“Perhaps the most radical gesture today is not to add, but to subtract.”
It is evident: there is now too much in the world. Too many objects, too many houses, too many functions, too many urgencies. Excess has saturated not only our spaces, but also our design imagination. Perhaps the most radical gesture today is not to add, but to subtract.
To make a mental leap toward frugality. The Indian concept of jugaad offers a valuable perspective: an ingenious, unconventional form of innovation born from constraints. It is the attitude of the bricoleur, who observes what is at hand and recomposes it in unexpected ways. It is not poor improvisation, but situated intelligence: imagination exercised through scarcity, transforming limits into possibilities.
Looking to the East means rediscovering a culture of “doing more with less,” where efficiency is not only technical, but ethical. Within this dimension emerges a theme that recurs across philosophical and religious traditions: care. Care as responsibility toward people – the primary horizon of a designer’s action – but also toward matter, objects, ecosystems and everything we now recognize as more than human.
Frugality and care, together, become powerful activators of creativity. They bring relationships back to the center, reduce the superfluous, and open new – sometimes unprecedented – paths. For those engaged in design, they represent not a renunciation, but a cultural evolution: a more conscious, necessary, and deeply human way of shaping the future.
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