Inside the soon-to-be-demolished A+D Museum in Los Angeles, a small group gathered last week for a conversation with Susan S. Szenasy, the Editor-in-Chief of Metropolis Magazine, followed by a signing of her new book of collected writings, Szenasy, Design Advocate. The talk is likely the last the museum will host in its Miracle Mile location, as the museum prepares to move to a new home in the Downtown Arts District following the expropriation of the current building to make room for an extension of the Metro Red Line. Moderated by architecture writer and curator Greg Goldin (whose previous “Never Built: Los Angeles” exhibition was on show at the A+D in 2013), the conversation focused on the personal relationships we have with design in everyday life.

“I was always railing against the idea that people were never talked about in architecture,” Szenasy recalled of her formative years at Interior magazine. “Designers reflect us back to ourselves,” she added a bit later. “They have a huge role to play in our understandings of ourselves and our world.”

Goldin asked what Szenasy conceives of as “good design.” She mentioned a beehive blender, which “did exactly what it was supposed to do.” A Tizio lamp by Richard Sapper that stands out amidst the clutter of her desk. Eero Saarinen’s 'Womb Chair', which she “lives in.” Eames-designed tables that “say what they are.” Szenasy concluded, “I hate to say it, but my iPhone is really spectacular [too].” 

Szenasy noted that it took her years of hard work to be able to pay for these objects. And, as a historian, they all have a special importance for her outside of their (exquisite) functionalism. But, at the end of the day, their value emerges in their everyday use, in their capacity to stand out from all the stuff that we surround ourselves with but have no meaning. “It’s a much richer life when you connect to the world around you,” she added.

The conversation edged into the contemporary moment and the role of images in our ideas about design. Goldin noted that design is sold to us through images, that we tend to buy an “idea of the object” instead of the experience. “You’re buying an image not the product,” Szenasy confirmed, adding that this has contributed to an enormous, and incredibly detrimental, knock-off industry. “That’s the test: to test them,” she stated about designed objects contra the dominance of images in our contemporary culture. “I wouldn’t even thinking of buying the Stark lemon squeezer because it’s a stupid object that doesn’t work.”

The evening’s talk concluded by touching on the enormous importance that Szenasy has given to the ecological impact of design. Throughout her career, she has advocated for the role of design to serve as a mediating force between humans and their environmental context. To this end, designers have a real and serious obligation to not just consider the environmental impact of an object, but to give “expression to the world around me.” And that world includes everything from a beautiful lamp to a landfill.