In a climate of rising pessimism, Deyan Sudjic considers the dualities of design and the optimism of industrial designers who are increasingly returning to the social purpose of the profession as promoted by William Morris and Victor Papanek. However, an over-emphasis on process and research while all areas of life are increasingly digitised risks undermining the cultural value of making and interacting with the physical.

Jonathan Keates argues in favour of “a place for beauty unconditional on its taking a subordinate role alongside the useful and the good”, tracing its complex relationship with changing ideas of morality.

Conspicuous consumption “has also claimed architecture and the city”, explains Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani, despite it being “the most solid of all artefacts”. An immediate paradigmatic shift towards “congenial frugality” is required to curb this corrosive process and its impact on how we treat each other.

For Renzo Piano flexibility is “a question of ethics” rather than a technical issue. Speaking from his vibrant studio overlooking the Ligurian Sea, Piano provides an insight into his passion for construction and loyal collaborations, which are among the defining characteristics of his timeless practice. Each new building is treated as a fresh opportunity to embed social values and the process of making the heart of the design process.

Mona Fawaz and Cara Aramouny review this month’s “Grand project”: Lina Ghotmeh’s striking Stone Garden mixed-use tower in the Port of Beirut area. In contrast to profit-driven speculative developments elsewhere in the metropolis, the building “embraces the city’s eclectic, layered morphologies and sets its new, elegant yet unassuming presence on them”.

According to Paola Antonelli, senior curator of design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, design is ‘synthesis’. Agile designers are needed to grasp and maintain our visionary ambitions in times of change, and to convene the interdisciplinary teams that will be needed to make them reality

Jasper Morrison and Francesca Picchi invite seven young designers to illustrate a project of their own with the references that fueled their design approach – a celebration of “ideas as a living system” around which a design takes shape.

Continuing our exploration of the boundaries between architecture and art, Jay Merrick visits the studio of British artist Rachel Whiteread, whose ambitious sculptural works “are composed as forms haunted by the same kinds of historical and human phenomena that many architects are attuned to.”

When Yasmeen Lari first took on the task of helping rural communities to rebuild after an earthquake, it soon became clear that issuing drawings would not work. This month’s “Drawn closer” column questions the order of conventional design processes.

For “Making architecture,” Alexander Schwarz explores Fernand Pouillon’s stone buildings using them to consider how we read the construction of a building in its completed form, and to consider the revealing qualities shared by ruins and building sites alike.

Fulvio Irace ends this issue’s “Reflections” by retrieving Domus 433 (December 1965) in which Ettore Sottsass presents his furniture collection for Poltronova. The article is evidence of a shift in communication of products, which matched the design for the first time without the go-between of words.