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"Less is more" – three words that seem to contain a contradiction in terms. How can something that is less actually be more? However, if we set more specific terms for them, we can arrive at a number of logical solutions. In general terms, for example, less work can lead to more free time; with more appropriate solutions, we can achieve maximum effect with minimum resources. For example, a simplified design that allows more products to be made from fewer materials, or more products to be made in less time, thus making them more affordable or "democratic". Or it can offer better materials or better craftsmanship for the same price... In other words, to achieve efficiency, the boundaries of which were tested during the early days of modernism by, for example, Henry Ford (1863–1947) in the USA, Tomáš Baťa (1876–1932) in Zlín, or many others who understood and consistently applied the principles of modern mass production in practice.

But what did this reductivism and the pursuit of maximum efficiency bring with it that was positive, and where it began to create a gap and tie the hands of designers and other creators by setting up new rules aimed at the gradual elimination of everything that was considered "superfluous", and not infrequently ended up in mindless formalism? This raises a legitimate question: do limits and reductions result in less creativity or is creativity born out of limits?

Just three words, which were able to provoke a number of creators in their time to look for radically different solutions than had been common until then. The question therefore arises as to whether this is still the case today. Whether they are still so provocative and relevant after a hundred years, during which time there have been a number of tendencies that developed the perspective of Mies and his successors, as well as a number of those that, on the contrary, radically rejected the concept with slogans such as "less is a bore" and labelled the foundations of modernism as an empty formalism, which only resulted in a series of "grey" soulless objects or buildings, renouncing the values of earlier generations and creative freedom. There were even calls for the form to follow the expression above all, as one of the important features of the design.

Is it therefore a now meaningless imperative of the pioneering generation of modern design, which was looking for an adequate expression for the new era and stormy scientific and technical progress, unencumbered by the relics and patina of the past, or "Less is more" refers to a timeless creative principle, the concrete meaning of which is determined only by the needs of the time?

In the course of the last century, the slogan "Less is more" was subjected not only to efforts to relativize it, as postmodernists led by Robert Venturi (1925–2018) did, but also found a number of modifications that make it less radical, but perhaps even more so more current and applicable in practice. We can include here, for example, the principle of "Doing more with less" developed by Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983), one of the pioneers in the search for more sustainable paths in design and architecture, or "Less but better" by the German designer Dieter Rams (*1932), which, among other things, calls for more reasonable and responsible handling of materials and raw materials. Perhaps their derivative of the "Less is more" approach can also be one of the answers to today's ecological and economic challenges.