Functional Beauty

Functional beauty is the relationship between a purpose and its aesthetic value (“Functional beauty” by Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson).  A purposeful object is created to serve, solve a task and have a role in a particular situation.  Adding beauty to its function is sometimes seen as superfluous, unnecessary, even condemned: “a fire extinguisher can only be red!”! 

Adding beauty to a function increases its nobility, gives it higher significance, serves other (should I say) “functions”?  Indeed, beauty is an aggregate of qualities that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind (Merriam Webster).  How far can functional beauty go is a personal endeavor. Can a plunger be beautiful?  But for all, being in the presence of Beauty is cognitively enriching, stimulating, and elevating.  It enhances and brings wealth into our lives.  We crave it!  We gaze at rainbows, stare at sunsets, and pinch ourselves every time Mother Nature throws beauty at us.  It is essential, and therefore necessary. 

Safe-T Designer Fire Extinguishers were created exactly in that spirit, because dull is impoverishing and beauty exhilarating!