Dear readers, Welcome to our annual Design Awards issue, a fixture of our editorial calendar (this is its 21st year), but also a hugely valuable, time-stamped appraisal of the very best the world has to offer in terms of fashion, technology, architecture, interiors, travel and art. As ever, the Wallpaper* team has been both avid in their appreciation and acute in their adjudication of each of our winners; mindful, too, that applying a ‘time stamp’ to achievement is necessarily limiting. After all, truly great design isn’t for a month or a year, but has the potential to permanently alter our direction of travel, affecting lives in ways that might take a little time to comprehend. It’s with this in mind that we decided to shake up the awards process itself (and I would personally like to express gratitude to the 100-plus creatives who have, over two decades, lent their shoulder to the judging wheel) in order to bring a fresh perspective to our selections. Our editors have thus taken full ownership of this year’s winners’ enclosure, stipulating not only who won, but why and how they achieved their award. To add further context, we asked five leading figures from across the creative industries to pen their own appraisal of what counts – and what doesn’t – in a world both buffeted by, and borne aloft on, seismic societal, technological and cultural change. I’d like to thank Es Devlin, Ilse Crawford, Lesley Lokko, Sou Fujimoto and Yves Béhar for taking the time to share their thoughts, the Wallpaper* team for their diligence and insights, and all the winners for satisfying our insatiable appetite for the new, the novel and the next. Bill Prince Editor-in-Chief
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