Abstract

In recent years, wabi-sabi has become a hot trend in product design. Consumerism encourages the pursuit of unrealistic “perfection,” which hurts human well-being and the environment. Fortunately, as wabi-sabi has become a global design trend, its aesthetic concept of acceptance of incompleteness, imperfection, and impermanence has taken on a positive aspect that has helped alleviate widespread social anxiety. It is noteworthy that the aesthetics of wabi-sabi is closely related to the concept of sustainable design in the contemporary context, but the theoretical knowledge about its sustainability in product design is scarce. Based on this premise, this article explores how wabi-sabi aesthetics have shifted in the contemporary context through background research and a theoretical review of sustainable product design and analyzes the rationale for the sustainability of wabi-sabi aesthetics in ceramic product design in terms of the four aspects of material selection, production, use, and maintenance and upgradability in order to help potential ceramic designers and producers understand and apply the design principles of wabi-sabi aesthetics from a sustainable design perspective.