Editor's Letter – January 2022

You're a long time dead.

This wry pearl was a favourite of my Irish grandfather's. Meaning, make hay while the sun shines. Carpe that diem. 

Richard Rogers certainly did. When the British architectural grandee – one of the chief actors on the stage of high-tech architecture – passed away a few weeks ago at the age of 88 (fitting, indeed for a grandee), it was noted by many that his final project was completed less than a year earlier. Practice was his lifeblood.

2021, with all its vicissitudes, saw a number of legacy-leaving greats enter that hallowed architectural pantheon, among them Chris Wilkinson of WilkinsonEyre, Helmut Jahn, Art Gensler, and Paulo Mendes da Rocha. They live on, of course, not only in the projects they authored, but in the work of every architectural practitioner they challenged and inspired.

If it’s not too glib a segue, allow me to tell you that our Global Design Agenda lives on, too, into 2022. Launched last January as a platform first and foremost for our community of A&D experts to provide professional insights to you – dear readers – into their work, process and, dare I say it, ‘philosophy’, we’ve had the pleasure of chewing the cud with the likes of Patrik Schumacher, Ben van Berkel, Kim Herforth Nielsen, Hella Jongerius, Sevil Peach, Jay Osgerby, Konstantin Grcic and Yves Béhar across a range of themes.

In a lively exchange with Richard Hutten as part of our GDA Sustainability Design Week, for example, the Dutch designer laid down the gauntlet for industry: ‘If you make a product, but as a company don’t take responsibility to recycle it...it’s just greenwashing.’ You heard the man. And this year’s Global Design Agenda is set to be even more compelling. Construction Design Week starts on 17 January with contributions from, among others, Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Madrid-based practice Fenwick Iribarren, whose recently completed Stadium 974 in Doha for the World Cup 2022 is built with shipping containers and is fully demountable. 

Are things looking up in 2022? Let’s hope so. January’s international design fairs might have been put on ice, but there’s every reason to stay positive. If you need a leg up, check out our recent article on staircase typologies. There are many ways to move up in the world. 

Stay healthy. And be inspired.

Simon Keane-Cowell
Editor-in-Chief

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