What is good design? What defines its quality and should be the deciding factor when awarding prizes and realizing projects? Especially in architecture, where a building is possibly occupying and creating the same space for many years, affecting countless people - users, visitors, neighbors, builders - and the nature and climate around it, this has not one straightforward answer. Actually, it is probably a question without a definite answer - at least none for all perspectives and times. One that needs to be negotiated consistently. This text wants to start with proposing an interpretation of three relatively general attributes of design - Interesting, Beautiful and Good.

Interesting

Interesting is often something new. Or something that has been new when it was first perceived. The first of something. Something that expands the border of what is possible or what is seen as normal. Something that is thought of outside the box. It might be a new technology, a new type of space, or even just a new application for the most basic space conceivable. The new aspect might even be the repetition of something old, but it has to push at least one boundary.

Beautiful

Beautiful is pleasing to the eye. It can derive its beauty from pure functionality and simplicity or by adding seemingly useless ornaments. The Berliner Altbau is perceived as beautiful. Its decorated facades and high ceilings appeal to the passerby as well as the dweller, while expensive heating bills or badly lit residual rooms do not even affect the equation. Repurposed or converted buildings, whether it is a rural vernacular edifice or industrial loft, also convey beauty. Even though the old construction is setting constraints and prompts compromises, the added layer in the composition is gratifying and impossible to reproduce artificially from scratch. It is something rare. Simultaneously, beauty is based on what is known and proven. It does not indicate danger and calms the mind. It is the easiest and first quality to be examined by any observer and sadly often the last. While it can not be neglected for anything as visible as a building, it is ephemeral and subjective and should never be the only aspect of quality.

Good

Good is something that works. For all its possible users. Something that might not have to improve society but at least should not work against it. Something sustainable. Ecologically, socially but also economically. Something feasible. It is harder to define than the other two attributes; for its generality and its synonymous use with the term quality. However, in this contemplation, its meaning shall be limited to true functionality. Functioning for everyone and everything affected by the building over its complete lifecycle as being the criterion for good architecture.

Interesting, Beautiful, Good.

None of the above-outlined attributes allows conclusions to be drawn about the others. Good things don't have to be beautiful, not even interesting. They might be the most normal thing one can imagine. Beauty can be charming but just as well can be boring or even harmful. Interesting things are engaging to talk about but nothing prohibits the interesting feature to be its failure. They all play their role. They all are important and constitute parts of architectural quality. Even though they don't necessarily contradict each other, one rarely finds a project that can claim all three properties. Finding those things, or rather creating them, is the perpetual task of architecture, design, and life.