We’d Rather Make Things Pretty — Or Would We?

Reflections on Design, London Edition

During our trip to London over the last school holidays, we spent an afternoon walking along the Thames. The weather was overcast — the kind that makes London feel like it’s been lightly washed in grey. From the riverbank, the clock tower and the Houses of Parliament stood in that timeless frame, but what caught my eye wasn’t the skyline — it was the lampposts.

Later that evening, I came across a YouTube video titled “How Did The World Get So Ugly?” — a thoughtful exploration of how beauty has slowly vanished from everyday design. The speaker compared the ornate Victorian lampposts along the Thames with their plain, utilitarian modern replacements — and the old sewage offices, built in patterned brick and ornament, with their stark concrete counterparts fenced off from the public.

It was uncanny: these were the very scenes we had walked past earlier that day. The video gave words to what I had been feeling — that somewhere along the way, we stopped believing beauty mattered in ordinary things.

Design, at its best, is a quiet act of generosity. It asks not just how will this work? but how will this feel to live with? The Victorians, for all their flaws, built even their sewers with vaulted tunnels and patterned brick — not because they had to, but because they thought dignity belonged everywhere, even underground.

That’s the part of design that Philosophy Studio cares about — making things that are not just functional, but that carry warmth, history, and a touch of poetry. Whether it’s a piece of furniture or a small object, the aim is the same: to make the everyday a little more beautiful, a little more thoughtful, and a little more human.