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Effortless Luxury: Life Designed Around You: Style & Design

How Design Can Change Your Life

By Susan F. Castle for Effortless Luxury: Life Designed Around You

If you think design is just about chic chaises, stainless-steel kitchens or ultra-slim watches, think again. “Design used to be making things. Now it’s considered to be making things better,” says international design consultant Alexander Isley, one of the many innovators featured in Warren Berger’s book Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Business, Your Life, and Maybe Even the World.

That emphasis on “better” reveals a meaningful shift: Today’s designers are more apt to be moved to solve real-life problems with style than to just make something beautiful.

Not that the best solution to even the thorniest of design problems can’t be beautiful. Designer Marianne Cusato took one look at the dark, depressing trailers FEMA offered to hurricane refugees and asked, “Can’t we build temporary housing decent and dignified enough to work in the long term?” Her response was the Katrina Cottage, where high ceilings, built-in bookcases and inviting front porches make 300 square feet feel like hope, not hopelessness. These affordable cottages can also serve as building blocks from which larger homes can grow.

Or consider designer and athlete Van Phillips. After losing his left leg below the knee in a water skiing accident, Phillips asked, “Why can’t I have a foot that allows me to run?” And then he created Flex-Foot Cheetah carbon-fiber artificial limbs, which combine ideas from nature -- the workings of a cheetah’s leg -- with the manmade concept of the diving board. Van Phillips’ Cheetah is now used by world-class amputee athletes in competition.

And then there’s Gordon Murray, designer of the uber-expensive McLaren F1 supercar, who took a 360-degree turn when he wondered whether he could conjure an urban personal-transport car that is as efficient to manufacture as it is to drive. His answer? The very tiny -- but very cool -- T.25 concept car, which packs major style in a small space.

The willingness of today’s designers to ask “Why not?” and the sense of social responsibility and style on the path to solutions are part of what author Berger has dubbed “the glimmer movement.” It’s a movement designed to make things better -- without sacrificing beauty. Asking “Why?” and being brave enough to embrace “Why not?” is a beautiful and simple idea that extends beyond the realm of design.

For more on Warren Berger’s new book, visit GlimmerSite.com

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Photo: @iStockphoto.com/Cardmaverick

Susan F. Castle is a writer who specializes in art, architecture, sustainability and garden design. A former writer for Sotheby’s, she has also written for many national publications, including Four Seasons Magazine and Delta Sky.

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