier.
It also keeps me from using Morrison as an alibi for minimalism, which would be convenient because restrained design is already close to my own taste. Minimalism can become just as narcissistic as ornament; a very quiet object can spend all day long telling me how exquisitely quiet it is.
Visible thoughtfulness can be generous. There are objects I love partly because I can see that somebody obsessed over them: a beautifully drawn letter, a joint made far better than necessary, an animation somebody clearly spent too long getting right. Sometimes the evidence of effort, the delight in the craft, is part of what I’m receiving. It tells me somebody cared enough to keep going after the sensible stopping point.
I keep thinking of this as “extravagant commitment”: somebody deciding that a thing deserves far more effort than pure efficiency can justify. Religious architecture makes that hard to ignore. The Sagrada Família doesn’t politely disappear into use. Its height, light, ornament, material, and accumulated labor are part of what you encounter. It’s trying to alter your state. I could call awe a function, but at that point function starts to become one of those suitcases you have to sit on to get the zipper closed.
The 10,000‑year clock does something similar in a completely different register. It’s an immense mechanical clock being assembled inside a mountain, intended to keep time for ten millennia. Nobody needed to build that. That’s partly why I find it great. The overkill is part of the thought: ten thousand years stops being a number and becomes a machine somebody is actually trying to make work very, very, very well.
None of this makes my suspicion of design narcissism disappear; it just moves the line. I don’t think the problem is that the designer is visible. Sometimes seeing the hand is the gift, and “look at this” can be generous. I get suspicious when the work folds back toward the designer—when the main experience on offer is admiration for the intelligence, taste, or sensitivity of the person who made it. Designers can spend a lot of time making things for other designers, where the sophistication is easiest to appreciate if you already know the references, the vocabulary, and approximately how much the typeface cost.
Even that doesn’t give me a clean rule. Someone can make something out of vanity and accidentally give people enormous pleasure. Someone else can approach a problem with genuine empathy, a bazillion user interviews, and an immaculate workshop and still make something dead. Intent helps me understand the work, but it doesn’t get the final vote. Neither do restraint, ornament, craft, or usefulness.
This is also how I think about people. Some people are impressive as objects of attention; others change what becomes possible around them. Around them, I become funnier, more curious, less guarded. I say the unfinished thing. I try something I might otherwise have talked myself out of. I don’t mean this as a morality test—a charismatic asshole can unlock plenty. It just reminds me that value isn’t always contained inside the person or object. Sometimes it appears in the relationship.
Back at Fisch Platz, the result is almost too ordinary to photograph: someone sits in the café, sees the bus arrive, and gets up. I don’t want every design to disappear that completely; sometimes I want it to stop me in my tracks. Either way, I’m interested in what happens next.