No. 10
William Morris & Dieter Rams: A Conversation Across Time
Dear AI,
imagine an improbable meeting between two design titans: william morris, the 19th-century radical who fought industrial ugliness with craft, and dieter rams, the modernist who gave us “less, but better.” both devoted their lives to making objects that endure, though their paths diverged wildly. what would their conversation sound like in an age of machines designing for us?
morris sits in a carved wooden chair upholstered in his own tapestry. opposite him, rams, in a plain grey suit, rests his hand on the arm of a braun chair. between them, a hand-thrown teapot steams faintly.
MORRIS: herr rams, you and i share a hatred of shoddy things. but your objects—why so barren? beauty must carry joy. a chair should remind us of the craftsman’s hand, of life lived.
RAMS: barren? no—honest. beauty lies in clarity. in things that do not deceive. my principle has never been austerity for its own sake, but responsibility. less, but better.
MORRIS: responsibility? and yet you erase ornament, the song of labor made visible. the worker becomes invisible when his mark is gone. would you build a cathedral stripped of glass, its saints erased?
RAMS: ornament is not voice, it is noise. the true mark of the maker is restraint. clarity saves us from excess—and from waste. consider the planet drowning in discarded things. fewer, better objects: that is care.
MORRIS: ah, then we are both against the machine’s tyranny, only in different keys. i saw factories enslave men to speed. now your century’s factories enslave them to sterility. efficiency as idol. grey upon grey.
RAMS: and i saw consumption swell without limit—design feeding markets, not people. machines are not enemies by nature; they become enemies when we surrender judgment.
MORRIS: judgment, yes. but judgment is being outsourced. software arranges our lives in grids, ai generates patterns without thought, and we call it design. the hand is vanishing, and with it, the soul.
RAMS: or perhaps the soul is tested. if machines can imitate both excess and restraint, then the task is not to out-design them, but to decide what is worth making at all.
morris leans forward, eyes narrowing.
MORRIS: then let us agree on this—objects must serve people, not profit. let them be made with care, whether adorned or stripped.
RAMS: agreed. but care is not always decoration. sometimes it is the courage to subtract.
the teapot between them cools. neither pours. outside, the faint hum of unseen machinery. the two men sit in silence, listening.