Chapter 3: The Tool Summary and Analysis

Chapter three opens with a description of the remarkable thing it is that the key to really excellent and functional design is not to add as much as possible, but to take away as much as possible, until ultimately what is left is very like the lines of the naked human body. That simplicity is what makes a thing as aerodynamic as possible and what takes hours and drafts by the greatest engineers before it is perfected. In a particularly elegant analogy, Antoine says it is like the artist's visioning the finished sculpture from a block of marble; it is not crafting that he is doing as much as releasing the already perfect image from its stony prison. Engineers just have to discover the lines that are already there and free them from encumbrance.

In the same...