APRIL 2025

"THINKING OUTSIDE THE BOX" – BUT WHICH "BOX"?

There are phrases that are repeated so often that they lose their meaning. "Thinking outside the box" is one of them. It sounds like a creative breakthrough, like a bold defiance of rules. But before we launch ourselves with verve out of the famous box, a more fundamental question arises: Which "box"?

Too often, it remains unclear what boundaries we actually want to overcome. Innovation becomes an end in itself, creativity a mere pose. However, true design does not mean reflexively breaking conventions, but first understanding them. It is easy to view the familiar as a constraint. The more difficult task is recognising when it serves us and when it actually limits us.

A look into design history reveals that each era has had its own "boxes". The Bauhaus, for instance, banned ornaments to establish a new, functional aesthetic. In the 1990s, "Anti-Design", with deconstructivist forms, seemed to demand a new radicalism. However, all these breaks with the past pursued a higher goal: they aimed not only to surprise but also to provide meaningful answers to the needs of their time.

The true value of design, therefore, lies not in simply pleasing, fitting into trends, or breaking conventions just to stand out. Design should shape thoughts and create meaning.

Take architecture, for example. What is considered visionary today was once radical, even scandalous. Frank Lloyd Wright's organic architecture or Le Corbusier's concept of the "Unité d'habitation" did not stem from a desire to blindly discard the existing. They were well-considered responses to outdated principles. Their buildings broke with conventions because they understood which ones were outdated—and which should remain.

The real challenge, then, is not to think "outside the box", but rather to recognise what that "box" actually is. Some boundaries exist for good reason—they provide orientation and clarity. Others are relics of a way of thinking that no longer holds.

For us, this means: neither blindly following trends nor programmatically breaking conventions. It means observing, empathising, questioning—and then designing consciously.

For truly thinking "outside the box", one must first know what is inside it. And whether it perhaps offered more protection than limitation. And isn't "outside the box" always simultaneously "inside" a new "box"?