The Philosophy of Beauty: Ornamenta Research Trip, Paris

Conceptions of beauty aim to capture the fundamental nature of all beautiful things. Classical ideas describe beauty in terms of the aesthetic value of the thing as a whole and the relationship between its parts. Along with truth and goodness beauty is considered to be one of the transcendentals, which are often considered the three basic concepts of human understanding. During our research trip to Paris, a visit to Layfayette Anticipations greeted our group of Ornamenta exerts with an exhibition of "extrasensory" perceptions, an experience that invited us to think about future worlds and to heal the present one. Following on from this, a talk delivered by one of the world's leading trend forecasters, Lidewij Edelkoort, described how the slowness of craft processes gives design its nobility and depth, empowered by the belief that animistic energy can be nestled in materials and how functions of space are transforming beyond the aesthetic towards a new functionality. During our time in Paris, we embarked on a journey of new understanding, seeing the world through the eyes of the beholder with newfound awareness as we scrutinized the role of beauty in today's society: how it informs our choices as humans but also as consumers.