Asad Syrkett on Interiors, Identity, and the Human Touch

• Living in Milan versus passing through it
  Asad reflects on the shift from visiting Milan for work to truly living there, and how permanence deepens relationships, curiosity, and cultural exchange beyond the churn of Salone and design week.
  
  
• A childhood shaped by environments, not fashion
  Growing up in Harlem and New York City, Asad became attuned early to how homes, retail spaces, and objects reflect identity, class, and aspiration, long before he had the language for design.
  
  
• The built world is never neutral
  From department stores to shop windows, he describes how cities teach us, early on, that design encodes power, values, and social difference.
  
  
• Curiosity as a lifelong engine
  Raised by a family deeply invested in culture, music, books, and dance, Asad traces how being encouraged to ask questions shaped his editorial and intellectual instincts.
  
  
• Why architectural history unlocked everything
  Studying architectural history at Columbia gave him context and language for instincts formed in childhood, connecting design to authority, religion, economics, and social structures.
  
  
• A career guided by sustainability of curiosity
  Moving between journalism, design studios, digital media, and business wasn’t about restlessness, but about building an intellectually sustainable life around design.
  
  
• Context over aesthetics
  As an editor, Asad emphasizes that interiors don’t exist in a vacuum, they are social, political, and emotional artifacts shaped by history, access, and intention.
  
  
• Access versus upward mobility
  He challenges the idea that design is about “upward mobility,” reframing it instead as access, self-knowledge, and environments that reflect inner growth rather than status alone.
  
  
• Italy as a culture of makers
  Living in Milan has sharpened his appreciation for Italian design’s deep respect for craft, family-run production, and material knowledge passed down through generations.
  
  
• What’s contemporary now: the human touch
  In a digital, accelerated world, Asad argues that the most contemporary thing is work shaped by human skill, physical effort, and deep commitment to craft, things technology cannot replicate.

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Notable Quotes: 

“Moving your life to a new country is bureaucracy, yes, but it’s also finally engaging with a place beyond the cursory interactions of being a visitor.”

“As a visitor, those connections are lovely. Living here, they start to feel like real friendships, outside the whirlwind.”

“I always knew design was something I was interested in before I had the language for it.”

“For me, fashion wasn’t the playground for self-expression. My environment was.”

“The kinds of stories people told about themselves through their spaces became really interesting to me.”

“New York forces you into engagement with people of completely different socioeconomic backgrounds, and you register that difference everywhere.”

“I thought I wanted to be an architect, but architectural history gave me the context and language for what I was already sensing.”

“It’s not upward mobility. It’s access. What you decide you want in your life, and whether you have access to those things.”

“If you like it, I love it. I’d rather a space reflect real engagement with the self than something copied from Instagram.”

“What’s contemporary now is the human touch, the things that are so evidently the product of someone’s skill and craft.”