I went to interview a designer called Matthias Megyeri today at his studio in Hackney Wick. Its a funny area, one of those in-between places that you never really think about. It was strange to see its streets at ground level as I look down on it from the train to Stratford every day.

Megyeri’s studio is in a gated mews of other live-work units. Peering in one of them as I passed on the way in, I noticed a trestle table covered in little painted soldiers that looked rather familar. It turned out that “Young British Artists” Jake and Dinos Chapman have a studio there too. Looks like they’re rebuilding Hell, their incredible boys-own Airfix-style model of Nazis doing unspeakable things with spikes and skeletons that was burnt in the fire in a Saatchi warehouse last year. Megyeri also told me that the editor of Another magazine lived in another of the units.

The mews had a lovely atmosphere. Two children were playing in the communal yard with a dog that appeared to come from the Chapman’s studio and they clamoured to have their portraits taken with Megyeri by the photographer I brought along, people came and went, chatting with each other, and all the big doors were wide open.

Not bad for what seemed an anonymous group of ex-industrial warehouses in a nowhere area.