But much of Starck’s playful ribbing was at the expense of the user. One could never find the door to the bathrooms in the Royalton lobby, for example, and the “flaming ornament” atop the roof of Japan’s Asahi Brewery building meant to symbolize the brewery’s dynamic heart but is far better known as the “golden turd.”

Starck’s furniture designs seemed clever the first time you saw them — lamps in the shape of guns, a chair with Louis XIV detailing, a cute (but pricey) gnome stool — but not so much the second time around.

His product design often entered the realm of pure silliness, perhaps epitomized by the goblet-shaped toddler sippy cup in plastic masquerading as crystal that Starck design for Target back in 2002. Or maybe the WW Stool he designed for Vitra, described as a stool or a “support for users who prefer to stand” priced at an astonishing $4,670. (I will give him a nod for his spider-legged juice squeezer for Alessi; if you’ll pardon the unpardonable pun, that design has legs.)

I write of Starck in the past tense because the increasingly cynical vibe of his creations seems to have caught up with him. In an interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit recently, Starck proclaimed that “everything that I designed is absolutely unnecessary.” This continued a jag of self-deprecation started at the TED conference in March, where Starck began by addressing his audience thusly: “I must tell you I am like that [indicates shaking hands], not very comfortable, because usually, in life, I think my job is absolutely useless.” Starck also announced his impending retirement (not effective immediately, but two years from now, so we can expect more of the same).

Now, for a designer of objects and things to announce that “we do not need anything material,” that all we need is “the ability to love,” makes for a delicious scandal. It also transforms Starck suddenly into the most unlikely of roles: an advocate for sustainability. This is all the more remarkable as Starck’s material of choice is, more often than not, the incredibly un-green polycarbonate.

In the future, promises Starck, “there will be no more designers.” And by extension, no more stuff! Now, that’s a surefire way to reduce one’s carbon footprint. (Will Starck now join the Designers Accord?) As is Starck’s prediction that the designer of the future is “a personal coach, the gym trainer, the diet consultant.” So not only will we consume less stuff (because no one is designing it), we’ll consume less food, too. Brilliant!

And that’s when I began to get suspicious.