Normally I am not quite a fan of Phillip Starck’s designs, but in the most recent issue of DAMn magazine his ideas really grabbed me. Here is an excerpt for your reading pleasure:

“The intelligent part of human production always focuses on reducing materiality. the main lines tend towards dematerialisation, which in itself implies lightness and invisibility. The future is not the production of matter. Intelligence lies in the creation of ideas and actions. Think of computers. Initially they had very low capacities and were the size of an apartment building. But gradually they became so powerful that now they are the size of an envelope. And their capacity will continue to grow exponentially until a time in the near future when they will have completely disappeared and become virtual, like the iCloud…the less material an object is, the more intelligent it becomes.”

And on the topic of luxury:

“I’m not interested in the concept of luxury…if I were to talk about luxury, I would say that it is an entity that continuously shifts such that part of the population never has access to it. I think that’s the idea, because once you can afford luxury, it is no longer a luxury. Like caviar and smoked salmon. As soon as you could buy them in the supermarket, they were no longer a luxury. So you can see that it is all a mirage, a bit like smoke and mirrors. Something that is always shifting on the horizon and is never within reach…I would be inclined to say that there is a negative connotation. I would prefer to substitute intelligence and quality for the word luxury. And these two notions should absolutely be accessible. It is not a choice. It’s a duty to make these available to the greatest number of people. The only modern elegance is the multiplication of good ideas and quality.”