Maeda's SIMPLICITY

The Taste of a Room

While enjoying a lunch conversation with the quietly masterful designer Sam Hecht arranged by the Editor-in-Chief of the forthcoming European magazine Provider, I was happy to know that we had one important thing in common. Neither of us understood the mystery of why in France the bath showers never have any proper shower curtains. As Sam put it, "The water gets all over the darn floor." There was a cosmic moment of two minds connecting when he revealed his puzzlement over this issue as I was grappling with the exact same question in my head. Note that to avoid any misunderstanding, neither Sam nor I were anywhere near a shower as we were just having lunch in Lisa's office near the famous Montparnasse Cemetary.

Sam's designed some incredibly simple pieces for the popular MUJI brand and it was nice to meet one of the people behind perhaps the most elegant telephone in the world. We talked a great deal about a variety of issues concerning the ecology of the product landscape, but the most memorable moment for me during our lunch conversation was when he turned to our lunch itself. Sam said something to the effect that the taste of our beautiful sushi meal was affected by the room that we were sitting in. He felt that the visual purity of the meal was anchored by the environmental tranquility of Lisa's elegantly simple office.

Thus we come to the twelfth law of simplicity we shall call "Hecht's Law":

Hecht's Law doesn't imply that the only way you can properly enjoy your iPod is by sitting in a room full of furniture that is painted white or else made of see-through plastic. It is more of a general statement about life. Sometimes you have the capacity to enjoy certain things; and other times you are just too busy to smell the roses. I guess the moral of the story is that simplicity comes to those who can allow it (and not just afford it).