Rachel Brandenberger

We think of aesthetics as superficial, but style is an external expression of a culture’s inner spirit.

We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is. I think it was William James who said, “My experience is what I agree to attend to, and only those things which I notice shaped my mind.” In choosing how we are in the world, we shape our experience of that world, our contribution to it. We shape our world, our inner world,... See more

Following this, the author identifies four properties of beauty: first, beauty is sacred, it belongs to the realm of divinity, of goodness, of our quest for perfection; second, beauty is unprecedented, in the sense that it is a novel experience for the subject; thirdly, beauty is life-saving; and finally, beauty incites deliberation.

When faced with a difficult problem, don’t try to solve it. Instead, make sure you understand it. If you understand it properly, the solution will be obvious.

And it wasn’t enough to respect the context. What we put in needed to make the already-existing stronger . This also applied to the other aspects of the context, the architecture, the ecology... And it applied to the part of the context that was us —the garden should make us feel more alive and encourage us to engage in the activities we want to... See more

First, beauty evokes a longing for fullness and creation, even in the form of duplication. We want to tell others about beautiful paintings we have seen, beautiful songs we have heard, even beautiful arguments we have read. The desire to spread the beauty one beholds acts as a force not only for beauty but also for truth. "[T]he beautiful person or... See more

Feed your curiosity, but also feed your humanity.

Go live a big, interesting, beautiful life—and bring all of that back to the work.

The same thing happened with minimalism and companies like Apple and Blue Bottle. They absolutely nailed it. But then came the copycats. They looked at the tree above the surface, but forgot about the root structure. They copied the surface, and what underpinned the original began to disappear. This created a poor imitation of minimalism, which is... See more

“Giving the people what they want isn’t nearly as powerful as teaching people what they need. There’s always a shortcut available, a way to be a little more ironic, cheaper, more instantly understandable. There’s the chance to play into our desire to be entertained and distracted regardless of the cost. Most of all, there’s the temptation to... See more