# Philosophy of Design Chapters 1 and 2 **Opening (not a real abstract):** When it comes to questions about design, perhaps the most fundamental one of all is simply: “What is it?” One way to respond to this question would be to pick out examples of design. With a visit to a design website, or a flip through a design magazine, we could easily point to some objects that are widely recognized as products of contemporary design: the Apple iPod, the Eames chair, Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House or Alessi's famous Juicy Salif citrus juicer. But identifying some examples of design does not really answer our question in a fully satisfying way. When we ask “What is design?,” we want to understand what makes the production of these things, and others like them, instances of design. We would like to discover, in other words, the nature of the concept rather than mere examples of it. In this chapter, I take up this challenge, and examine some