Does good design have to be innovative?
No, of course good design doesn't have to be innovative. The Parthenon wasn't -- it was a refined, elegant, impeccably worked out, perfectly judged reworking of an already very familiar form and function. It all depends upon whether the circumstances of the project call for innovation. Good design can be good (without necessarily being innovative) because it's sensitive, because it's refined, because it's refreshingly crude and gutsy, because it's culturally resonant, because it's amusing, because it perfectly fits a context, because it's subversive, because it irritates fools . . . and on and on. Innovation can be very important, and I tend to go for it myself, but we shouldn't be fundamentalists about it.— William J. Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences at MIT
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