The cryptic headline set the scene: landscape roof tops besley & spresser's pavilion in sydney, made from recycled oyster shells. The accompanying set of images of this project is impressive, as is the project itself. This so-called ‘sculptural structure' noted in the second introductory headline: Besley & Spresser unveils sculptural structure on Sydney Harbor, (sic), is sensitively profiled to fit its site with a beautifully detailed, reverberative assembly that carries overtones of the buildings and public places shaped by Schinkel, Bernini and Palladio. The elegance and subtlety of the project is impressive, with columns angled so as to offer private ledges for repose, while framing open and enclosed place with both with a single array of columns, and a denser set of twin pillars that reference a rigorous classicism in a refined and determinedly fresh, inventive manner: see - https://www.designboom.com/architecture/landscape-roof-besleyspresser-pavilion-sydney-recycled-oyster-shells-10-06-2025/. The project holds something of the intrigue of Le Corbusier's Tower of Shadows at Chandigarh.
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Like the headline, the text emphasises that this sculpture is made of recycled oyster shells, a strange qualification considering the necessity. Are there others? One senses that there is some extra kudos to be gained in recycled things.
a permanent civic landmark . . . made almost entirely from a bespoke terrazzo embedded with recycled rock oyster shells. . . . the latest addition to the ongoing regeneration of the harbor along its western edge.
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The architect explains the form and again speaks of the oyster shells:
The sculptural structure draws on the layered identity of the site, where land, sea, and sky meet. Its plan takes cues from the distinctive coves and peninsulas of the harbor, unfolding as a series of open and enclosed spaces framed by a double colonnade. Eighty-six slender, moment-resisting columns hold up a landscape roof planted with native species, sandstone, and hollow logs to attract birds and insects. A circular oculus punctures the roof, allowing daylight and weather to pass through, projecting a shifting circle of light that moves across the terrazzo floor. The Pier Pavilion’s custom oyster terrazzo is crafted from recycled aggregates and thousands of reclaimed Sydney rock oyster shells.
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'Reclaimed' is a better word. The reference to the oyster shells continues in still more detail, as if it might be the core concept of the scheme:
The defining material of Pier Pavilion, oyster terrazzo, was developed specifically for the pavilion in collaboration with Terrazzo Australian Marble. Over a year of experimentation led to a mix combining whole Sydney rock oyster shells with various recycled aggregates. When polished, the terrazzo shows the detailed patterns of the shells, connecting the building to the area’s coastal environment and ancient oyster reefs.
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The shells are even quantified, such is their apparent importance: Nearly half a million shells, otherwise destined for landfill, were reused in the process - 'reused'? One supposes that the oysters used the shells first. It is further explained that the (oyster shell) terrazzo is hung in panels from the ceiling, columns, and fascia in the manner of stone cladding, while the folded timber deck of the roof mirrors the geometry of surrounding headlands.
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And there is more: the client notes that ‘Besley & Spresser’s design celebrates the defining elements of the site—land, sky, and sea—while creating a prominent visual landmark,’ adding that ‘The result is a stunning public space where people can shelter, meet, gather, and relax by the water.’ It is indeed an impressive scheme.
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The co-director of the Australian practice, Jessica Spresser, explains the intent:
‘The Pavilion references human gathering by the sea through its use of recycled Sydney Rock Oyster shells. . . . We wanted to pay respect to the long history of oyster feasting in the area, and to celebrate the use of a unique material in the public realm.’
While the project is exemplary, one has to note the problem with meaning. The Schinkel/Bernini/Palladio references are ignored, as if there was no awareness of these parallels - (surely we've overcome our embarrassment with classical references toyed with in Postmodernism?) - with the project being instead rationalised as referencing human gathering by the sea through its use of recycled Sydney Rock Oyster shells. One wonders exactly how this sense of 'gathering' has been achieved by actually using reclaimed oyster shells in the project other than as the storyline.
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Likewise, one wonders how respect is shown by this 'celebration': ‘We wanted to pay respect to the long history of oyster feasting in the area, and to celebrate the use of a unique material in the public realm.’ Is this achieved just using oyster shells in a concrete mix? There is the suggestion of some Aboriginal involvement in the idea, something similar to recognising 'country,' (see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2024/06/country-outside-inside-place.html), but there is no clear statement on this, and the pavilion has not yet been given an Aboriginal name.
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It seems that this 'celebration of place' has been 'expressed,' yes, in the bespoke and unusual use of oyster shells embedded in the applied terrazzo panels; at a location that also 'celebrates' the defining elements of the site—land, sky, and sea – seemingly just by being there as land by the sea under the sky? What else is there here that defines . . . the site and its history?
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One senses that the meaning is being explained as matter, and interpreted as a fact, in a hopeful word play fashioned to appear sensitively relevant, rather than being left as an experience holding an essential, integral quality rooted in symbolism, embodying an inherent depth of meaning. The problem with stated intents is that the outcome remains just a matter of declared fact with an applied storyline, and little else, in spite of the effort to achieve more. Providing something different is easy enough, but while things bespoke might surprise and engage, this response is not the mystery of meaning. One is left to observe the oyster shells on land by the sea under the sky, and to try to rationalise the subtle meanings that the architects have tried to engage; alluded to; but there is no essential necessity in the situation even though the parts can all be individually observed. The 'sculpture' is just there for us to consider, shells and all, and attempt to understand, using the information that has been given in the same way as any legal argument might be analysed; and when comprehended, one might give a shrug or a silent nod of acknowledgement, recognising that the pieces have been assembled in some personal way.
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Embodied meaning using symbolism is much richer and far more complex than this adoption of facts as words presented as being of mysterious value with a suggestive depth just by the saying that this is so. Rather, with symbolism, there is a real, essential connection rooted in form and place. While the designer's intentions might be admirable, we are left with statements of reality that are merely saying that we used oyster shells in a surprisingly new way in a place where oysters were once consumed by the sea. It is a concept that requires us to interpret the circumstance and read something 'truly meaningful' into this different situation - to 'feel' it in the clever adaptation of oyster shells - as we try to assume an 'understanding' through some cooperative, self-conscious sensing of analogy, rather than having the core relevance of symbols embodied in our lived experience as an integral whole. Even though the architects would like this experiential knowing to be happening, and might talk of this actually being so because this is what they thought possible, we still find ourselves struggling with an intellectual interpretation in order to comprehend to situation. We are left to apply some relevance to the place in our own individualistic manner, and are made to feel inadequate if we find ourselves struggling to comprehend or to become involved in the idea provided to us.
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It is Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn who has pointed out the qualities of a symbol in the most straightforward manner. Ananda Coomaraswamy has also written clearly on this subject - see: Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, Dover, New York, 1956 where he explains that a symbol is the thing itself in one of its aspects. It is not a sign giving directions containing a message defining what and how to see. Rather:
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A symbol is something in a lower ‘known and wonted’ domain which the traveller considers not only for its own sake but also and above all in order to have an intuitive glimpse of the ‘universal and strange’ reality which corresponds to it in each of the hidden higher domains. Symbols are in fact none other than the illusory perfections of creation which have already been referred to as being guides and incentives to the traveller upon his journey, and they have the power to remind him of their counterparts in higher worlds not through merely incidental resemblance but because they are actually related to them in the way that a shadow is related to the object which it casts. There is not the least thing in existence which is not such a shadow . . . Nor is there anything which is any more than a shadow.
Abū Bakr Sirāj ad-Dīn (Martin Lings) explains in The Book of Certainty The Islamic Texts Society, Cambridge, 2015.
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The problem with meaning that faces us today seems to lie in what has been argued to be the inherent nihilism of Modernism: see – https://uxdesign.cc/contemporary-design-doesnt-just-reflect-nihilism-it-creates-it-4b8617293462, (reproduced below), where design itself embodies a clean, neutral minimalism that equates to nothingness; a void which we are told holds an innate special significance.
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One can perhaps understand the enthusiasm for the oyster shells, but the landscaped roof? . . . and the timber framing that mirrors the geometry of surrounding headlands? These seem to be possible 'extras' - a part of the search for an explanation of the meaning of everything. This presentation of ideas appears to be something of a hopeful fantasy that embodies the fundamental dilemma of Modernism: the blind struggle for meaning beyond matter and fact, in spite of all of the very best intentions of the architects.
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The effort to be articulate about subtlety and relevance highlights the awareness of the need for more, that longing for something else other than just a well-considered sculptural structure; but we know little about this experience, let alone knowing anything about how to embody meaning in form. The Origins of Form in Art by Herbert Read (Thames & Hudson, London, 1965), comes to mind. The subject still lingers as an enigma that we constantly grapple with: see Swell 2025 - Necessity & Essence - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2025/09/swell-25-necessity-essence.html. The proposition is; if nothingness is embodied in Modernism, what can we do to change things? Oyster shells might be a beginning, but they are not the answer. Their use in this project holds a greater, more 'polished' subtlety, but it is really not that different in principle to the Big Oyster at Taree that gives a bold reference to this industry in the area as a piece of kitsch.
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Michael Buckley’s article is reproduced in full here as originally published:
https://uxdesign.cc/contemporary-design-doesnt-just-reflect-nihilism-it-creates-it-4b8617293462
Contemporary design doesn’t just reflect nihilism, it creates it.
How what we build transforms our condition and shapes the very fabric of meaning.
Michael Buckley
29 September 2025
It should come as no surprise to those paying attention that nihilism — the belief that life lacks inherent meaning — has become increasingly prevalent. However, these days it appears not as a defiant rejection of values, but as a quiet erosion of purpose met with a shrug of apathy.
Ends are replaced by metrics, conviction by convenience, and narrative by feeds. Secularism, politics, ideology, and technology are often blamed. However, another force hides in plain sight — design.
If one had to describe what nihilistic design looks like, it would be sterile, stripped of conviction, void of meaning, and soulless. Sound familiar?
Those same traits could be used to describe how many brands, websites, and apps appear today. No color, no texture, no shape— just flat, black and white, afraid to offend, and content to remain barren.
We like to think design reflects culture. The ornament of the Baroque in the 17th century, the geometric rigor of Art Deco in the 1920s, the neon excess of the 1980s — each seems like a mirror of the society that created it.
But what if this familiar story has it backwards? What if culture is not simply echoed in design, but shaped by it? What if the sterile and hollow interfaces we produce today are not passive reflections of nihilism, but active producers of it?
This idea has deep philosophical roots. Oscar Wilde once argued that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. Friedrich Nietzsche believed that aesthetics precede truth, that existence itself is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon. Marshall McLuhan declared that the medium is the message, and Jean Baudrillard pushed it further, claiming that signs and images no longer reflect reality but generate it.
If this is true, the pattern is unmistakable—design doesn’t just record meaning, it scripts it. And once design withers, culture follows close behind.
Cultural forms once carried narrative. Cathedrals told stories in stone and glass. Novels and films offered beginnings, middles, and ends that gave coherence to life. Even broadcast television moved within familiar arcs.
Today that coherence is harder to find. Much can be said about the bland architecture of our cities and the thinning narratives of contemporary movies and novels, but one of the most concerning shifts has been in the evolution of streaming television.
Television experiences that once delivered episodes with self-contained stories now lean heavily on season-long arcs—arcs that may never conclude if the series is canceled. Stories hang suspended, deferred, or abandoned, and audiences grow accustomed to living with open loops, each pause just another cue to crave the next dopamine hit that never truly satisfies.
Nowhere are open loops more pervasive than the internet, especially social media. Here, design has abandoned narrative architecture altogether. Scroll-based feeds deliver hours of endless, unresolved experience. Search itself has become infinite — every query spawning new links, new threads, new rabbit holes without finality. These systems do not merely reflect shortened attention spans—they train us into them.
What’s lost in this shift is the collective experience. Once, cultural scarcity bound people together — shared stories, shared rituals, shared meanings that culminated. Meaning deepened because it was finite, because it felt resolved. Now we chase a superficial sense of significance in the infinite. But infinity never resolves. It offers no closure, only the perpetual lure of what lies just beyond.
Minimalism and modernism complicate the story further. These movements, and their descendants in today’s flat digital interfaces, often parade as neutral. The grid, the sans serif, the clean white background — all claim to transcend culture, to present the universal. But neutrality is a myth. Every omission is a worldview.
By removing ornament, context, and symbol, design does not simply clear space for function — it establishes an aesthetic where emptiness itself becomes a virtue. This virtue is not neutral—it is rooted in Western Enlightenment ideals of rationality and order. A stripped-down interface tells us that depth is clutter, that meaning is noise, that efficiency is the highest good.
This unraveling of layered meaning now reaches even long-form writing. Articles like this, which should invite reflection, are met with readers possessed by the demand for expediency — brevity, punch, imagery. Platforms like Instagram and X (Twitter) have trained us to crave immediacy over depth. Pictures replace paragraphs, glances replace grasp, and culture learns to settle for surfaces.
What makes this drift even more insidious is the way design has cloaked itself in the language of reason. Research, usability testing, and A/B experiments all serve as proof that design is objective. Yet philosophy has long shown that reason cannot prove itself.
As Immanual Kant observed, reason always bumps against the limits of what it can justify. David Hume warned that no amount of empirical observation can bridge the gap from “is” to “ought.” Kurt Gődel demonstrated that even mathematics, the purest structure of reason, contains truths that cannot be proven within its own system. And Nietzche reminded us that what we take as “truth” often conceals underlying values and power.
When design insists that data is its foundation, it forgets that even data rests on faith — in our senses, our instruments, and our frameworks. What presents itself as objectivity quickly slides into relativism, guided not by conviction but by whichever metric performs best in an experiment. Meaning evaporates in the process. Usability without story, efficiency without soul — these become the hallmarks of design that has abandoned belief in meaning itself.
AI and the acceleration of emptiness
Artificial intelligence is the logical extension of this trajectory — an engine built on reason based technology—data, pattern recognition, statistical inference — yet stripped of the conviction or belief that gives form meaning.
An AI-generated logo may look polished, but beneath the surface there is nothing. It is statistically coherent but culturally vacant, a reflection of averages without values.
Scaled up, these outputs flood culture with forms that only pretend to carry meaning. The danger is not simply their hollowness, but the way they train us to accept hollowness as normal.
Worse, their conversational mimicry — the illusion of a voice that “understands” — creates trust where none is warranted. We begin to trust the simulation of meaning rather than meaning itself.
When design can be generated in seconds, we learn to value speed over depth, convenience over conviction. The more we consume forms without substance, the more we adapt to their vacancy.
AI doesn’t just produce empty surfaces — it trains us to stop expecting meaning at all. And that quiet erosion of expectation is what makes it an accelerant of nihilism.
Design as an engine of nihilism
In contemporary design the inversion becomes clear. It doesn’t merely display nihilism — it drives it. Infinite feeds manufacture distraction. Minimalist sameness recasts emptiness as elegance. AI systems hint at human replaceability and then condition us to accept it.
Today’s interfaces aren’t passive reflections of culture. They script the way we see, think, and value. In their hollow repetitions they embed a lesson— nothing lasts, everything is disposable, and meaning is irrelevant.
Once these forms take hold, culture completes the circuit. Users absorb the cues and stop expecting depth. The less story, symbolism, or conviction design provides, the more indulgent such elements appear when they do surface.
The loop accelerates until the pursuit of meaning seems archaic. Emptiness is marketed as efficiency, even clarity. And here lies the danger—nihilism does not remain an abstract idea but becomes a lived condition.
At that point design doesn’t follow culture — it steers it, training us not only to live without meaning but to stop wanting it. That is how nihilism, once a philosophical diagnosis, becomes the default atmosphere of everyday life. And sadly, we are in the midst of such decay.
If this diagnosis is right, then design carries more responsibility than we often admit. It is not neutral. It is not merely reactive. It is formative. Which means that if design has played a role in producing nihilism, it can also play a role in resisting it.
The challenge is not to restore some lost objectivity — that foundation never existed. The challenge is to create values where none are given. Nietzsche saw this as the only way through nihilism — to become creators of meaning rather than its mourners.
Søren Kierkegaard, too, understood that escaping despair required more than reason—it demanded a leap of faith, an act of commitment that could not be justified in advance.
For design, that means reintroducing narrative into interfaces, reclaiming symbolism, and insisting that even in a secular and fragmented modern society, design can be an act of conviction rather than resignation. Meaning doesn’t emerge from an infinite feed of possibilities but from forms that resolve, gestures that culminate, and experiences that cohere.
Some designs already gesture in this direction. Duolingo, for example, transforms small units of repetition into a narrative of progress — each lesson resolves, each milestone carries symbolic weight. It shows that interfaces need not be hollow loops of engagement, but can script arcs of meaning that accumulate over time.
Another app that embodies a design philosophy that counters unbroken scroll and cultural drift is Wordle —with its one puzzle a day. Its strength lies in its boundary—you can’t binge it, and its closure is literal and shared.
Because the puzzle is the same for everyone, it becomes a point of convergence — a common experience across strangers and communities. The resolution is built in, and that closure is what gives it weight.
Designers cannot avoid their role in molding society. Every decision is ethical labyrinth. Every omission shapes culture. Every interface is an argument about how meaning works. If our designs are hollow, they will train us into hollowness. If they carry conviction, they will cultivate conviction.
We like to say design reflects culture, but that’s only half the truth. Culture also reflects design. And the interfaces we are building today don’t just echo nihilism — they embed it, normalize it, and accelerate it. The real question isn’t whether design has agency, but whether designers are willing to own the meanings they create — or the voids they leave behind.
Part of the work is rhetorical. Designers can learn to reframe meaning as a kind of metric in itself — arguing that coherence builds retention, that conviction breeds loyalty. If the industry only speaks numbers, then one task is to translate values into that language without losing the values themselves.
If we refuse that responsibility, our interfaces will go on teaching the same lesson, swipe after swipe—that meaning itself is negotiable, optional, disposable. And the more we live inside those lessons, the more we risk losing the very capacity to imagine life beyond the abyss.
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