Sterility Resistance: Now Is The Time to Pay Heed: Ruskin’s Warning and the Soul of 'Work Aesthetics':

Why beauty, not profit, must return to the heart of design and labour.

In an age of sterile design and hollow efficiency, we must ask ourselves what we’ve lost in the pursuit of sleekness. This essay revisits the prophetic insight of John Ruskin, who warned against a future where beauty, craftsmanship, and soul would be sacrificed on the altar of profit. We explore how architecture, labour, and design can either uplift the spirit or mute it. Through the lens of Work Aesthetics, we consider how to rekindle meaning and awe in the way we shape our world.

Against Sterility: Ruskin’s Warning and the Soul of Work Aesthetics: As if bearers of some magnificent ‘trend compass’, there are moments in history when an individual sees clearly - not only deep into the heart of their own time, but are capable of extrapolating patterns towards future crises yet to come. Alongside such similarly gifted forecasters as George Orwell in '1984' (1949) and Marshall McLuhan in ‘Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man' (1964) who possessed that rare, almost oracular capacity to see through the present into the soul of the future - often decades ahead of their time - John Ruskin was such a time-pilot.

Far beyond the sun-stifling smog of Victorian Britain, at the very dawn of industrial capitalism, Ruskin foresaw a grim pattern emerging: the rise of efficiency at the expense of beauty; the exaltation of profit over permanence; and the slow, numbing erosion of wonder in the way we shape, craft and hone our world.

More than an art critic or architect, Ruskin was a moral visionary. He believed passionately that the built-environment reflects the soul of a civilisation  -  and when that soul is compromised, its structures lose their intrinsic poetry. In The Stones of Venice and The Seven Lamps of Architecture, he mourned the loss of the Gothic spirit  -  not because it was ornate, but because it was alive. The irregularity, the hand-chiselled flourishes, the evidence of the craftsman’s investment in mastery, in the cultivation of joy  -  in himself, as well as appreciative onlookers - these were not imperfections to him, but sacred footprints. Each imperfection, each deviation from symmetry, a timeless celebration whispering down through the ages: “a human being made this  -  not a machine”. Echoes of truest humanity, faithful souls, mastery cherry-picked from mediocrity, feats of devotion, self-sacrifice and craftsmanship worthy of everlasting awe.

What drove this shift toward sterility? Ruskin intuited what we can now say more plainly. Put simply: profit trumped awe. And in pursuit of increased gains, we have borne witness to an ever diminishing series of aberrations like occlusions in what might otherwise be faultless diamonds of architecture. The pursuit of efficiency, market expansion, and return on investment began to override the higher callings of art and design  -  reverence, longevity, harmony with nature, and the elevation of the human spirit. In the cold calculus of profit-fixated thinking, ornamentation becomes waste, permanence becomes an unnecessary overhead, and astonishment at the majesty of a design becomes irrelevant.

This prophetic vision is starkly evident in today’s architectural landscape, where we see this most starkly in modern architecture. The great man-made structures that stir our souls  -  whether temples, cathedrals, ancient halls, or sacred dwellings  -  have endured the ravages of time, not simply because they were well-engineered, but because their aesthetics resonate with something eternal in us. People actually learned to love them, care for them, protect them and see them as integral to our sense of belonging, culture and affinity for who we are ourselves.

The reverence with which we speak of the Taj Mahal, The Chrysler Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, Machu Picchu, and Hagia Sophia underpins their potency in affecting our spirits on a deep level.

Such iconic structures have become integral to the archives of human existence. They differentiate us. They speak to us in the language of proportion, purity, aesthetics, light, harmony, symbolism, connection, affinity, cooperation, civility, service, belongingness, love, devotion, sacrifice, transcendence, merit. They were built not merely to serve, but to mean. To uplift. To stir awe. And above all, having been critiqued from every possible angle, to last the fullest scrutiny of time.

Such structures as these titans of human endeavour affect us deeply because they resonate with something timeless and archetypal within the human psyche. In the straddling and connecting of such boundaries, these masterpieces are more than functional - they mirror the rhythms of nature, the proportions of the cosmos, and the yearnings of our innermost soul to act constructively. When we stand before them, our physiology shifts: the heart slows, the breath deepens, and our sense of ego quietens.

They offer more than beauty - they offer perspective, stillness, connection and belonging. Through light, symmetry, scale, conviction of purpose and intentionality, they stir a sensation that we are part of something vaster than ourselves. This momentary loss of separation is not unlike a spiritual state. In this way, architecture becomes a silent conduit for presence, peace, and transcendence.

What we revere in such places is not just their grandeur, but the labour of love embedded within the materials of their construction. Stone, sand, mortar, timber, steel, glass, iron and gold, all affected by and added to by the human touch. Whether sacred or secular, they are acts of devotion - crafted with reverence, patience, and purpose. They remind us that great work is far from the high-speed dating of the modern labour market’s ‘snakes and ladders’ game of job-hopping and loss of momentum. But a slow, soulful, flow of intentionality that is meant to mature over time as incremental steps towards mastery.

Amounting to far more than monuments, these structures are vessels of awe. They speak in the language of permanence and place our fleeting lives within the etched landscape of our enduring human story. In so doing, they stir our dormant longing for meaning - and quietly reveal that the path to enlightenment may not be abstract or otherworldly, but found in the pursuit of beauty through meaningful work.

Contrast this with the modern world: commercial architecture that is intentionally temporary, numbered kits, interiors churned-out with inbuilt obsolescence, the soulless proliferation of form without feeling. We are, as Ruskin feared, surrounded by assemblies that do not converse with our soul, but mute it. Unlike fast-fashion that depends upon its innate superficiality to spawn the urge to replace shoddily-made garments with more short-lived frivolity, authentically great art not just endures but sustains that vitalising soul-connection such fashionistas will never compete with. The desire to own something for always, to treasure its exquisite lines, to notice the aura of it, for love to radiate from its aesthetic. – this is the outcome human work is preordained to generate.

This is where my vision in the ideology of Work Aesthetics emerges  -  not as nostalgia, but as remedy. It is the call to re-embed meaning, soul, and beauty into the very act of creation. It is a refusal to see labour as merely transactional, exploitative or extractive, and instead to reclaim it as spiritual, transcendent and transformational. It insists that design is not a matter of market demand, but of moral alignment. And it urges us to once again shape our world  -  our tools, our homes, our products, our values, our institutions, our culture, our systems  -  in ways that honour the full spectrum of human being: emotional, spiritual, social, and aesthetic.

Ruskin believed, above all, that good work is sacred. He wrote, “You may either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both.” Today, that binary measure persists  -  only now it is automated, outsourced, and digitised. And yet the question remains unchanged: Will we build a world that arouses our better angels, or reduce them to a shallow submission?

The sterility we inherit is not irreversible. It is a wound we can dress  -  through craft, through care, through curiosity and through courage. The courage to place meaning before margin, beauty before scale, and soul before speed. My vision for ‘Work Aesthetics’ is not that it is an ideology of the past. It is the blueprint for what must come next as humanity fights to make itself relevant in a future of work at risk of rendering ourselves obsolete.

To probe for the answers, we are compelled to step back and look at the presenting issue as a whole, identify patterns, extrapolate the trend, ask ourselves if we like the direction of travel and probe for ever deepening questions on true meaning. How do we know that the prevailing futuristic super-streamlined, sci-fi design ethos is the best direction of the aesthetic in developing tastes in our future? Why couldn't the extrapolation of current design trends be more evocative, wholesome or embracing of a more humane style as opposed to a robotic, detached, machine biased one?

We're touching on a rarely challenged assumption - that the dominant futuristic design ethos, with its shiny, sleek, superficial, metallic, mirror-glass, austere, sterile, minimalist, mechanistic appearance, is somehow the “natural” or “optimal” extrapolation of past and present trends in the direction of our communal future. But why should that be the case?

The prevailing sci-fi aesthetic - seen in everything from urban architecture to ‘tech’ user interface, car design to fashion, kitchen gadgets to superhero fantasy movies - is deeply permeated by a mechanistic worldview. This design language evolved out of industrial modernism and the belief that technological progress and striving for hyper-efficiency defines human progress. When it so clearly does not. It’s a visual metaphor for control, cost-cutting, logic, precision, and speed - qualities prized by billionaires, accountants, teenagers and robots, but not necessarily when framed through the requirements of human-flourishing.

Constructing a world where design is a reflection of human values, not profit generation. If we value empathy, connection, belonging, warmth, and sensuous experience, then the cold sterility of many futuristic environments begins to feel less like an aspirational future and more like a psychological desert where human blossoming was never part of the equation. Isn’t it time to ask ourselves whether our futures could instead draw added zeal from more humane artistic cues, connected or akin to such ideas as:

• Biophilic design, which incorporates natural forms, light, and textures?

• Wabi-sabi, which embraces imperfection, decay, and humanity?

• Arts & Crafts ideals, which resist mass production in favour of meaning and craftsmanship?

• Indigenous futurisms, which blend ancestral knowledge with futuristic visioning in more organic, life-embracing ways?

The idea that ‘progress’ must look like shiny steel and infinite glass is a cultural construction - largely rooted in Western ‘techno-centrism’ - and not an inevitability. It reflects a machine bias; which often sidelines the distinct opportunity for our design-world to connect with the human soul; as our historic do.

What if we started designing futures that honoured our evolutionary needs for texture, for softness, for narrative, and for communion? What if futuristic meant more soothing than industrialised, more healing than high-tech, more soulful than sterile? Because design doesn't just shape environments - it influences mindsets, connects communities, and ultimately, inspires who we become.

It’s worth asking: what kind of humans do we want to be? And what kind of creative elements help us become that version of ourselves?

We have to push for wider debate on the quiet truth that underpins much of today’s aesthetic malaise: design is no longer the domain of visionaries or soul-driven creators - it’s been hijacked by the logic of spreadsheets. When profit margins dictate decisions, the result is rarely beauty or humanity. It’s efficiency at the expense of empathy.

We see it everywhere:

• In architecture, where cheap materials and modular repetition trump spatial nourishment.

• In tech interfaces, where flat, lifeless minimalism is easier to scale and monetise.

• In furniture and consumer goods, where mass production demands conformity, reducing the object to its most extractable value.

Designers, if they’re lucky, get a small corner in the process - told to “make it look nice” once the form, function, and funding have already been locked into the blueprint. But this inversion - putting the accountant at the drawing board - has led to the dominance of anaemic futurism: all chrome, no character. Hence, my ‘Human-centric Future of Aesthetics Manifesto’ feels both vital and vitalising, below. It reclaims design, creative action and art as a philosophical, emotional, and ethical act of responsibility in the act of contributing good to the communities we seek to belong and connect with. Not merely a commercially driven one.

Duncan Bolam’s ‘Human-centric Future of Aesthetics Manifesto’: A Vision for Soulful, Life-Affirming Work Aesthetics as we Strive towards a Post-Industrial Age:

1. Design for the Whole Human: We are not cogs, data points, or efficiency units. Design must embrace our full spectrum - emotional, sensory, spiritual, and communal. Cold utility must give way to warm usability.

2. Beauty is not a Luxury - It is a Necessity: Aesthetic richness nourishes the psyche. Beauty should be woven into the everyday: in housing, in tools, in the digital and the mundane. Mass production should not mean aesthetic poverty.

3. Form Must Follow Feeling: We reject the dogma that function alone determines form. We begin instead with empathy: how does this design make people feel? Awe, calm, wonder, sublimity, safety - these become design metrics.

4. Rewild the Future: Reintroduce natural rhythms, patterns, materials, and unpredictability into sterile spaces. Let light, shadow, breath, patina, tranquillity, and scent become part of our design vocabulary again.

5. Craft Over Calculation: Honour the hand-made, the imperfect, the storied. Resist the algorithmic flattening of identity and place. Allow for the idiosyncratic and the local.

6. Design Must Heal: Our built and digital environments either soothe or stress. Choose calm. Choose curves over corners. Texture over gloss. Depth over speed.

7. Economy Should Serve Aesthetics - Not Invert It: Profit must never be the primary author of our futures. True value is measured in longevity, resonance, and human flourishing - not just margins and metrics.

8. Design is Legacy: Every object, space, or system designed today becomes part of tomorrow’s inheritance. Design not for the next investor pitch, but for the next generation. Positive legacy is at the heart’s core when it comes to sustainability.

9. Community is the Canvas: Design must be co-created with those who live its consequences. Flatten hierarchies between ‘expert’ and ‘user’. Make the design process a dialogue, not a decree.

10. Be Courageous: Dare to defy the defaults. Say no to sterile. Reimagine the future as a habitat for the human soul - not a holding cell for hyper-efficiency.

A Conclusion to Inspire the Embodiment of Work Aesthetics in our Working Lives: The time has come to reawaken the creative souls that lie dormant in so much of our daily doing. Work Aesthetics is not an abstract ideology, but a daily practice - a quiet revolution made tangible through every act of care, every decision to value beauty over blandness, and every refusal to separate utility from meaning. Whether you are building a business, shaping a space, designing a system, honing mastery, or simply crafting your next task, let it be a space where love is allowed to radiate through your labour in the contribution of good. Ask not only what you are building, but what it builds in you — and in those your work touches. Every object, every process, every touchpoint is a chance to remind the world that we are not machines. We are feelers, dreamers, artisans of legacy, positive entries on life's great balance sheet. The future we long for will not arrive through sterile efficiency, but through a thousand acts of soulful defiance — each one whispering: a human made this, it mattered, love was here.