Understanding Design Aesthetics beyond Functional Beauty Accounts

Design is presented as an apt object of aesthetic appreciation. The nature of its aesthetic dimension will be developed in terms of the relationship between form and function. Specially, by looking at the role that knowledge about function plays in our design aesthetic judgements. Then, I will present the dominant view about the aesthetic value of design coming from functional beauty accounts. Finally, in the last section, I will focus upon some problems derived from the aforementioned integral model form-function in design aesthetics. By means of practical cases, I will point to the narrowness of functional beauty accounts and its inability to include a broader range of actual design objects and their relevant design aesthetic properties.