Design is how things work. Not how they look.

In a New York Times article in 2003, Steve Jobs was quoted as saying:

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,” says Steve Jobs, Apple’s C.E.O. ”People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

It is something that seems to have been lost in some architectural design over the last 20 years or so.

According to the British Trust for Ornithology, 100 million birds slam into glass façades of buildings in cities across the UK, with a death rate of approximately 33%.

33 million birds die every year because there’s a building!

The local authorities haven’t conducted risk assessments to determine if this is unavoidable.

I feel that we are innovating ourselves to extinction.

8 December 2022 — French West Indies

Matthew Cowen @matthewcowen