Design and Aesthetic Appreciation: Form, Functionality, Performativity

Abstract

This essay explores the aesthetic dimension of design objects, which delivers properties as emerging from considerations of their formal aspect as well as their functionality and actual use by each individual. I analyse accounts of formal and functional properties in design as alternative views given for the aesthetic evaluation of design objects yet marking how both address the contemplation of the design object. However, I consider extending the aesthetic appreciation to the properties that emerge during the user’s active interaction with design objects. My view is that the global aesthetic value of design objects is the result of the intersections between these different sets (formal, functional, and performative) of properties. The aesthetic evaluation of design objects is, in that sense, pluralistic and variable, according to the particularity of the items in question.