MEET THE TITANS OF TASTE.

It isn't about whether the glass is half full or half empty--it's about the glass itself. Five design experts describe their favorite objects. Paola Antonelli, Curator, Museum of Modern Art. "That's the apotheosis of great design," Paola Antonelli says. Since joining MoMA in 1994, the Italian-born Antonelli has emerged as a star in the design world. When Murray Moss opened his Manhattan store nine years ago, he put a steel garbage can in the window to make a point: design is everywhere--and everything. "When you go from a normal glass to this, it modifies your behavior. You become more graceful," he says. "And that's an extraordinary thing to get for $70." As founder of the San Francisco dot-com Design Within Reach (dwr.com), Rob Forbes has become a design-world fixture in just four years, making high-end furnishings an option for people with not-so-high-end salaries. Ask Alice Rawsthorn for a favorite example of smart design, and she pauses for a moment. "Probably Grand Theft Auto: Vice City," says Rawsthorn, who came to the museum after a long career as a critic for the Financial Times. "I find multimedia design fascinating. It's changing the way we live." As head of MoMA's architecture and design department, Terence Riley has the job of recording the present through its objects--so not every choice may be pretty. "Like all great chairs, it's not very comfortable," says Terence Riley of his object, a stretched-metal club chair named How High the Moon by the late Japanese design icon Shiro Kuramata.