Last week we saw Mike Cannell and Murray Moss get into it a bit (largely centered around Hella Jongerius’ Polder sofa, above). This week, the Times Magazine’s Design Editor Pilar Viladas jumps into the fray, with an actually incredibly sensible and reasonable approach. Viladas is one of our favorite architecture writers out there: she describes buildings (shocker 1), gives them life (shocker 2), and makes jokes (shocker 3). Essentially, her argument is against a baby-and-bathwater-and-Jongerius-and-Royal-C throwout.

The design art movement has produced some inspired objects of great beauty. And while mass-market retailers have enabled people of modest means to buy well-designed products, they have also fueled people’s lust for disposability, producing a lot of shoddy stuff that’s straining our already groaning landfills. Yes, we need designers to come up with innovative, functional goods at reasonable prices; no, we do not need to sentence ourselves to living with hair-shirt design. Just because something is beautiful and expensive doesn’t make it frivolous and evil.

Don’t Hate Them Because They’re Beautiful [The Moment/New York Times]