It is a common thing to wonder about the environments architects live in, especially when we listen to their thoughts and follow their interventions in our built environment. Celebrating INDESIGN #92, Guest Editor William Smart welcomed those of the night into his personal home. This once languorous warehouse has been remodelled into the Smart Design Studio and extrapolated into an apartment upstairs for the Creative Director. Setting the tone for the evening and offering insight into his convivial personality, Smart opened his door and poured the knowledge he has accrued over decades in the industry into the pages of INDESIGN #92 — a galvanising addition to the collection, announcing the lauded recipients of the highly anticipated INDE.Awards.

As Moët overflowed into our champagne flutes, the consideration for how we perceive life and our impetus to learn transcended the pages of the aptly named ‘The Live and Learn Issue’ and into the speeches by Editor Gillian Serisier and William Smart. Smart spoke about how his herculean workload nearly deterred him from taking up the joyous task of Guest Editing, but (luckily for us and our readers) his mind pivoted, as he “couldn’t say no to being Anna Wintour for a day.”

Speaking of the projects found in Issue #92 with a level of “richness and clarity” found in the tome, the layering of complexity is built from a foundation of simplicity. Smart spoke about the underlying pattern of the issue as “complex simplicity” — a theme akin to the great EBTG song of a skier called Downhill Racer, Smart confessed. A perpetual cycle of excitement, competition, doubt, a tremble, and a comeback — “All the effort to get there in the first place. All the effort not to let the effort show.”

When our Digital Editor, Timothy Alouani-Roby – himself noted for no small amount of sprezzatura – caught up with Smart in the evening, the two spoke about how the ‘day in the life of an editor’ had altered his perspective towards design and the potential for a future career swap. With the issue focused on education and learning, “it was inspiring to see the level of creativity in our industry around their approach to what would have been a similar brief for those jobs.” Although Smart speaks of his proclivity to annotate, swapping positions with Timothy would be frustrating — “my happiness time is sitting with a pencil and creating, even though I often reach for the red pencil and think ‘I might change something in that corner.'”

The two spoke about highlights, one of which itself unfolded at the end of the magazine: “A highlight for me was interviewing Jenny Turpin. It was an extraordinary time to sit down with her and have a cup of tea in her studio. [Turpin’s] work is a synthesis of poetry, art, sculpture and engineering, and she brings that together in an incredible way.”

INDESIGN #92 is available to purchase here.

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