BEAUTY

The very profession of Interior Design answers this call, to marry the desire for beauty with the need for shelter.  We all want (and deserve) to work and live in spaces that are beautiful.  It may seem obvious that beauty would be considered when creating spaces, but rarely do we ponder why beauty is so important. Our inherent draw towards beauty is a basic function of being alive. 

When we encounter beauty something interesting happens. No longer do we find ourselves separate from everything as we do in ordinary perceptions. We feel the complete opposite, united. We are in total sympathy with that which has moved us. Our boundaries of self seem to dissolve away and for that moment, maybe longer if we allow it, we feel expansive, hopeful and complete. So in this sense beauty can be seen as a sort of remembering, remembering that we were at one time all connected.

In the earliest days, the need for beauty was abundantly provided for by nature, but as we moved from the nomadic lifestyles of the hunters and gatherers into built environments, something paramount was lost. It is easy to draw the conclusion that modern life is much better, and in most ways it is, but we must also consider what was lost:  The constant interaction with nature, which in its multifariousness, has always provided a healthy dose of beauty.  It should be no wonder then that in contemporary times, we all desire beauty.  We evolved in and were surrounded by nature; but now we must be the active seeker of it.  No longer is it abundantly provided and guaranteed.

Thankfully with our modernity came the ability to create beauty; beauty that early man could not have achieved, whether it be in the tangible or intangible.  It is also through the intentional choice of materials, fixtures, furnishings, art and incorporation of nature that we may further our connection to beauty.

Some say beauty evokes a hope of happiness, some say it expands our consciousness and some say beauty is love, taking form.  Beauty’s paramount achievement is that it reaffirms that there is goodness in the world, thus making beauty an essential ingredient to knowing a good life.