Simplifying, Bruno Munari

During my first year in architecture school in Milan I came across a book that has been highly influential in my design education: Da Cosa Nasce Cosa, Appunti per una Metodologia Progettuale by artist and designer Bruno Munari. The book title (badly) translates to: One Thing Leads to Another, Notes on Design Methodology. Below is my translation of one of my favorite essays of the book:

" Simplifying.

Simplifying means trying to solve a problem removing what is not necessary. Simplifying means lowering the costs, the manufacture, the assembly and the finishing times. It means solving two problems at once with one solution. Simplifying is a hard job and requires a lot of creativity.

Complicating is much easier, you just need to add what comes through your mind without worrying whether manufacture costs go over selling limits, or whether it takes more times to make the object, and so on.

We should say however that generally the public tends to better appreciate the quantity of manual work required to make something complicated rather than the quantity of mental work required to simplify, since the result cannot be seen.

For this reason people in front of extremely easy solutions, which may have required long research and trials, say: that’s all? But I could have made this myself!

When someone says

I could have made this myself

he (or she) means

that he can re-make it

otherwise he would have

already made it."

Da Cosa Nasce Cosa, Bruno Munari, Laterza 1981.