# The Depth of Design  ## Metadata - Author: [[Albert Borgmann]] - Full Title: The Depth of Design - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: Borgmann discusses the importance of design in shaping our material culture, emphasizing that design should combine both engineering and aesthetics to foster engagement. He argues that designers have a responsibility to create environments that promote moral and cultural excellence while being mindful of historical context. Ultimately, effective design can enhance our daily lives and communal celebrations by inviting deeper engagement with our surroundings. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/204163271 - Source File: The Depth of Design by Borgmann.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > Design as a practice needs de- sign as an object because designers as professionals appear to suf- fer from an uncertain sense of identity that would be firmed up through the focus on the excellence of the material environment. To be sure, daunting obstacles stand in the way of this mutual alignment. Perhaps the fundamental problem is the seemingly inexorable tendency of the excellence of the material culture toward attenuation, superficiality, and even disappearance. Con- sider the development of sound reproduction. The original Victrolas had an intelligible and dramatic shape and required constant and careful attention from their users. More sophisti- cated information retrieval by way of diamond pickups and the development of electronic amplification reduced the need for interaction and the intelligibility of the apparatus. There was less occasion for tangible and expressive design. The day is not far off when the daily presence of a sound system will have shrunk to a hand-held device consisting of a small keyboard and screen that allows you to call up whatever and however much music you desire. The musical information, the retrieval and amplifica- tion mechanisms, and the loudspeakers will be concealed behind opaque surfaces. The designer's scope will be reduced to making these surfaces as pleasing and the programming device as portable and functional as possible. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j52ddb96j5p23a48v0tb4c6z)) > The underlying phenomenon in these developments is a shift from aesthetic design to engineering design and a concomitant shift from user engagement to user disburdenment. To begin with the latter shift, should we worry about the disappearance of engagement? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j52des5bef91wp110wacwbn9)) > What is engagement? "Engagement" is a term to specify the symmetry that links humanity and reality. Human beings have certain capacities that prefigure the things of the world; and conversely what is out there in the world has called forth human sense and sensibility. > More specifically the most commanding and subtle things engage our talents most fully; and, conversely again, to employ our ca- pacities most deeply we turn to the most powerful and intricate things. Engagement is to designate the profound realization of the humanity-reality commensuration. For example, a musical instrument normally engages a person deeply; a television pro- gram typically fails to do so. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j52dfgdpr5sxqmzeq7zk3kns)) > Concern for engagement can spring from the human or the real side. We may be concerned to develop and use our gifts to the fullest and so find our way to the rich and grand things that re- quire and reward such self-realization. Or we may be concerned to guard and oblige the great things of the world and find that doing so makes us most fully human. The latter approach is pref- erable at a time when technology imperils eminent and eloquent reality and when subjectivism infects the notion of self-realization with ambiguity. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j52dk7mvye5e0mqz4kh305z7)) > I am overemphasizing the problem. Walking, seeing, and com- prehending are important ways of inhabiting a place, and those ways are much richer in a diverse and historic setting than in one where opaque glamor repels all comprehension. More important, comprehension shades over into engagement, and it is depth of engagement that truly allows and calls for depth of design. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j52dtxvv856chxed2n4mrcwr)) > The good of design is the moral and cultural excellence of the humanly shaped and built environment. More particularly, I want to urge, designers are charged with making the material culture conducive to engagement. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j52dxr1jprehmmqs2rbc5gey)) > In the case of a cooking pot, however, not only the colors mat- ter, but even more so the shape, weight, heat conductivity, surface texture, even the sound it makes when you stir in it or set it down. The handling and use of a pot disclose the wealth of its properties even when its ultimate constitution is veiled by technological so- phistication, as it is in a pressure-cast, ceramic-plasma-coated alu- minum pan with the heat-resistant, springlock mounted, Bakelite handles.' ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j52e0p6q4x9hy4k39020yz91)) > The kitchen utensils of the gourmet cook, to the contrary, dis- close the texture, color, and taste of the food. The depth of the utensils opens on the depth of the world at large. They do not represent the world, as technological devices do; they allow the world to be present in its own right. Things, however, can have and hold this deeply disclosive power only if they are so designed ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j52e1re11tm3pafabke3ra11))