Goodbye 2025. You were truly a rollercoaster of a year: juggling multiple roles, identities, and horizons with the immediate intensity of parenting, and so many other things.
Moments of extreme joy and extreme stress. Hospital trips and design festivals.
Biennales and breastfeeding.
Annual reports and institutional plans and book launches and social media campaigns.
Bike accidents, endless packed lunches and carrying home made lanterns through the park.
Making and producing and commissioning and and and and and and and...
For 2026 the focus is not ambition or expansion, but consolidation. And maybe finding a reliable babysitter.
Image☝️Roe enjoying a VR slime world in ipseria by Isabell Bullerschen at the Other Intelligences exhibition at MU during Dutch Design Week.
Ormond Castle: toddler racetrack meets 16th-century power architecture in Ireland's only unfortified Tudor manor. Possibly the only mild and wet area of Europe this week - we're wearing jumpers and raincoats while everyone else melts.
There was cake. But waffles with squirty cream and sprinkles for breakfast seem even more decadent and exciting when you're six.
Never forgetting how lucky we are to be able to do this. Especially now. #LiftTheBlockade
Took the baby to a conference in Berlin in January (thank you Political Tech Summit for providing childcare, which should be standard but really isn't) and finally managed to see the Neues Museum more than 16 years after I first wrote about it. Got told off for wearing the baby on my back 🤷♀️
This project really resonated with me when it opened. It planted an idea about what contemporary architecture should and could do, and what I did and didn't respect in an approach. I think it remains just as relevant today, if not even more so.
First turn around the sun with Cosmo. A rollercoaster of a year in so many ways. I quite enjoy marking the passing of time in cakes, and lucky to live in a reality where I have access to the resources and a safe place to create, even if the results are often inconsistent and a bit sloppy.
It's been a while. Easing back into things with Roe at #DDW. He thinks design is cool because you can swing on things and fish for things and watch things. Thanks @designacademyeindhoven x
This year's Biennale made me nostalgic for 2021 and realise how unique our experience was as National Pavilion participants during Covid and as the founding members of the @curatorscollective_ .
Thank you again to @haewonseoul for making me part of @koreanpavilion_futureschool and part of the CC. So many fond memories: the warmth and tactility of the space created by @ryul_song and Christian Schweizer with Haewon, the Midissage event the CC created to make up for the lack of opening events, the epic curators' dinner bringing together more than 70 participants, the CC party in the old fish market organised by Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer from the Austrian pavilion, new friends and just general fun and good conversation.
The delays of the Covid era opened up space for ideas and possibilities that are understandably less available under the time pressures of having to produce and install a pavilion in a few months and the intensity and scrutiny of a two-day preview...
Better late than never to share this interview with @vincentvanduysen for Kinfolk. Much as I love talking about design, it becomes so much more interesting when it gets personal and you begin to understand how someone's life experiences shape what they do. Being allowed to nose around Vincent's home and meet his dogs was an extra bonus! The interview was published early last year, but we enjoyed talking so much that we did it again for Zara a few months later on film for the launch of Vincent's @zarahome collection. Thanks to all involved.
I'm still in shock and can't quite believe this is real. Sending love and condolences to his family and to all of the extended Dezeen family past and present, especially @waishinli and @benedicthobson
The design industry has lost a great champion and friend. Marcus was a brilliant journalist and a great supporter of talent.
Working for and with Marcus could be extremely challenging. We argued many, many times about many, many things. But he was also often generous with his time, and was willing to take chances and change his opinion. He took a fairly big chance on me when he offered me the editorship of Dezeen, and I owe him a great debt of gratitude.
He will be greatly missed.
