Things you (do not) need

The other day, my neighbour told me about the villa they had rented tog­ether with another family on holiday – about the pool, the fitness room and the air con­di­tioning, without which, she said, the heat would really have been unbe­arable. We were happy to indulge our­selves in this luxury, she added. Luxury?, I thought.

According to the Duden dic­tionary, luxury is “a costly, was­teful, beyond the normal scope … not necessary, pursued only for pleasure”. This purely material under­standing of luxury describes what was con­sidered luxury for cen­turies: expensive pos­ses­sions with which the wealthy were able to adorn them­selves and demons­trate their power. There is talk of osten­tation and lavish opu­lence – the intention was to show off one’s status within society. Cer­tainly, status symbols still exist and always will – but the meaning of the word luxury has mean­while shifted to a more con­tem­porary under­standing: Mostly, luxury is no longer understood as excessive con­sumption, but rather as imma­terial things, values and respon­si­bility. Moreover, luxury is a relative term: Not only do we in the Western world live luxu­riously com­pared to people in Third World countries, but there also is a very wide range of what is understood by luxury in our country. While one person con­siders staying on their own yacht to be some­thing com­pletely normal, for another person a warm shower or even a safe place to sleep is pure luxury. So, is luxury a question of per­spective – or in other words: In view of the affluence in which we live, can we still expe­rience any­thing like luxury at all?

“Luxury is not the opposite of poverty, but the opposite of ordi­na­riness,” fashion designer Coco Chanel said about luxury. For her, luxury was some­thing extra­or­dinary. While Chanel pro­bably meant a style that was not ordinary – one can also read the quote as meaning that luxury does not neces­s­arily mean the pos­session of material goods, but rather an attitude towards life, or in a more con­tem­porary sense: quality of life. Some­thing that one cannot afford in “ordinary” everyday life – that can be cham­pagne, of course, but also the leisure to read a good book, that can be a beau­tiful place or even the family one rarely sees. In his 1996 Spiegel article on the future of luxury, Hans Magnus Enzens­berger describes luxury as ever­y­thing that is scarce and the­r­efore desi­rable – and these are not neces­s­arily objective things, but in par­ti­cular time, peace, space, security or even the envi­ronment. According to him, the future of luxury lies “not, as before, in mul­ti­pli­cation, but in reduction, not in accu­mu­lation, but in avo­idance.”

In the “New Luxury”, the repre­sen­tation of wealth is incre­asingly taking a back seat to things that have a positive effect on us and our envi­ronment: Quality is more important than quantity, reduction and down­sizing, less clutter and an accom­panying reduced style of living are the new luxury. Status symbols are incre­asingly being replaced by durable, tim­eless things that are com­pa­tible with sus­tainable living and fair living con­di­tions for the world’s popu­lation. It’s about trans­pa­rency, work-life balance and also a shift from pos­ses­sions to unique expe­ri­ences, so-called “money-can’t-buy” expe­ri­ences. And already there is talk of a new era of luxury: of “neo luxury”, which pro­motes trends such as sharing, digital detox or mindfulness as the new luxury. Once again, it becomes clear how far the new under­standing of luxury has moved away from the tra­di­tional defi­nition of luxury.

And what does all this have to do with holidays and archi­tecture? Well, of course, having a holiday is a luxury in itself – we have twice as many days of holiday in this country as workers in Japan, for example. Moreover, holidays are a time when most people want to reward them­selves for their stressful everyday life and enjoy them­selves – pre­ferably in beau­tiful sur­roun­dings and an archi­tec­tu­rally sui­table abode. For some people, air con­di­tioning or a whirlpool will cer­tainly remain a must – but more and more people now regard luxury as some­thing com­pletely dif­ferent: Reduced sim­plicity is pre­ferred, almost empty rooms are per­ceived as luxury, peace and nature are app­re­ciated. Alt­hough simple is not to be equated with uncom­for­table, but with reduction in terms of: There is nothing that offends the eye, the fur­nis­hings are har­mo­nious and of high quality, pos­sibly with indi­vidual design pieces, but without super­fluous frills. In addition, the leisure that one should have on holiday offers the oppor­tunity to dis­cover things, to expe­rience the beauty of nature and to let oneself go. Per­so­nally, I am now enjoying what’s left of a long weekend – the greenery of nature, in the moun­tains, with a view of the coun­tryside. Won­derful, this peace. And no plastic chair to offend the eye. What a luxury.

Text: Tina Barankay, October 2021

About the author: Tina Barankay has been com­bining her passion for aes­thetics and design with her pro­fes­sional acti­vities for many years, among others as an editor for the archi­tecture magazine DETAIL. As a free­lance jour­nalist and con­sultant, she publishes articles, pro­duces publi­ca­tions and designs com­mu­ni­cation con­cepts in the fields of archi­tecture, interior design and design.