I’m sitting down to write this just a few days after the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Now, I wouldn’t call myself a staunch monarchist or a royalist per se, but – as those who have had a Zoom call with me over these past few years may have noticed – on the wall behind my desk is a portrait of Her Majesty.

Found many years ago in a junk shop on Brixton Hill, clamped between two pieces of chipped glass, it’s a photograph, I imagine from the 1950s, enhanced with Technicolor hues and a sprinkling of real glitter covering her tiara. It’s infinitely camp, but it has always filled me with a reassuring sort of joy, and I just love the jaunty contrast of it hanging there in my relatively minimal interior. Like the woman herself it confounds expectation and shows that, in spite of what some may think, at the heart of modernity lies tradition.

Yes, I’m an ardent champion of the new and the next (see my letters in our previous two issues), and ELLE Decoration is itself a brand founded on a contemporary and cutting-edge aesthetic, however nothing in design truly emerges from a vacuum. Something or someone has always gone before, influencing a shape or inspiring a way of working, a type of craftsmanship.

This edition was always going to be themed around the subject of structure. Of course, we are focusing on architecture – extensions, renovations and contemporary builds – but, structure could also be viewed in terms of those protocols and traditions (of which we have seen many these past few weeks) that lend a framework to the everyday. In design, as in life, structure provides us with support and strength to go forward, to innovate.

Nowhere is the sense of innovation greater than in the work of some of the design world’s greats featured on these pages. We join Piero Lissoni, one of Italy’s most high-profile and prolific architects – able to turn his hand to furniture design as well as brilliant buildings – at home. Elsewhere, we talk to British icons Sir Paul Smith and Sir David Chipperfield about their latest endeavours. Not only were both knighted by Her Majesty, but they were also appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour, an award established to celebrate creative work of national importance, whose elite members included the Queen herself.

On reflection, there seems no better time to celebrate the achievements of these long-standing talents, than during this period when we collectively take time to reflect on those of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s record-breaking reign.