Stories by name

Ljubljana: The artist Roman Uranjek lives in a building by the architect Maks Fabiani, adorned with a wavy, sea-like façade, one of Ljubljana’s loveliest. Uranjek is an obsessive artist, one who’s made at least one cross every single day since January 1, 2002, but who’s also a member of various collectives and informal social networks. What…

The alienation and loneliness of this year strangely remind me of the period I spent in New York after separating from a woman I loved and who I believe loved me and who ended up marrying another man, one she truly considered a real one. That was a time when I thought I would go…

When Pedro E. Guerrero was 22 years old and fresh from photography classes at ArtCenter College of Design in California, he asked America’s foremost architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, for a job. It was 1939; Wright was 72 and had recently built a home and a fellowship program at Taliesin West near Scottsdale, Arizona, a winter…

Last September, I found myself somewhere in Accra where the road is the colour of cinnamon and lush greenery lined the right-hand side of the reddish-orange ground. The bark of the trees shone like molasses if it crystallised rich and dark, its sculptural arms filled with families of leaves basking in the sun, creating an…

With all the holes in you already, there’s no reason to define the outside environment as alien. —Jenny Holzer, The Survival Series, 1983 In Flatland, 19th-century theologian Edwin Abbot Abbot penned a thought experiment-cum-satirical novella where all sorts of problems arise from a world without a Z-axis, from navigating a household to identifying the face…

Yesterday, at work, I came across a photo of a wooden stage with people lying on it. They were all face down and naked. It was a group of people making a statement about marriage equality, but when I looked at it all I saw were 30 bare bums. My friend’s daughter is one year…

My mom loves Denzel Washington. We’ve spent enough hours in his company that he’s become a family friend, a deacon. She doesn’t tend to say his last name when she talks about him, or even the titles of films he stars in. ‘Denzel movie’ or ‘the new Denzel’ and a quick plot synopsis can reliably…

It’s a detached house, exposed to wind on all sides. Every day around evening, a single one gusts in. I used to think of it as a furious gale, when really, it’s an end-of-day wind, eager to return home. It gusts in all of a sudden, as though it had wandered the world over and…

The photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star. —Roland Barthes We often say we ‘consume images’, thereby yoking vision to gastrointestinal processes. The act of consuming evokes various emotions such as guilt, comfort, and, for those fixated on the uncertainty principle of spoilage inside…

When I think of kitchens, my mind splits between the warm nostalgia of home kitchens and the efficiency of colossal metallic restaurant kitchens, one a living spice master’s cave, the other an almost clinical, cold, stainless-steel temple. What a dilemma. My first memories are of my grandmother Julia’s kitchen, of the three-seater table where we…

I stopped drinking, and in the space left by drinking, a crisp energy started to accumulate. I often walked the tree-lined streets thinking: Sun! Cloud! How glad I am to see you! Glad for the bins, even, the receptacles for dirt, unnoticed by many. It was easy to imagine I was the first to see…

There’s a rule against opening a poetic piece with the narration of a dream. But obeying this rule would mean lying about the first time I saw the bench called ibùjókòó… And what’s the point of doing that when I once heard friends talking about me in a dream as clearly as if I stood there…

Tbilisi: We listened to Patti Smith and Tina Dico while John Wurdeman drove. As we drew closer to Tibaani, the village where he and Gela Patalishvili founded Pheasant’s Tears—arguably the culinary and natural wine destination of the Caucuses—he pressed play on a cassette of Georgian polyphonic recordings, and we stared at the mountains towering over the…

London: To know Antonia is to know that an attention to detail is key and in her nature. It’s something we confer about and supports engagement between myself as an artist and her as my gallerist. Antonia messages, ‘Please will you text when here instead of ringing the bell because the princess is sleeping’. Coyly, she…

Tokyo: Tokyo’s Shibuya district is the subcultural heart of the city. Music and fashion are as varied as its steep geography, a cultural landscape squeezed between the Kanda and Meguro Rivers. The district is also home to the Tokyo Toilet Project, a collection of 17 public restrooms renovated as a testament to Japan’s culture of fastidious care…

New York City: A stone’s throw away from the New Museum in New York City lies Freeman Alley, a narrow street parallel to the Bowery completely adorned with graffiti and tags. It’s the perfect setting for our protagonist, Jimmy Wright, a legend of the city’s art scene. Every morning, Jimmy strides out of his sleek building…

Rome: Rachel Roddy lives in a block of flats next to the piazza in Testaccio, a small quarter of Rome she says looks like a piece of cheese. Like others here, these flats were built in the 1890s to host people from all over Italy who came to work in the slaughterhouses, soap factories, and leather…

Bolinas: Hailed as ‘the king of D.I.Y. dwellings’ and ‘the guru of guerrilla architecture’ by the New York Times, the now 89-year-old builder, publisher, and storyteller Lloyd Kahn is truly one of a kind. I first met Lloyd four years ago when Swiss architect Leopold Banchini and I went to visit him and his late wife,…

It started a year ago, when a painting on our bedroom wall appeared to move behind the glass. My husband, Fred, invited me to look. I peered. It was heaving with insects. I took the painting off the hanger, and behind it, black flecks peppered a flaking slice of drywall. I pulled at it, and…

We drove about 50 kilometres south of Paris to the municipality of La Ferté-Alais. The landscape was very flat, and the fields and vegetation were covered in frost on that late January day. Once in the village, we headed to find the airfield. It is there, next to the runway, where Hans-Walter Müller (Worms, Germany,…

Amsterdam: Najla El Zein welcomed me to her studio in Amsterdam on a rainy day in February. I could barely drag my suitcase through the streets, so strong were the gusts of wind. These elements set the scene for our meeting, a meeting about challenging natural, elemental forces. The former brutalist technical school that houses El…

Mexico City: It was only natural that my path would cross with Enrique Olvera’s at some point; we share a passion and admiration for the traditions of our country which are thousands of years in the making. We’ve dedicated our respective careers to imagining new ways of redefining this heritage with a constant spirit of innovation…

New York City: Enigma is a funny thing. And a word we perhaps overuse. But Eric N. Mack is very much that. He moves through New York with a grace that is rare to see, leaving faint traces of dreams and possibility in his wake. His work is similarly inscrutable and attractive all at once….

London: Full disclosure: Ron Arad and I have been playing a version of Scrabble online almost continuously since the Covid shutdown. Before that, we would meet face-to-face at a pub midway between our North London homes for regular games of Snatch, which might best be described as a boardless version of Scrabble turned into a mildly…

London: Madelon Vriesendorp opened the door with an egg box on her head. Statue of Liberty? I wondered. This must be a nod to her series of paintings that has been so etched into my (and possibly every architect of the last half-century’s) memory. These are the works that illustrate Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto…

 Fulda: Amongst the brick-heavy rye that Germans call ‘bread’ in his parents’ Fulda bakery in 1954, Franz Erhard Walther began his career sketching live models with their own artistic ambitions. His parents rose at dawn to watch bread and their son rise higher and higher, the latter to international artistic acclaim for his sculpture, installation, conceptual,…

New York City: Timing, they say, is everything. Some people are born under the right stars. This is an understatement for Hari Nef, who seems to be the right person with the winning combination of talent, looks, and attitude required to navigate this cultural moment and thrive. Nef has done the impossible: She left New York…

The trip from Zurich to the lower Engadin takes three hours by one of those trains that could be from a Wes Anderson movie. Arriving in Sent, a tiny, picturesque village, and entering my hotel, I bump into Not. The house where he was born, as well as his studio, are a stone’s throw away…

London: I can’t remember exactly when we met, but I do remember the first images I saw of their world: One was of Jago Rackham dressed as a satyr at one of their parties, and one was of Lowena Hearn undressed, tying bows of pasta for a dinner. I call it ‘their world’ as worldbuilding is…

Los Angeles: In the late ‘40s, Touko Valio Laaksonen, a young Finnish war veteran, spent his evenings drawing homoerotic scenes. At that time, mainstream society considered gay men morally and physically weak. Touko imagined himself and his comrades much differently. With all the propaganda skills he acquired from his advertising career, the master draftsman began a one-man…

Los Angeles: Wedged between the Eastside’s working-class enclaves and the Westside’s Botox bubble, the slopes surrounding Silver Lake have long been a locus of Los Angeles bohemia, and Louise Bonnet and Adam Silverman have long been a local presence. In 1991, Adam co-founded the streetwear company X-Large; Louise, fresh from Geneva, soon signed on as an…

Hornby Island: I consider it a gift to have grown up on Hornby, a small Gulf Island off the west coast of Canada, home to draft dodgers, barefoot back-to-the-landers, hippies, and artists. I remember the smell of sandstone beaches and freshly chopped piles of red cedar. I remember that islanders could seemingly build or grow anything…

London: Anthea Hamilton’s home and studio occupy separate units in a semi-industrial building in London’s Stockwell. When I arrive, Anthea hasn’t quite decided where to settle for our conversation; we hover at the door of the apartment before she finally steers us down a couple of flights of stairs to her studio, a place where she…

Here on the following eight pages are some of the Templeton’s images—paintings by Ed and photographs by Deanna—that bring to life so vividly the weird and sometimes dark slice of that only-in-America SoCal suburban lifestyle they grew up in. Whether depicting an old man watering his lawn in front of a cinderblock wall or a…

Huntington Beach: Both Ed and Deanna Templeton have achieved global success and respect over the years as artists. In 2021, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City acquired 82 of their photographs for its permanent collection. Yet they remain in their ‘70s-style Huntington Beach ranch house in a nondescript suburban neighbourhood now dotted with…

Since 1970, I have been making photographs in a relatively continuous manner. My world over the past five decades has primarily been southern California, and my photographs are specific to this place and this moment in time. Early on, I began to see in photography the ability to collate a wide range of cultural and…

The kid meets us downstairs in the morning. Jae and Manny sip their coffee, wrapping up their kitchen routine. And I’ve made a point of staying awake to greet my nephew, although most days, this fucking early, I’m well into my fourth dream. This room’s big enough for all of us. Light filters in through…

House with an Earthen Floor is the smallest residence of Kazuo Shinohara’s realised works. Completed in 1963 on the outskirts of the mountain resort town Karuizawa, the house was designed as a retreat for photographer Kiyoshi Ōtsuji. Measuring a perfect square at only 24 shaku (approx. 7.3 metres) on each side, the plan is divided…

Tbilisi: Nona Gaprindashvili—who in 1978 became the first woman to be awarded the title grandmaster rank among men by the International Chess Federation (FIDE), and who holds five World Championship titles and 11 team and nine individual gold medals at the Chess Olympics, and who was named the best Georgian Sportswoman of the 20th century, and…

Los Angeles: Though Ruby and I have been within each other’s orbits for years, we didn’t meet until this interview. We have a lot in common beyond mutual friends. We both grew up in Inverness, California; our fathers and mothers were artists; we each had a lot of freedom growing up; and we both went to…

Paris: Vincent’s Darré’s life has been full of grand influences; he was the nephew of Jorge Semprún (one of the key figures of Spain’s transition to democracy) and the late Karl Lagerfeld was his mentor. I’ve been lucky enough to know Vincent since I was six or seven years old, and we are still connected now…

New York City: A         In your debut novel, Freshwater, you write: ‘Many things begin with a name’. ‘Akwaeke’ means ‘python’s egg’ in Igbo. The first years of my existence, I was told it meant ‘precious’. Later I found out that it is called precious because the python is the physical manifestation…

Riverside: John Divola is a well-kept secret among directors and cinematographers I know, someone we tend to discuss when we talk about our favourite photographers. If you are lucky enough to acquire some of his prints, you will be the envy of anyone who gazes through those beautifully vandalised windows to the spectacular sunrises or sunsets…

London: Sometime in the earlier years of Archy Marshall’s media coverage, rumours spread that his stage name, King Krule, came from King K. Rool, the villain in a Donkey Kong video game. In fact, it comes from the film King Creole, starring Elvis Presley as a struggling singer in New Orleans, avoiding the temptations of a…

Livingston Manor: Driving to photographer and filmmaker Marianna Rothen’s house in Sullivan County on a Friday afternoon, I see more people walking along the highways than usual for New York’s country roads. The scene up here on this Sabbath day—groups of boys and men, many of them bearded, in large hats or kippahs, tzitzit poking out…

Luther Vandross’ 1985 The Night I Fell in Love (Epic) rises up tall in an arty Black neighbourhood lush with evergreens like New Edition’s eponymous second album, Sade’s Diamond Life, and Prince’s Purple Rain. The mood of Vandross’ eight-song Night glides from relatable charade to trembling intimacy to the resignation that love and loneliness are…

Some medieval miniatures allow us to intrude into the monastic space we know as a ‘cell’, from the Latin cella, which means ‘tiny chamber’. In the cell, little, very little can be possessed, and almost nothing encroaches from the outside world. This is because the cell exists to house another world, unlike this one, immense,…

The ‘reality’ I’d get back to, in due course, was that I was, in actuality, a really well-known artist, hitting the contemporary art circuit at 22 with a research-based praxis and legion of erratic paintings that people seemed to admire.  Thinking clearly about life was just another way of saying low self-esteem.  Almighty to save…

1. Gather the ingredients: two onions, green lentils (washed), chickpeas soaked overnight, all-purpose flour, oil for frying, bunches of ksboor and parsley, three stalks of celery, the spices—cumin, turmeric, zanjbil. Black pepper, English pepper, paprika-in-oil (optional), Osem chicken soup powder, a cup of intriya or cut vermicelli, tomato purée (for colour), meat (something fatty like…

The motel sign reflected in the pool. A neon jellyfish convulsing. Paradise Inn, it said. Maybe The House of Rhapsody. Or Cloud Nine Motel. (Something in that vein.) My son floated in the pool at the centre of his inflatable doughnut. Pink, aquamarine, and purple were his favourite colours: the same colours flashing in the…

Imagine an infinitely vast matrix of nearly identical, inescapable four-and-a-half-mat tatami rooms which can be (re)entered through door, window, or hole bashed through wall—you could call it a ‘tatami galaxy’. My translation of mega-popular, anime-adapted author Tomihiko Morimi’s The Tatami Galaxy came out in 2022. Originally published in Japanese in 2004, the campus novel unfolds…

I wake, and I know that no one’s scheduled to arrive today. A line from a Jorge Luis Borges short story wraps itself around my bones: ‘You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream’. I recall the dream I had on my first night in solitary confinement, about two months ago,…

Athens: Alekos Fassianos is probably the best-known living painter in Greece. Simple and immediate, his drawings of common people, objects, and events are icons of our popular culture. His art is self-explanatory. He draws pleasure from the small, common things because he’s a pragmatist who believes that life is lived every day, so everyday things are the…

The following texts and photographs have been taken from Kyoichi Tsuzuki’s book, Tokyo Style (Kyoto Shoin Co., Ltd, 1993). Word has it that Tokyo is the hardest city in the world to live in. $10 cups of coffee, $100 per head dinners, $100,000 per square... Read more

In the early ‘90s, magazine editor Kyoichi Tsuzuki began photographing cramped, cluttered apartments in Tokyo. Threading the city’s dense network of streets on his 50cc Honda scooter, he bounced between the dwellings of friends and strangers, shooting inside their homes with a borrowed large-format camera.... Read more

There are rooms in my house we just walk through. The dining room is basically a passage from the kitchen to the veranda, but it contains a six-seater table and a breakfront full of china left to me by my grandparents. The carpet smells slightly of the rubber backing. We always eat in the kitchen….

[matin] Etsuko stands in seagrass by the porch at 3am, grappling with moody winds that take the day, watching silly waves of caution and anxiety. There are endless harbours and lakes on the fringe of this coastline, infinite children playing with albatrosses and other sea birds, arms extended, small voices in high-pitched caws, and windy…

La aurora de Nueva York gime por las inmensas escaleras buscando entre las aristas nardos de angustia dibujada  From ‘La Aurora’ by Federico García Lorca Arista: border, edge, corner, ridge My work desk is set into a corner. A monitor sits at eye level with an edge running along each wall. The left-hand wall is…

’? Chips are yellow potato slices. Potatoes come from the soil. For many years humans only ate potatoes and bugs. Then, as you know, we got boats and fishing rods. But yeah, chips are from potatoes, we peel them and cut them into different shapes and fry them in pools of oil. ? Condiments are…

  Mortality is a gorgeous framework. —Anne Boyer The photographer Peter Hujar had a large kitchen table at his East 12th Street loft that was painted cobalt blue. Friends and subjects would sit here to talk, drink coffee or wine, or to eat a simple meal of chicken and rice before a shoot. It was…

Some of my most cherished memories of my grandfather are of him being fascinated by nature. Watching monkeys jumping and lazing around, surrounded by peacocks and peahens, deeply engrossed by trees swaying in the breeze and light filtering through fluttering leaves, while listening to birds chirping, silently conversing with nature—these were daily rituals for him….

Los Angeles: Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s deceptively straightforward studio portraits often depict himself and his circles of friends and lovers in various stages of undress and interconnection. These distinctive, classical, multiracial, homoerotic images have hit a cultural nerve and are celebrated at museums and galleries all over the world. His sensibility strikes a delicate balance; he creates…

Amadora: Pedro Costa’s cinema is intimately linked to homes and inhabiting. His first full-length work, O Sangue (1989), starts with an outdoor scene in which a father abandons his children. It’s as if the home has been destroyed, and this is the opportunity to reconfigure it. Nino, the youngest of the children, wants to move the…

London: Supriya Lele makes clothes that are visually striking and chromatically intense. Intricately constructed from swathes of fabric in colours that seem to sing (marigold, copper-sulphate blue, emerald green, or the brown you would have found on the soft furnishings of an English office block in the ‘80s), they both follow the form of the female…

New York City: A few weeks before interviewing Misha for this piece, our mutual friend Nina Johnson invited us (and several other bright lights) to dinner in the East Village. It was Indian food. One of the spots with chilli lights hanging so low you have to stoop to make your way to a table. Conversation…

Saché: The artist Alexander Calder arrived in Europe in the summer of 1926 aboard the British freighter Galileo, a fitting coincidence, as Galileo—the father of modern science—was a master of kinematics, the ‘geometry of motion’, and Calder would rise to fame as the creator of kinetic sculptures known as ‘mobiles’. At 27, Calder made his…

And France, how’s France doing? Every time the question was asked, we all started to laugh. A nervous laugh at first, then sincere, carefree. What else is there to do after living and surviving these three days of misunderstandings, of quintessentially Moroccan tensions and tragedies? Laugh. So: let’s laugh, let’s laugh. Laugh, laugh, no one…

Paris: We walk up the steep hill in Belleville. In this quarter of Paris at least a hundred nationalities live door to door, innumerable people from all over the world, each with their own reasons for moving to the city. Moroccan-born writer Abdellah Taïa tells me his reason. I wanted to live free as I,…

We could call Bas Princen a photographer, but above all he is an image-maker, an artist that plays somewhere between architecture, landscape, and design. He has had a strong influence on our generation of architects, and in a tangential way he has flown over several of the conversations we’ve had with others in this series….

Tucson: Neglected, ignored, unknown, or unrecognised, the artist garnering little or no attention during their lifetime who nevertheless keeps plugging away is a common cliché. A stereotype covering the spectrum from those who toil in obscurity to be forgotten forever, which is normally the case, or the ones discovered and in some cases celebrated posthumously….

New York: If you’re a skater, you know skating isn’t what a typical video looks like—three minutes of highlights. You go with your friends, you talk a lot of shit, you sit on the curb, and when you get the spark, a trick could take you an hour, four days, or a second. It’s just about…

Bignona: Talking about Seyni Awa Camara is not easy, as her life and work are linked to many mysteries and rumours, deliberately maintained or perpetuated by the chasm that can exist between her reality and that of the art world. Amid an abundance of contradictory information, the following text attempts to provide insight into Seyni’s personal…

London: On a Sunday afternoon, Deanna Fanning and Kiko Kostadinov make a little lunch. In matching Charvet slippers, the couple navigate their galley kitchen with peaceful, unspoken methodology. Their flat is covered in textured wallpaper from the ‘50s, carpeting that seems an unavoidable feat for London renters, and a stained-glass door that goes out to a…

I was drawn to Dayanita Singh’s work by her book Privacy. I got my copy back in 2005, and was impressed by its portrait of India’s middle class. My roots are a humble farming family from Punjab, so that mixed with the very narrow, exoticised gaze of Western mainstream media meant that it was refreshing for…

Goa: On one of the main streets in the centre of Göttingen, Germany, Gerhard Steidl has set up what most of your favourite photographers consider to be the Mecca of publishing. The building sits alongside a historic Günter Grass archive and hotel reserved for Steidl artists, all contrasted by the uber modern museum space, Kunsthaus, where…

Copenhagen: I walk down to the shoreline to see if I can see Sweden over the Øresund—I can’t, just choppy grey-green sea and some birds. I’ve just been to see Tal R and Emma Rosenzweig at their home in central Copenhagen, and now I’m in Hellerup, a neighbourhood about 20 minutes north, killing some time before…

Formello: About 40 minutes by car from the centre of Rome, north of the industrial warehouses and the marble stores for cemetery headstones, there’s a small village called Formello, surrounded by olive trees and maritime pines. There, until recently, lived Lucia Di Luciano and Giovanni Pizzo. A couple in life and art for nearly 70…

t’s always intriguing to step into someone’s home and find the unexpected. I think that’s because we tend to make assumptions about the people we meet, drawing conclusions about their personal style and the books they might keep on their shelves. Or we may believe we understand them from their public personas and track records,…

Architecture is no longer about buildings, nor is it about people. Now architecture’s focus is life itself and how life is enacted as a transition across scales. Transscalar entities are formed by the interaction between what happens in the microscopic realm of hormones, and at the territorial dimension of energy mobilisation and geopolitical violence. Design…

I was 27 when I was invited to write for issue #1 of Apartamento. I was very excited about it and my different thoughts blended into a shapeless mass. I thought of writing about my neighbour’s immense Bang & Olufsen square television from the ‘90s and carefully selected collection of Scandinavian mid-century classic objects and…

I was asked recently to reflect on my changing conception of the home over the past 15 years, during which time I have grown into an adult, while British society seems to have shrunk. In 2008 I turned 17. Back then, every night I would sit at the desk in my first-floor childhood bedroom gazing…

A home is constructed with tools and building materials. ‘Home’ is also a construct, an idea or image we make in our minds. My home is not just the structure in which I live. It is the architecture of my life; everything that makes my life possible and joyful. This means living, working, and playing…

The houses photographed in design and lifestyle magazines are all kitsch. Even when they are minimal, essential, of a measured modernity, of a refined simplicity. Even when they present sets of furniture and objects, books and ornaments, works of art and plants, perfect, without flaw, without excess, without errors of taste. Since the mid-19th century,…

Alpha misfits inspire me most. I love the story of a confident outcast who didn’t fit into the life they were born into. Their biological families may not have seen value in their creativity, desires, or vision. This just made them more determined to make their own place in the world—sometimes at great personal cost….

We’ve been growing together. We’re in the age of Apartamento now. I say this casually, like the magazine-cum-institution itself. We’re celebrating every day, whether or not we’re living well or easily. Today is no different. There is a collective ‘we’ in Apartamento. But it is probably hard to talk about stuff through the lens of…

Paris: It was the last week of summer and we were going to eat lamb chops. The rest of us were dressed down, practically schlubby with exhaustion; it was the end of holidays. But Yasmine Dubois showed up in a pink silk dress, her long braids swaying. She wore knee-high white lace socks that tied…

Colombo: When Channa Daswatte and I start talking, I don’t have the opportunity to ask a question first. Channa—one of Sri Lanka’s pre-eminent contemporary architects and a disciple of Geoffrey Bawa—is almost disarmingly generous with his time and his stories, and immediately launches into friendly conversation. It makes everything easier, in no small part because this…

Havana: I met Wilfredo Prieto in March 2014 at the Marais speakeasy, La Candelaria. On that day, Prieto went for dinner after a conversation with the artist Gabriel Orozco, which I transcribed and which was later published in a collection by Mousse. That text would be part of Prieto’s first retrospective catalogue and my first assignment…

Tucson: Kitty Brophy epitomises how perception and reality are often at odds, how assumptions can be frequently wrongheaded, and the ways superficial attributes can mask deeper, darker, much more interesting depths of the soul. Behind and beyond the chic demeanour and sunny disposition is a person committed to her powerful, uncompromising art, belying the impression some…

Oakland: I’m driving to the Bay Area for a number of reasons, one of which is to meet and hang out with the artist Woody De Othello, someone whose work I’ve been following and admiring for some time. Woody lives and works here, though his work seems to be everywhere recently: in Los Angeles, New York,…

Tbilisi: We first met Levan Koguashvili on the sixth floor of a 19th-century apartment building that overlooks the Rioni River in the Royal Quarter of Kutaisi, Georgia. It was Valentine’s Day, close to midnight, and my girlfriend and I had stumbled home from Palaty restaurant after several bottles of saperavi wine. I suppose you could say…

Posadas: As the rest of Spain starts flirting with autumn, the southern region of Andalusia isn’t ready to leave behind the scorching temperatures. We’re in the birthplace of flamenco, a land full of bullfighting aficionados, traditional fairs, and religious processions. In-between this rooted folklore and liturgy is where Alejandro Palomo has kept challenging assumptions defining menswear…

New York City: I met artist Clayton Patterson in the early ‘90s when I was living with the godfather of street art, Richard Hambleton, and publisher Steven Neumann. I slept on the sofa in the living room, which Richard used as his painting studio. The place looked like an active crime scene. When Richard was broke,…

It’s the mid ‘90s, before Myspace, Facebook, cell phones, Google. Carla lives in San Francisco, Ed in Chicago. For the past six months they have been lovers across every media available to them: dial-up internet (poets’ listserv and email), landlines with their exorbitant long-distance fees, the US mail, and in person (aka ‘mere life’). To…

B+ is a collaborative architectural practice currently led by Arno Brandlhuber, Olaf Grawert, Jonas Janke, Roberta Jurcic, and Jolene Lee. It is, as such, a new office, but at the same time it has been active since the ‘90s under different iterations. Since the beginning of his career 30 years ago, Arno Brandlhuber has not…

London: It’s been almost a year since I’ve seen Ángela in person and two since I’ve spent a lot of time in London. It feels weird, having lived there for so many years and travelled there so often. But Covid and Brexit have built a wall that physically separates us and many other people. Ángela was…

New York City: On a bright Saturday morning in New York City, Jon Gray is thinking about his next meal. ‘Peace beloved’, the text on my phone reads. The time: 10.43am. We are scheduled to meet at Jon’s crib in the Bronx that afternoon. I know this is a query about lunch. ‘Peace good morning’, I…

Gurugram: I was born and raised in Barking, East London, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, first generation born to my immigrant Sikh parents, who emigrated from farming villages close to Chandigarh, Punjab, to make a new life in the UK. Growing up, there were not many references for my family in mainstream media; it was easy…

Flash floods in and around Jaipur, Rajasthan, created sudden chaos in 1976–77. The only way to get to Jaipur was by air. Defence Ministry PR chartered a helicopter for photographers to fly in and capture the havoc played by the floods. I was one of them. The helicopter only covered 250 kilometres and the flying…

New York City: Mel Ottenberg is the proud owner of one of Manhattan’s most iconic bedrooms. The all grey, late-70s-inspired sex den has wall-to-wall carpeting over a built-in queen bed located directly in the centre of the room. His closet doors are mirrored in a smoky glass and his ceiling is lacquered ivory. A bold statement,…

Vienna: When I arrive at the home of artist Marina Faust, I’m immediately aware of my location on the Ring in the centre of Vienna. The Burggarten, with its magical Butterfly House, is across the street, the Kunsthistorische Museum is around the corner, and the souvenir shop below sells images of Empress Elisabeth on silk…

Milan: Many creatives of Italy’s bygone era are referred to as ‘Architetto’, irrespective of whether or not they’re really architects. Hence, when we met Ugo for the first time, that is what we called him too. He responded promptly, ‘No no! Non sono un’architetto!’ This is Ugo in his essence. It’s been his life’s pursuit to…

Los Angeles: For most of Solange Knowles’ adult life, she has had the same loft; a quiet, serene oasis set above the 24-hour buzz of downtown Hollywood. The space is a mix of organic modernism, her own furniture designs, and Black art and vernacular objects she has collected over the years. It is the private…

Elgorriaga: I first met Álvaro in the Guggenheim cafeteria in Bilbao. He was meeting with a friend of mine, who promised I’d be very glad to know him. Álvaro was wearing an impeccable white cashmere Gucci coat from the ‘80s or ‘90s—on a rainy day. A tall, good-looking, bearded guy, his presence was incredible. I was…

Milan: My father, Marco Glaviano, was born and raised in Palermo, Sicily. He became a successful fashion photographer in the ‘80s, working for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, developing a personal body of work that featured many of the supermodels of that period, and, it’s said, ushering in a certain aesthetic that focused on beauty and the…

Tehran: At the beginning there was daddy sperm. DADDY is Reza Shafahi, born in 1940 in Saveh, Iran, an ancient metropolis located southwest of Tehran, known for its pomegranates, melons, wheat, and cotton. Saveh is a wealthy city, once ruled by Reza’s father, a rich patriarch who until the late ‘30s owned pretty much every…

Vienna: Chessboards, soccer players, hearts, emoji shadows, ostrich eggs, devils, and palm trees: German-born artist Sarah Ortmeyer is faithful to her family of co-opted icons that she continuously features in her work. So much so that, at this point in her career, these symbols represent her better than her own image. This is deliberate. In an…

Milan: I first met Joan in 2015 when I brought her into the radio station where I work for a small, live concert. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but I realised that this young girl with a guitar, who hadn’t yet found her musical identity, had something special. That girl has now become a…

New York City: Duane Michals loves pie, especially apple. There were at least three on the counter and one in the refrigerator when I came by to visit. His cramped kitchen also serves as a de facto greenhouse for dozens of orchids that soak up the light from the recessed window. In fact flowers, both fresh…

Los Angeles: Are you where you once thought you’d be at the age you are now? Sydney ‘Syd’ Bennett isn’t. In her view, she’s somewhere better. Early teenage success on the basketball courts, with professional-level potential, was diverted by a wack coach and GarageBand exploration in her parents’ home, quickly leading to Syd’s musical collaboration…

Paju: There are so many stones in Choi Byung-Hoon’s home that you might find one bouncing off your foot. He has stones holding up his table, stones holding up the books on his bookshelf, and stones weighing down ultra-thin sheets of traditional Korean paper. There are stones in front of his door, stones in his…

New York City: Ice-pop red and blue and Halloween-orange six-inch-high tapered torsos merging into outrageously demonstrative faces, Alice Mackler’s sculpted clay portraits, with their scarred, furrowed, and lumpily textured surfaces, are alternately distorted, grotesque, totem-like, and irrefutably endearing. Blow-up-doll mouths and huge peepers, drooping boobs, all curves and contrapposto, self-possessed, and at times appearing confrontational or…

Rogelio hasn’t slept a wink since he inherited the Rosas family estate. The first two days have been unequivocally joyous, like non-stop sex, an endless delicacy. He keeps his eyes open wide at night and only catches sleep for a few seconds or minutes here and there in quiet moments—at mass, on the john, waiting…

When one faces a conversation with Álvaro Siza (Matosinhos, Portugal, 1933) it’s hard to think up questions that haven’t already been formulated hundreds of times in previous interviews. His first built project, four houses in his native city, happened 68 years ago. Since then, he hasn’t stopped doing architecture projects, building whenever the right circumstances…

New York City: I first met Darrel Ellis in 1981. I was 30 and he was almost 23. He had just broken up with the actor José Rafael Arango and we were at an East Village neighbourhood gay bar called The Bar, at 2nd Avenue and East 4th Street, half a block from José’s apartment. The…

London: When I first began to make contact with people who collected ceramics with a passion, some extremely generous invitations were extended to visit their private homes and to see the pots in their collections. And on the very first occasion, a strange thing happened; a jealous streak ran through me. I am ashamed to…

New York City: Kunle Martins’ status as an OG of the Lower East Side is well deserved. Kunle, aka EARSNOT, aka IRAK, is the eponymous founding member of the IRAK crew, made up of misfits, outsiders, skaters, and graffiti artists. IRAK gained street cred while catching the eye of the ever-elusive art world, who couldn’t get…

New York City: The first thing you’ll notice about one of my favourite architects and friend Solveig Fernlund is her elegance. She is a willowy yet sturdy Swedish woman nearly six feet tall, who my mother, if she were still living, would have described as ‘a lovely long, tall drink of water’. And this willowy, sturdy…

Siwa Oasis: I remember the first time I went to Siwa back in 1998: my son Miles was two years old and my father had been speaking to me about Mounir and his extraordinary initiative for I don’t know how long. After a day’s drive, I recall arriving in the pitch-black night with only bonfires and…

Cairo: Mounir has the look of those people who know how to be fully present. His beautiful blue eyes have the joy of a child and he always blesses me with answers that contain wisdom and kindness. I remember meeting him after my first visit to his eco lodge Adrere Amellal, meaning ‘the White Mountain’ in…

New York City: Legs folded and with unwavering eye contact, Minjae Kim emits poise and calm. But if you meet his eyes longer than a moment, you see something of a fun frenzy beneath the surface. This frantic, creative energy comes out in his work, which is mostly hand-carved wooden furniture incorporating quilted fibreglass and silky…

London: Claudia Roden was a name well known to anyone who worked in food. Then the new wave of culinary stars arrived, and only in the past few years has there been a return to the grand writers who laid the foundations of contemporary food writing. Roden symbolises a rare period in history. Her two…

Fiesole: Gianni Pettena is an outsider, and proudly so. Born in Bolzano, he trained in Florence at the same faculty as those who made radical architecture and design famous, with groups from Superstudio to Archizoom. He’s always been included among the first radicals and has largely committed himself to promoting their radicalism by curating catalogues…

The alienation and loneliness of this year strangely remind me of the period I spent in New York after separating from a woman I loved and who I believe loved me and who ended up marrying another man, one she truly considered a real one. That was a time when I thought I would go…

New York City: One leafy night, I was strolling down Mulberry Street in Soho when I ran into Paul Moakley, the nicest person in the photo world. The people of New York were enjoying the splendours of outdoor dining, and Paul had just left a downtown bistro accompanied by a friend named Melissa. They were reuniting,…

Guadalajara: The work of Guadalajara-based artist Jose Dávila delves into opposing forces of gravity and resistance, and continuously examines both found and self-made configurations in the most basic forms of geometry. In his studio in Barrio Artesanos Dávila surrounds himself with raw materials like stones, blocks, slabs, and pieces of glass, all methodically arranged and selected…

Wahington DC: We’ve been living online for more than a year and, by now, connecting through a screen feels almost impossible. But when you meet someone like Joan E. Biren (JEB) over Zoom, her presence comes through even time zones apart. Maybe this is because she’s used to working through a lens while still being able…

Wellington: Most days I wear pearl earrings by Lisa Walker, gold and gem rings by Karl Fritsch, and a silver necklace with a teardrop in artificial diamonds by their son Max. When our house was burgled in London, none of my jewellery was stolen. My collection is exclusive to Walker-Fritsch family; I don’t think the burglar…

A piece of land overlooking the sea, southwest towards Corsica, and a small shelter—that’s what I bought nearly 50 years ago. Without knowing it, I was embarking on an adventure where thoughts, dreams, projects, notes, drawings, materials, students, and friends would converge on this micro-island of mine. The place was totally wild when I found it,…

New York City: Topaz Jones and I met on the sweatiest day of the summer, our pleasantries, conversation, and laughter coming more readily than the breeze. But before I even met him I already felt as if I knew him, having watched his short film, Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma. Scored by his album of the…

Albion: During the lockdown, stuck in my apartment, living through screens, observing environmental disasters and massive failures of infrastructure in-between Zoom meetings, it was easy to daydream about a better way of living. A possible alternative emerged on Instagram, where Salmon Creek Farm presents its aestheticised update of communal living to 38,000 followers. Given the…

Naples: Rug dealer, journalist, and book collector Nathalie de Saint Phalle grew up on the Île Saint-Louis in a house full of books. It’s here that we conduct our interview in high summer, in the eclectic chaos of an apartment where those many publications are piled high on every surface and an array of artwork covers…

Soisy-sur-École/Pescia Fiorentina: It’s difficult to decide where to begin when telling the story of the French–American artist Niki de Saint Phalle. Her life and work read like a fairy tale of her own making, starting with her artistic awakening while convalescing from a breakdown. Her impulsive drive to create carried her throughout her life, manifesting in…

Rome: When I asked Luigi Serafini to send me a short, informal biography he replied, ‘I entrust it to you; I’m sure you’ll write it in a moment’. Very difficult. Despite the friendship that binds us, our shared plans to conquer the world and other galaxies, and many four-handed projects—the last being Ubu Roi, a…

St.Louis: Katherine Bernhardt was born in St. Louis and lived there for the first 18 years of her life. At that point, she left for the Art Institute of Chicago, then moved to NYC. She lived in NYC for 22 years. Two years ago she moved back into her childhood home in St. Louis with her…

Joan Nestle is a fem, working-class, queer Jewish lesbian, and a lifelong activist. She is also a prolific and award-winning author, editor, and educator. I first met Joan in the ’70s after she co-founded the Lesbian Herstory Archives, one of the world’s most expansive collections of lesbian culture. She has been a lasting inspiration to…

Accra: Born in 1947 in a small village in the Akwapim area of Ghana, Paa Joe is a name familiar to those well versed in the country’s visual and material culture. Beginning his training at 15, under the tutelage of his maternal uncle in Teshie, Greater Accra, by age 25 he’d been promoted to master…

Fire Island: I discovered the work of Larry Stanton by chance, while searching online for information about an artist I love and have collected for years, Patrick Angus. That was in January 2018. Larry Stanton did not know Patrick Angus, because Larry died of AIDS in 1984, when he was just 37 years old. That same…

London: At the musician Sabrina Fuentes’ house in London, her friend Ophelia Horton (nicknamed Opi) prepares some late breakfast sandwiches, navigating around the mould inside an old tub of olive spread. ‘Can I still use this?’ she looks to Sabrina, and again, ‘Does this need more ham?’ The inseparable pair chuckle as they wonder where the…

They played poker in the old fifth-storey apartment that hung below the smog over the central train station. They played for no money, hand after hand, from four until the smog darkened into night. They ate cheese and sausage sandwiches and drank soda and the occasional shot of prune brandy at adjacent TV trays set…

We have just passed the one-year mark of the pandemic, and yet we’re still fully implicated. Restrictions are still in force, and mobility between countries is almost impossible. These circumstances make it difficult to carry out our conversation in person, but in the case of Leopold Banchini (Geneva, 1981), the situation becomes even more complicated….

New York City: In an old factory on Broadway and 12th Street, wedged between The Strand and Grace Church, you’ll find a Halloween store—the kind of store that defined a ‘90s-era NYC, one that supported hyper-specialised shops that knew their audience and could depend on it for survival. It’s a version of NY many hope…

Los Angeles: Roger (pronounced ‘Ro-jay’ in the French–German manner of his hybrid hometown of Saarbrücken) Herman is an artist from Germany who has lived in California since 1977, and Los Angeles for almost as long. Roger is a painter and, since the mid ‘80s until recently, was an influential teacher at the University of California’s…

Tucson: A lanky, rakish figure regularly seen riding around Tucson on various two-wheeled motorised machines accompanied by Jake, his faithful 15-year-old Chihuahua, Alex Streeter is a renowned jewellery designer, world traveller, and outstanding raconteur whose stories manage to beggar belief while being firmly rooted in fact. From seeing Roy Rogers at Madison Square Garden as…

Milan: Before meeting Lucia Pescador I’d seen, and instantly loved, her work. When the moment came to meet her, it was like rediscovering an old friendship, tied together perhaps by similar personalities and our love of art and artefacts from the 20th century. Lucia was born in 1943 in Voghera, Italy—and the 20th century is…

New York City: In 2009, Victor Barragán was a hyper-creative 17 year old living with his family in Postal, a neighbourhood in Mexico City. In high school he studied architecture, bartended at his father’s taquería, and experimented with his sexuality at public cruising spots. Because he couldn’t afford the clothes he desired, he began silk-screening…

Brussels: The first time I heard of David Numwami, who back then was releasing music as Le Colisée, must have been in 2017 or 2018. I was about to launch an online radio here in Brussels, and my colleague at the time suggested I give his stuff a listen. I won’t lie, at first I…

Mexico City: A hundred years after its birth, Colonia Roma, the charming European-inflected neighbourhood developed in the early 20th century for Mexico City’s emergent bourgeoisie, is many worlds at once. While its northern section surrendered to a constant flux of tourism and foreign residents, its leafy sidewalks filled with concept eateries, fake mezcalerías, design shops,…

Shanghai: Since 2008, Luo Yang has led her audience into the homes of the many girls who’ve inhabited her personal project of the same title. These rooms, located all across China, have witnessed these girls’ lives, moments of their love and growth. But when we... Read more

Mexico City: I like to think about liminal moments, when radical changes appear in your life, those events that arrive all of a sudden and interrupt the normal flow of things. As Žižek says, ‘That radical intervention after which nothing remains the same’. Most of the time you don’t see these changes coming, they arrive…

Valvignères: Our last morning in Valvignères, Anders dropped us a pin; it was a while after they’d got there already, but at the time we were still schlepping around the breakfast table. Business and pleasure were starting to blur. We threw our bags in the car and eventually located the ranks of Ardèche natural winemakers…

New York City: The French–American artist Louise Bourgeois lived in the Chelsea neighbourhood of New York City for almost 50 years. She purchased the narrow townhouse—a mere 15 feet wide—in 1962 with her husband, the art historian Robert Goldwater; their three sons, Michel, Alain, and Jean-Louis, were already grown and lived elsewhere. They furnished it…

New York City: TABBOO!, aka Stephen Tashjian, has entered an exciting new stage in a life already jam-packed with excitement. The artist’s formative years were spent in parallel schools of culture: the art world and the drag world. He created a routine in which days were spent making paintings and nights were spent performing, with…

New Orleans: After 20 years away, Tunde Wey is finally going home. The cook and writer was 16 years old when he left Lagos to move to the United States. He landed in Detroit where he enrolled in community college to ostensibly pursue a pharmacy degree to precede the medical degree his parents wished for…

Moving to Lispenard Street Willi Smith purchased one of the few remaining derelict lofts on Lispenard Street in the early ‘80s. A few artists had already taken up residence in the crumbling building, the editor and co-founder of Paper magazine, Kim Hastreiter, being one of them. She was shocked at first when she found out…

Biesenthal: The water slowly evaporates from the wet cement under the summer sun. The house of Thomas Demand seems strangely artificial on a quiet afternoon, and if you know his artworks, you can’t avoid thinking about them, the entire history of photography, the potential nostalgia it bequeaths, and all the illusion it can bring, when…

Concept by Apartamento Studios in collaboration with Marta Armengol        

Givraines: It’d been five years already that I’d wanted to go to the house of Denis Charignon, after ambling around one of the websites on art brut/singulier that I regularly consult. I’d come across some photos of his house and was struck by the force of the frescoes, both naïve and controlled, which adorned the…

I’m a painter, but I often look to photography as much as anything for lessons on how to think, how to see, and then, how to make. Last year I was offered a dream opportunity to curate an exhibition from the vast archives of one of my favourite artists, the Italian photographer Luigi Ghirri (1943–92)….

In his silvery Swiss-French-inflected English, Olivier Mosset always answers the phone with a crisp and emphatic, ‘Yes!’ There’s a magnanimity and enthusiasm in those greetings, heralding a genuine willingness to engage in a spirited reciprocal dialogue. At the zenith of the scorching Sonoran summer over a period of two afternoons, first at his studio, then…

Stockholm: Before this interview with Kali Malone I took a long walk from my house to my office, listening to her record The Sacrificial Code. Three of the tracks were recorded at the concert hall Studio Acusticum in Piteå, roughly a thousand kilometres north of Stockholm. I was there for a residency, creating a sound…

Depending on where your own interests lie, it’s possible to arrive at the life and work of Charles Perry in more than one way. Born in LA, in 1941, Perry’s known as one of world’s foremost experts on medieval Arabic cuisine, having majored in Middle Eastern studies at Princeton and then UC, Berkeley, and having…

Milan: Andrea Branzi is an architect, designer, and theorist, a giant of ‘the project’ whose work is based on research and experimentation. His is a complex anthropological vision that, from the outset, has been nourished by ideas that go far beyond the traditional discipline of design, moving between philosophy, economics, art, music, and literature, but…

Possible architectures Anne Holtrop (1977, the Netherlands) has a unique approach to architecture that has always caught our attention. His work starts from shapes, or material gestures, that don’t usually come from the world of architecture. He examines this material, trying to look at it with other eyes, as someone who can see a butterfly…

Toki City: A golden tea bowl with an enchanting lustre; an almost infectiously pop object, reminiscent of the work of Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol. The countless works produced by Takuro Kuwata exhibit a delicate balance amid their quirkiness, giving rise to new forms of aesthetic beauty. His appearance in the ‘Fire and Clay’ group exhibition…

I come back from the overflowing archives in which I was quickly snooping around in to find Javier Mariscal has gone back to painting the world. The world has a diameter of around 70cm and is the new idea in progress for the furniture design company Magis, a ball for kids aged two to six…

Remain in light New York City: Peter Halley has lived most of his life in New York as an artist in the purest sense. His constant exploration—either through his own work as an important painter and writer, or as a professor of painting and the director of graduate studies in painting and printmaking at Yale University—has…

Living in a palimpsest Zurich: Lora Lamm’s apartment is not her own. Or, not exclusively her own. It is a built palimpsest—its original author being the architect Hans Demarmels. Before his death in 2010, he used to come here regularly with architecture students, this being the only apartment in a row of three listed houses from the…

Liam Gillick pays attention to architecture. A nice pair of binoculars sits conspicuously on his coffee table, and he uses them. He lives on the 17th floor of a building designed by Wallace Harrison, overlooking the United Nations Plaza and the East River. The building’s exterior gives the appearance of uniformity and order. Harrison served…

Among the more odious habits of the gang that live here is showering naked. Particularly Fat Fingers Miller (not to be confused with Footwank Miller and his brother Asterix), who really goes for it with the soap, which tends to rile Demolition Dave something rotten. This is just one example of the many little idiosyncratic…

‘What do any of us really know about love?’ Mel said. ‘It seems to me we’re just beginners at love. We say we love each other and we do, I don’t doubt it. I love Terri and Terri loves me, and you guys love each other and we do, I don’t doubt it. You know…

I was probably chosen to do this interview because I live three Parisian buildings away from Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant’s beautiful home. When I entered a courtyard that takes you back in time, about 47 seconds after I had closed my own door, there was a feeling of immediacy that Courrèges’ artistic directors only extended….

The insider view New York City: I visited Jeremiah Goodman at his high-rise apartment in New York, which is as chic as his paintings. His style is captivating and evocative of a more elegant, gracious era—the era epitomised by the illustrations he did for years for the department store Lord & Taylor. In Jeremiah’s paintings, ceilings…

Zurich: I happened to meet Walter one evening in Zurich by chance, out of pure luck. I don’t even recall the year or if it was spring or fall, but I remember Walter laughing and telling stories. He loved to say beautiful, mixed with Italian and French words. It was photographer and friend Linus Bill who…

Growing up Judd Las Casas, Texas: When Flavin and Rainer Judd think of home, no single image comes to mind. The son and daughter of the American artist Donald Judd (to whom they refer as Don rather than Dad), Flavin and Rainer grew up in New York City and west Texas—but also all over the world…

Ateliers de la Petite Enfance Paris: We all share memories of our childhood, though some of them prove to be more cherished than others. And throughout adolescence and into adulthood, we have certainly heard a few stories about our own childhood from the people who have been close to us. In a similar way, we will…

Sound, noise & music Buenos Aires: At the beginning of the ‘90s Juana Molina was a famous comedian in Argentina, but during her pregnancy she realised she was denying her true vocation as a musician. She immediately abandoned television, and started her slow journey, which laid the foundations for the current international recognition of her hypnotic…

New York City: Françoise Mouly has lived life on her own terms and arrived at her prominent position as art editor of the New Yorker through a lifetime of experiments in publishing and design. She entered the boys club of American underground comics in the ‘70s and proceeded to reshape it in new and exciting…

Los Angeles: Swedish pop star Lykke Li has finally settled down in Los Angeles. Since releasing her long-awaited fourth album, so sad so sexy, in 2018, the 33-year-old artist has digested the trauma and triumph of the past few years. While writing so sad so sexy, Li had just given birth to her son, Dion, split…

Mexico City in 2-D Mexico City: At the moment Mexico City is one of the most fun places in the world. There is a new energy, and new sense of freedom fuelled by a new generation’s rejection of the long dominating religious and political status quo. This has created a feeling of openness and experimentation, sexual…

I’ve lived in Tokyo since 2004 with my wife Yoshiko and our two children.  For the first few years I had quite a difficult time trying to adjust and I spent a lot of time alone or in Japanese class. The classes were hard and not that fun—not like learning French or English, those classes…

One bright, spring morning, five years ago, we happened to be visiting a neighbour whose chickens were busily clucking over nests of chicks. We returned home with a cardboard box of fluffy black feathers and a love story that has lasted years. The first two chicks grew to be two roosters called Jean Jacques and…

I have lived in this space for about a year. I have lived everywhere in Oakland about three times over and this is by far the cheapest place I have ever lived. It’s essentially squatting since it’s an artist space. but I built walls and added a sink and made it pretty nice. I have been…

You know that house that you have often seen and long dreamt of living in? Maybe you pass it every day, or maybe you catch a glimpse during your annual vacation to the same well-loved coastal town/mountain hamlet/other picturesque location. Or maybe you only saw it once but it was love at first sight, and…

Through life head first New York City: These are the facts: Christiaan Houtenbos, or simply Christiaan as everyone in the fashion industry knows him (the real stars in that world go by one name), is a maker. He is most recognised and celebrated for artfully crafting hair, but hand him a notebook and he’ll write you…

When chance turns into history Milan: When Santi Caleca first opened the door of his Milanese apartment, shared with his wife Aurora and their two kids, he uncovered a magical world to me. His is an apartment that witnessed a particular instant in the history of Italian design, its most radical and perhaps, its most exciting…

Although anyone can own a poster, there is no doubt that they are more commonly found on the walls of 13-25 year olds than those of any other age group. One simple reason for this, of course, is that posters are a cheap form of ornamentation and so, more suited to the teen market than…

Island of Calvary, as an islander called it. Wild and beautiful, inhabited by a strong nature, which defends it by external aggressions. Only when you are there, from time to time, you can perceive this sensation. Here, air, water and even fire manifest themselves as the true fury of the elements. When the wind shifts…

House of style New York City: I first met Todd about six years ago when he approached my family about the possibility of doing a book on my grandfather’s work. At that point the only association I had with his name was from an old favourite pair of jeans I owned in the ‘90s. After doing…

Paris: When I first moved to Paris, I went through a process common to most foreigners arriving in a new city—haphazardly but carefully tracking down a few locales that will soon become your regulars and keep you feeling grounded while you otherwise fumble through the adjustment. Yvon’s bookshop was one of those places for me;…

When I came back to Los Angeles in March I had a friend visiting from Canada who used to drive me to Sqirl every morning for the drip coffee, which is thick and rich and comes in large quantities. I remember sitting in the sunshine with him outside the restaurant, really stoned one day, drinking…

Los Angeles: I first encountered Ricky Swallow online. Or rather, what I actually encountered was an anonymous blog called Ready for the House. It was an album quilt of objects—hundreds of objects—stitched together by some mysterious collector in California. Navajo jewellery. Nineteen-forties wave splitters from Papua New Guinea, worn and weathered from time at sea….

A walk-in sketchbook Zurich: Beda Achermann is one of the first creative directors from the Alps to become internationally known. He revolutionised fashion during his time at the German Männer Vogue in Munich in the ‘80s. Later, he transformed boring annual reports into stunning narrative picture books. Up to this day, Beda is working non-stop, jetting around…

Family matters Los Angeles: Over the past ten years Tierney Gearon has produced a body of work centred on her family life, starting with the breakthrough exhibition ‘I Am A Camera’ in 2001. Although the series of work was critically lauded, two naked photographs of her (then) young children attracted some controversial debate regarding censorship. In…

Form without function Helsinki: Glass designer Oiva Toikka has always worked with a smile on his face. His career started during the golden era of Finnish functional design, but he never followed the mainstream style. Instead, his path has been full of wild shapes, colours, and experiments. Toikka isn’t a perfectionist at all, but rather an…

New York City: I was walking down the street one day with my friend Malcolm McLaren. Richard Hell was across the street walking in the opposite direction, and didn’t see us. Malcolm turned to me and said, ‘Modern people look the way they do and dress the way they do because of Richard’. Malcolm went…

‘Sometimes I hear their guest toilet flush upstairs’. We are sat in the open-plan living room of Margaret Howell’s almost-seaside second home on the Suffolk coast, which she bought off a school inspector from Croydon in 2002. It’s one of a row of attached houses by Swiss architect Rudy Mock that were built in 1965,…

Going home New York City: On a quiet street in lower Manhattan, Alex Wiederin, creative director and founder of Buero New York, has carved a home out of a former maze of a loft. The airy, plush space exhibits the type of domestic atmosphere reserved for the trans-Atlantic, New York-by-way-of-Europe creative types seen often in New…

Slow and steady wins the race New York City: Matt Connors is an artist that splits his time between New York City and Los Angeles, while his work can be found in the collections of MoMA, the Walker Art Center, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Hammer. He has maintained a career that is more aligned…

From the time I left home until I was 34 I moved 35 times. Since then my moving gradually slowed down. For 11 years I’ve been living in a loft-like house in Paris above the Montmartre Cemetery. This is longer than I’ve ever lived in any place in my life. It’s also the first time…

One family, one room Helsinki: Until I turned twenty I lived with my grandparents in a small town in Southern Finland. My grandfather Yrjö is an interior designer and my grandmother Irmeli is a graphic artist. My grandfather taught me the philosophy behind functionalism, how to climb trees and how to do a handstand. I…

I never thought making things for my son, Elia, would be something that could bring us so close together. It all began when he was turning two years old, I just did a box so he could go in it pretending it was a bed. He is four now and I am still making them…

Stella’s room: Keep out! London: Stella and I first met when we started at the same secondary school four years ago, but we only really got to know each other during our third year. She lives in Kentish Town, North London, in a beautiful Victorian building made up mainly of open-plan spaces and heavy-beamed ceilings which hint…

Making dens, now for real London: Being one of the most genuinely interesting, talented and deserving bands of the contemporary British music scene, Mystery Jets have received, or better yet, haven’t received nearly as much press nor attention as those Myspacer-one-hit-wonders usually get nowadays… And thank the Queen they didn’t! As other bands were quickly coming…

Humming the chant of the motor. The radio is off, the windows up and the wind is unnoticeable, just a constant aummmm and my eyes fixed on the horizon. Right in the centre of my vision, a point spits asphalt and white lines. The rest is fuzzy; a dusty and dry landscape funnelled through the…

Brazilian Sunshine on the Lower East Side New York City: Brazilian born Marcelo Krasilcic is a passionate man. He loves fun, friends, hosting parties, family, travel, Rio, New York City, interior design, open floor plans, tropical plants, abstract ceramics, colourful pillows, balance, beauty, bodies, sex, his boyfriend, his two cats, yoga, vegetarian cooking, collaborating and…

on writing from home, and her fascination with other writers I have been working (and by that I mean writing) from home for nearly a decade. During this time, I’ve learned how dramatically a home itself can affect the work that’s done inside it. Beyond that, I’ve learned of the labyrinthian, often ridiculous rituals writers…

A man of many hats Tokyo: If you’ve ever been to a fashion show in New York or Paris, you may have wondered to yourself, ‘Who is that amazingly dressed man in the front row with the incredible head of hair?’ It would be Gene Krell, international fashion director of the Japanese editions of Vogue, Vogue…

Petra Collins is a 23-year-old photographer, actress, model, curator, and director. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Petra now resides in New York City. She comes from a dance background that ended with a knee injury, which turned her creative energies towards photography during her mid-teens. And she has not stopped shooting since. From her earliest photos…

The beauty of frogs’ legs Cork: Let’s see: one rowing man, made out of a discarded sardine can; one birthday drawing for author colleague Ingrid Noll, showing her sitting at a typewriter with a skeleton dictating behind her; one drawing of a couple dancing tango; one crossword puzzle in the International Herald Tribune; and one song…

A journey is a specific dimension that has different meanings, all correct. Usually a journey implies the place you’re aiming at, the place you’re going to. Not the moving, the transaction, or the road you’re going through to get there. I think of the caravan on the road, the sailboat in the ocean, slow and…

The clothes on our bodies are sweaty and we wear them to bed. Waking up fully clothed with more sweat forming into beads under the cotton fabric; the sun is hot, coming through a partially open window (we opened it last night at 4am in case we needed to escape during the night). It feels…

Wes Anderson Photography courtesy of American Empirical Pictures The characters from his movies have lived in houses, hotels, schools, boats, trains, trees, scout camps, on islands, and on beaches; he personally lives in New York but likes to spend time in Paris. This is where I met him, late one afternoon in early December. In…

A Parisian view If you were asked to think of someone that influenced your vision in the way you work and look at things around you, for me one of these persons would be Elein Fleiss. I still remember clearly the first time we met in Paris some time ago, when I visited her apartment…

Brussels: Sitting in a French restaurant in New York for lunch with Nicolas Party, we started by talking about how to deal with a cold. It’s the height of cold and flu season in New York, and Nicolas has just got back from Brussels, having stopped by San Francisco and maybe Dallas. He told me…

Concept by Ana Dominguez & Omar Sosa            

Mexico State is characteristic for its high, yellowish and humid all through the year pasture. Pines and oaks try to break the stepperian rhythm. Factories do break it much better. There are many and whatever of these you might wish. Bread, glue, car parts, canned goods. As you go by the highway their characteristic bouquet…

Learning to See Arles: As I drive to Arles I realise I don’t know much about the person I’m going to meet. Of course I know his work extensively; he’s one of the most prolific photographers in the world, THE interior photographer. For the last 30 years he has photographed everywhere and everyone—for sure the homes…

Book Cornered London: Settling down didn’t come naturally to Duncan Fallowell. He bought this apartment (his first and only) in London’s leafy Notting Hill just before his 40th birthday ‘in a panic’. Describing himself as a vagabond soul, Fallowell had spent the previous two decades travelling the world as a writer and journalist, interviewing and often…

Growing roots at home My girlfriend Mercedes and I have been tendering plants for about a year now. I would say she specially likes succulents and cacti, while I like ferns and moss. But what we have come to realize is that we like combinations—not only of plants, but of plants and the object or container…

A theory of evolution I have known Mark and Garrick for many, many years. Mark is a curator, currently at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, where he has been responsible for many glorious shows, most recently the wonderful concrete poetry exhibition ‘Poor. Old. Tired. Horse.’ Garrick does mysterious things, somewhere between academia, management consulting,…

Joshua Tree, California: The artist Andrea Zittel lives in the desert in Joshua Tree, California, with a trio of dogs (Maggie Peppercorn, Mona Winona, Owlette), a pair of cats (Mood Cloud, Stripy Tiger Wolf), assorted fish, a burgeoning family of rescue tortoises, and her son, Emmett. She started out, in 2000, with a five-acre parcel…

Introduction and footnotes by Flavin Judd Don had about 20 houses that he needed to furnish. They all needed bowls, knives, coffee cups, and other necessities of life. I think by anyone’s standards that’s a lot of houses, but Don liked things that he liked and he liked a good house, a beautiful structure, a…

Seoul: At 25, Oh Hyuk is the leader, vocalist, and guitar player for the band Hyukoh. The group’s name is an inversion of his own. Oh suddenly found himself a symbol of South Korean youth culture with his album 20, which he released as a 21-year-old uni student working part-time at Vans. For young South Koreans…

Saint-Georges-sur-Allier: I met Patrick 10 or 11 years ago while tasting wine in another winemaker’s cellar. Why is he immediately likeable? I think it is his laugh and his earnest interest in others, even me, then, despite my terrible French. He recommended I go to the 10 Vins Cochons, a wine tasting held locally that…

Barcelona: Life starts with food. When we are born, everything is blood and milk, he says. Nourishment is a crucial part of the growing process, but for the Spanish artist Antoni Miralda, food is a lot more than just mere fuel. His work talks about the symbology of a piece of meat, a loaf of bread,…

Barcelona: I first met Maria Pratts in an elevator. I had come to visit one of her gazillion flatmates, the photographer Rafa Castells, in the now legendary Gran Via apartment that was shared by many of the artists shaping today’s underground scene in Barcelona. We took the elevator down together, and by the time we’d…

Paula’s Ibiza Ibiza: Last summer in Ibiza, while in the house of my friend Grillo Demo, I set my eyes on the colourful fabric of his kitchen curtains. ‘Ah, that’s from Paula’s’, he said. By pulling some strings I came to meet Armin. He lives in an old farmhouse in the mountains of Santa Inés. Access…

The road leading to Jason Schwartzman and Brady Cunningham’s house winds its way slowly up a hillside above the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles County, and though the sunshine is dazzling the trees are hung with paper skeletons and cloth ghosts and the houses are wrapped in the sort of cobwebs that come out of…

Milan: Alessandro Mendini is the idiosyncratic, devilish, prismatic Marcel Proust of design—a living legend who’s played a crucial role in so many important adventures of Italian and international design, including the Alchimia and Memphis movements. Memphis was not only one of the most influential design experiences of all time, but an entrepreneurial adventure, a communication…

Barcelona: I first met Paloma 15 years ago through Fotolog, the first social network in Spain. This means I first met her visual universe when we were teenagers, and a bit later on I met her gestures and her particular way of articulating words—details that I return to in her apartment today. When the digital…

London: Coco Capitán has often said, will say again, that her work is just a reflection of her own life. Which is true—and which fact makes the ease with which it draws on themes of identity and selfhood, nods to art-historical ideas about pop and consumerism, and pinpoints the absurdity of our contemporary condition, all…

Why did I spend eight years working toward a goal that, if achieved, would efface the evidence of my effort? What could possibly make this an incredibly fulfilling obligation? If the project is the restoration of 101 Spring Street, Donald Judd’s home and studio in New York City, the answer is unambiguous. Within this 19th-century…

A man among men New York City: Day and night Vince Aletti is surrounded by thousands upon thousands of highly curated groupings of two-dimensional men. These men, mostly anonymous at first, later become established members of his household. He adds his own story to their lives, his own meaning to their gazes. Simply put, he…

In the exact geographic centre of Berlin, in a surprisingly anonymous part of the otherwise so-popular Kreuzberg area, stands a monumental building with massive concrete blocks and exposed surfaces. The building is St Agnes, a former church complex built in a brutalist style by architect Werner Düttmann between 1964 and 1967 as an iconic centrepiece…

In Berlin Berlin: Few people live out the maxim ‘the personal is political’ as completely as AA Bronson, whose art, life, and politics have always merged into one. Fearless, and transgressive best describe General Idea, the ground-breaking collective formed in 1969 by Bronson, Felix Partz, and Jorge Zontal. Together they brought the then unspoken topics of…

Music had Judy and Liza, Hollywood has Debbie and Carrie, fashion now apparently has Madonna and Lola and television had the Gilmore Girls. Food has Gloria Pinette and Anaïs Melero, mom and daughter food styling powerhouse duo. Based in San Juan, Gloria has been working in the industry for the past 35 years. She’s worked…

Bricks and mortar, blood and tears Amsterdam: When studying the work of Maurice Scheltens and Liesbeth Abbenes, their gesammt portfolio of photographic works, Maurice’s earlier photographs and Liesbeth’s tapestries, as one would do before meeting them for an interview, you could be tempted to get some preconceived notions about this Dutch couple and their very Dutch…

Mental as anything Sydney: I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but if you’re Australian, you’ve probably heard of Reg Mombassa. Since coming into existence in 1951 Reg, aka Chris O’Doherty, has infected everything he touches with his askew, laconic sensibility. From suburban landscapes to Dadaist creations with religious motifs—his work is coveted by…

As most young teenagers in the early 2000s, I spent some of my afternoons and weekends watching MTV. It was channel number 14 out of 20 on French television, and we would play it in the background whenever we got back from school and had to do our homework, or when we were getting ready…

It even has a name Miami: As Art Basel Miami Beach beckons its disciples to gorge on art in a show of reverence and decadence, Marvin and Ruth Sackner, who live across the bay, go about their quiet routine in what was once the duplex penthouse of the Venezuelan pop star El Puma. They decided to…

The measure of all things Barcelona: A few months ago Ricardo Bofill told me about one of the last of Barcelona’s crazy bohemians. When I met him, I understood that definition. It came from a certain nostalgia for a specific generation, in which art and architecture were disciplines going at full throttle without yet knowing what their…

There is nothing I like better than to build things for my six year old daughter Frances. As an artist and designer I spend much of my time making things, or helping other people make things. In making these things for her, I feel like I am putting these skills to good use. Mindlessly swinging a hammer and cutting…

Arranging things Milan: In the early ’80s French born Nathalie Du Pasquier was one of the young founding members of the Milan-based Memphis collective, led by veteran Ettore Sottsass. After their groundbreaking debut in 1981, Memphis pretty much dominated the design scene for years with their postmodern, rebellious pieces. Nathalie’s pattern designs, with their mix of…

The spirits of art and history Paris: I had never actually met Jean-Charles de Castelbajac before I was asked to interview him. But for some reason, and not only because he is a famous fashion designer and artist, I felt I already knew him personally before I even shook his hand. Is it because my husband,…

I was thinking recently about the theory, the one where a butterfly in Montana flaps its wings and a week later a hurricane hits Hawaii. While its complexities and nuance are well above my understanding, the basic idea is that small causes may have large effects. I can trust in the idea that this is…

The GPS tells me in its female voice that I’m only one kilometre away from my destination, and as I enter the tunnel the radio cuts out on the best single released in 1967. The side lights come on automatically, and, now that I’m out of the rain, I think about turning off the windscreen…

The afternoon I handed the keys to the new homeowners, there was a certain sadness I felt as I stood on the back porch, gazing off into the dense foliage, as the rain began to fall. In California, I’ve always welcomed the rain, as the sun is often in abundance. But there are always a…

A modern Hellenist Athens: On my way to meet Nanos Valaoritis, I realised that I had lost the note with his contact details. I was in the area, but I couldn’t remember the street number; I stopped at the square nearby and walked into a bar. I saw a lady at the cashier, went over and…

Concept by Ana Dominguez & Omar Sosa              

Molly Goddard Originally published in Apartamento Magazine Issue 18, 2016 Interview by Danielle Pender Photography by Angelo Pennetta Molly Goddard is a fashion designer whose collections remind me of the house parties I used to go to as a teenager. Parties that were full of girls with an awkward prettiness about them, their hair sweaty and matted…

The adventures of Ryan McGinley New York City: Sitting in Ryan McGinley’s apartment is not unlike looking at his photographs. Exposed, handmade kitchen shelves communicate DIY insouciance, a bathtub in the centre of the room was practically made for mischief, and, on a brutal New York winter morning, flourishing plants suggest a perennial spring. Everything lining the…

One morning while eating breakfast, a picture of the Queen Mary II coming into New York Harbour in The Times got pointed to and we all agreed: how could anybody look at that hideous behemoth and think it’s anything but an unsightly apartment building turned on its side, possessed of no more elegance than a…

The mayor of Los Angeles Los Angeles: Over coffee and the hand-built omelettes of Donna Shire, Peter Shire, Ryan Conder, and I talk shop, LA history, and we daydream of a Malibu with a more romantic crowd in the water. Breakfast is in the courtyard at Peter’s studio, a colourful, garden-lined outdoor space with funky vessels of…

Paris: Designer Julien Dossena worked in the studio with Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga for four years before his appointment as the artistic director of Paco Rabanne in 2013. Charged with reviving the retro brand, the 35-year-old Frenchman has successfully translated the line’s ultramodern heritage into a womenswear wardrobe for today, featuring desirable, sportswear-inspired ready-to-wear and…

The biography of the iconic New York artist Kembra Pfahler is as wide-ranging as it is productive. It includes formative years spent in LA’s punk scene, a decade-long ‘day-job’ as a video dominatrix, stints modelling for Playboy, Penthouse, and Hustler, she’s been a muse and model for a diverse range of designers, including Calvin Klein,…

The Sourceress London: Zoe Bedeaux always makes her presence known. She’s conspicuous, boisterous and funny but also wise, considerate and always, always curious. When she first began working as a stylist in the 1990s, London was the most happening place on earth. The Face and i-D were the only magazines that mattered and, following the lead…

From 2006 to 2008, I spent many Saturday evenings lying prone on the carpet of American minimalist composer La Monte Young’s Manhattan loft—repurposed for the last 18 years as a sound and light installation—listening to the steady drone of electronic sine waves tuned in a system wherein each note is related to every other note…

Southern weaver Johannesburg: Marguerite Stephens has been weaving tapestries for 50 years and looks fit enough to go 50 more. When we meet her at her award-winning, modular home in Diepsloot, half an hour outside Johannesburg, she is halfway through her latest commission for celebrated South African artist and long-time collaborator William Kentridge. Huge copies of…

Jewellery designer Marti Heil and her three musician children, Reeve Carney, Zane Carney, and Paris Carney all live here. For twelve years this has been their home. It’s my dream house and a tribute to the American dream. A place to meet and be met with open arms. A place to inspire and be inspired….

Bringing the fantasy into reality Los Angeles: Kenny Scharf is an artist who has worked with objects, interiors and kitsch for his whole career even if he’s best known for his paintings. He made TVs, cars, telephones, a crib for his daughter, pillows, boomboxes, a piano, a mixer and exhibited some of them in the Customized…

Concept by Ana Dominguez & Omar Sosa              

I’ve always had a soft spot for the words Charles Dickens wrote in 1859: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.’ And so now might be the time for a humble forewarning, as my version of ‘A Tale of…

In cities all over the world it is possible to observe inherited gestures, or free interpretations, of the architectural imagery of Herzog & de Meuron. It is common to see, in the same neighbourhood, repeated versions of the Dominus Winery. Dubious clones that, with different objectives, use the notorious solution of enclosing stones in gabions…

I work and sleep in Cambridge, England for what has come to be about six months of the year, but I don’t live there. It is becoming increasingly unclear where it is that I do live, however, and I find the question distressing enough to have left the ‘lives in’ section of my Facebook profile…

I like to photograph the ordinary. When I was a child, I spent endless hours drawing. I had very little interest in drawing fantastical or extraordinary scenes. I only wanted to draw what I saw in my daily life. I drew the shopping cart at the supermarket, the children on the playground, the food on…

It felt odd getting the assignment to write for Apartamento about Mati Klarwein, the man who once said, ‘The world is my apartment, and its cultures, the furniture’. Which is a pretty cool way to say he never had an apartment. Or even the bare intention of owning one. For most of his life, Mati…

New York City: Benjamin Pardo, Director of Design at Knoll, Mark Wasiuta, architect and theorist teaching at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and Masamichi Udagawa, partner of the industrial, interface and interaction design firm Antenna, met at Benjamin’s New York City apartment to discuss the effect of new technologies and products on…

Pasadena: How to describe Ottessa Moshfegh? I could tell you that she is an American author and novelist, that she was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and was a finalist for the Story Prize, that she’s won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Plimpton Prize for Fiction, the Fence Modern Prize in Prose, that the…

Restaurateurs the world over share a long and distinguished history, albeit one that is not widely known. They first appeared in Paris in the mid 18th century, though any time traveller to that era would have some difficulty in recognising them. In those days le restaurant was a restorative soup, a court-bouillon that became increasingly…

Intimate in Tokyo Tokyo: Celebrated wardrobe stylist Sonya Park came to Tokyo via Hawaii via Seoul. Born and raised in Seoul until she moved with her family to Hawaii when she was 12, Park later picked up in Tokyo without a plan. She has since become one of the most influential people in fashion today. Her job has…

Bringing material to life Knowing how to be patient has been one of the keys for Max Lamb finding the place of his dreams. He now lives in a workshop converted into an apartment, on a former North London industrial estate. It is an area that is obviously deprived and ethnically very diverse. The estate is…

A conversation chaired by Tag Christof Illustration by Pieter Van Eenoge Design is a verb. As such, its products and processes are shaped by culture, informed by narrative, and understood through imagery—perhaps more so than ever in an age where everything converges on social media. Or, does it? We gathered three pre-eminent thinkers for a discussion…

I met editor Luis Venegas 12 years ago through a mutual friend at a dive bar in Barcelona. Shortly after we began chatting, it already seemed as if we had known each other since forever. Aside from discussing our idols and references, I was already telling him intimate stories, like the time that I participated…

Sometimes things get complicated and don’t happen quite as we’d planned. This clearly depends upon the variables that you interact with. In this case holding a conversation with Enric Ruiz Geli has been more confusing than expected, to the point that when you get to talk to him, you can’t be sure whether you’re talking…

London: It is hard to exaggerate the impact that Fergus and Margot Henderson have had on the way we eat today, in London and the world beyond. Their approach to cooking and eating is rooted in common sense and joy, two principles that were mystifyingly rare in the 1980s British food landscape, which was then…

  Laboratorium began as a nomad atelier, later setting up its base of operations in Florence. It has since relocated to the third floor of an old building in the historic city centre. It is neither an industrial space nor a loft, as is frequently seen in the architectures of graphic design studios and communication…

Seoul: Na Kim is a very special character on the Korean art scene. She’s worked as a graphic designer at the very heart of the small-scale but prolific design studios that became an established trend in Seoul from the mid 2000s. And as an artist, she’s taken part in numerous exhibitions at major art museums…

Visiting the French architect Jean Renaudie’s social housing blocks in Ivry sur Seine in the suburbs of Paris reminded me of one of my favourite movies, My Dinner with Andre by Louis Malle, where one of the leading characters talks about breaking free of the habits of mechanical, automatic living: ‘But, Wally, don’t you see…

At the time I got this space, in 2007, I was tempted to go and live in the countryside, and in fact I spent a few weeks in Mallorca looking at amazing houses with palm trees, swimming pools and fireplaces. While in the middle of the countryside, I realised it wasn’t the time for be…

Concept by Ana Dominguez & Omar Sosa              

A few nights ago, I dreamt that Ola Rindal pushed me into the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris. In the dream we were walking along the canal together, on our way to meet his wife Madoka, and out of nowhere (possibly because I was complaining about how hot Parisian summers can be), he shoved me into…

Verona: Carlo Rovelli writes bestsellers. But he doesn’t write detective stories, family sagas, or other kinds of novels favoured by the general public. Rather, he’s a physicist, and in his books—like Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, translated into over 40 languages—he explains quantum physics, the theory of relativity, and the history and role of science….

Amman is made up of beige cuboids between four and six storeys high, interrupted by the occasional glossy glass-fronted version. The city looks like it was thrown together in a hurry and taken out of the oven half-baked, and this is almost true: what was at the time a chain of villages laced over seven…

A romanticist modernist Stockholm: Carl Johan De Geer is, at the age of 72, one of the most established visual artists in Sweden. Strangely enough he still keeps an outsider’s perspective on life. Born in Canada into an aristocratic Swedish family of diplomats and members of parliament, young Carl Johan moved to Copenhagen, Brussels and Warsaw before…

Korean memories, Italian reality Torre Orsina: Chung Eun Mo is a Korean painter. She lives in Torre Orsina, a village on top of a hill near Terni in Umbria. I have known her a few years now and every time I go to her place I am impressed by the perfect ease with which she mixes…

A train is rolling by outside. It’s very quiet here after dark. I’m lying on tatami mats, with the window open in a old wooden house in East Tokyo. Out there in the dark, small houses made from old wood and corrugated iron crowd around, and in the distance, the apartment blocks, built with deep…

The way we live with it all Introduction by Sean Kinnerly Portland: Chris Johanson and Johanna Jackson live their art. For them, art extends beyond the production of saleable objects to everything they do: riding bikes, growing food, doing yoga, being a positive part of their community and hanging out with their dog Raisin. A visitor…

Hidden genius New York: Known perfunctorily to many as the leader of influential bands Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is as prolific a writer and visual artist as she is a musician and performer. Widely hailed as one of the foremost pioneers of alternative culture as we know it, she has dedicated her…

A true love Milan: If the birth and subsequent explosion of Italian design in the second half of the last century is the stuff of history; if in that period, in only a few short years, the hand of the designer (they called themselves architects then) began, in tandem with industrial production, to cut a clear…

New old place The Argentinean painter Juan Tessi was born in Lima. He grew up in Chile, finished school in Buenos Aires and took his university studies in the US. He exhibited his work in Mexico, Buenos Aires, Rotterdam and London. At his 35 years, his nomadic way of life and constant moving made him…

In theory, we all know that there are certain rules to follow when moving through public space. Well, at least theoretically most of us know to how to behave, and mostly we all conduct ourselves in a different way to when we have privacy. These rules help us get along with each other. More or…

Little bears inside things Zurich: They are known for putting a cape on the United Nations Building in New York (in a collage, at least). But how do they go about dressing their own house in Zürich, Switzerland? Trix and Robert Haussmann, both architects, have lived close to the Lake of Zürich for 45 years. Opposing…

In 1982, Manoel de Oliveira, a 73-year-old Portuguese director, shot a movie entitled Visita ou Memórias e Confissões. He had directed six features by then, and at 73 he thought he was getting towards the end of his career—or the end of his life, for that matter. This film was meant to be a visit…

During the time that I am writing this, the power plant Fukushima-Daichi is continuing to spread fatal radioactive emanation that over the next few years will kill thousands of children, women, men, and animals. In an attempt to reassure the people that the contamination could be controlled, false information is given through the newspapers and—even…

The house of Benedetta Tagliabue is hidden on a small street of the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona. When observing the façades from the exterior, it’s difficult to imagine the magical nooks and crannies hidden behind them. In this house that she renovated together with her husband and professional partner at EMBT, Enric Miralles, layers of…

Ahmedabad: On a day in March this year, a jury member of the Pritzker Architecture Prize made a telephone call to the home of BV Doshi, in Ahmedabad, India. She asked, first, if he still travels—he is 90—and then went on to invite him to the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, for he had been awarded…

Recently I watched myself give birth on TV. I saw my face contort into a range of pinched expressions, none of which I had ever wanted to see, especially not on a 24 inch flat screen. The television was actually switched off, but its suspension above my delivery suite bed meant I couldn’t avoid my…

There’s no point in trying to sugar coat it. These days my apartment is a total mess. Not the sort of cool, cultivated, creative mess that you see in magazines: the kind that broadcasts the cool, cultivated, creative existence of the people that live there. Just your average, run of the mill, messy mess. Toothbrush…

One of the many joys of staying in JB’s house is having access to his library, a lifetime’s collection of ideas, interests and thoughts arranged over a wall of bookcases. In his collection, I found a copy of The Art of Rosanjin. Rosanjin Kitaoji was a highly eccentric Japanese potter famed as much for his…

Everything that Philolaos didn’t like he designed Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse:As a kid growing up, your house defines what a house is, and coming to grips with the fact that other people live in structures that are radically different from yours takes time. Yurt-dwelling Mongolians consider their tents to be the quintessential home, as do McMansion-bred kids from Florida….

I always try to stop in Hawaii before going to japan… It breaks the jet lag before hitting Tokyo in full stride. You have a chance to enjoy the ocean and the beautiful nature of Hawaii. It is the perfect pit stop. I usually go to the island of Kauai. It has beautiful beaches and you…

Not rooted and no desire to be rooted Paris: After reading his autobiography, Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond, I wandered around and did some research on Michael Lindsay-Hogg. The strong impression the book had left me with—through its fascinating story and its one-of-a-kind style—made me eager to…

I bought the flat when I was twenty. Twenty and sad. And lonely. I renovated it in a hurry, eager to get my own real home. I bought fake oak from Ikea, everything from the kitchen to the bed was in this disgusting material. When I was younger I used it as my studio too,…

In time at need, there have always been people in my life who has come through for me. So also the people in ‘The Villa’. ‘The Villa’ consists of six struggling artists all in their mid 20s. The small house is located in the north-eastern part of Stockholm. A neighbourhood packed with lawyers, doctors, other…

When I was growing up, a lot of my friends lived in communes. It was New Zealand in the 1980s. There were ponies at the communes and the kids ran around in bare-footed packs, raising hell. In summer my mother would trade fish we had caught for bottles of milk in commune kitchens and some…

Buenos Aires: Juan is an Argentine sculptor, painter and set designer, with a playful spirit and militant irony, leaving provocative footprints with his exciting sense of colour, and ethnic geometries, from the 1960s to today. Having lived in Europe for 40 years, he returned to Buenos Aires four years ago to settle in his home city….

A conversation chaired by Daniel Morgenthaler Zurich: Once we’re all up in the cloud, what will become of our books? Lovis Caputo, one half of design-slash-art duo Kueng Caputo; Lars Müller, publisher of books on design, architecture and other things; and Alexander Schärer, nowadays the S in USM, met in Zürich’s Corner College to talk about archives,…

Concept by Apartamento Studios              

Jan Lindenberg My friend Jan Lindenberg is showing me around his apartment on a cobbled, leafy street in the Neukölln district of Berlin. There’s something about this place that always impresses me: a thoughtful austerity, something German and post-materialist (Jan is a sustainability researcher at the Institute of Technology), but also Japanophile, studious, ethical and…

At the language school you made fifteen dollars an hour tutoring kids, adventurous housewives, mid-level corporate strivers, and everybody in between, almost all touchingly driven to improve their English. Two hundred Yuan for one hundred minutes, not bad, though later it was revealed the school charged six hundred Yuan, taking a big cut. Whatever, pretty…

I live with my mum in this small apartment with tatami floors. We moved to Tokyo two years ago when I was 14, from Berlin where all the apartments are huge and cheap. Therefore it was hard for me to adapt to living in a tiny room with less privacy. Just like it was hard…

This is a house in the countryside of Quinto, a small village that’s near Venice, Italy. It’s light brown with a big window on one side and a small porthole on the opposite side. There is also a trapdoor in the floor and a ladder that goes from the trapdoor to the ground below, which…

The gloomy reaction to the terrible murders of the Charlie Hebdo journalists raised the banners of freedom and democracy. But France’s largest rally since the end of the Second World War came with many unanswered questions. I’ve been living in Paris for 20 years as of this March. Elein Fleiss, who created Purple magazine in…

London: London is woven into the fabric of Martine Rose’s collections. For once, it’s not hyperbolic to claim so; in her Autumn/Winter 2020 collection, the designer included shirts and sharply tailored jacquard jackets inscribed with the words ‘Tottenham’, ‘Croydon’, ‘Tooting Bec’, and ‘Clapham Junction’, among others—all names of places the designer has lived in over…

Humor Furniture Graphic Born and raised in Milan, Luciano Consigli (1930) has been a key figure in the grapho-humoristic Italian scene since the early ‘60s, when he first founded Humor Graphic. Part book part magazine, it was a series that ran all the way into the early ‘90s. Humor Graphic has been one of the…

A conversation chaired by Alex Tieghi-Walker It is an uncomfortable truth that part of the thrill, or accomplishment, of shopping lies in the exercise of power by retail environments and the brands that commission them. Designer Faye Toogood, Marie Honda from COS and Richard McConkey of architectural firm Universal Design Studio gathered in a canal-side…

The first pieces of arts and crafts furniture I bought were two Harry Napper chairs. Though primarily a textile artist, he also designed a series of tall-back chairs around the same time as Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I became obsessed with the way the arms were constructed and how something could be from a different period but…

Home schooled Buenos Aires: One afternoon I went to a small library of some friends of mine and, upon entering, a new bag they had made caught my eye. In the centre it had a drawing of a girl reading a book that covered her face. When I asked who the illustrator was, they said, ‘Pilar…

I’ve had cats as pets my whole life and could never understand why it’s so difficult to find a decent looking cat scratcher. I can’t bring myself to buy one of those all beige carpeted cat hotels or sisal covered mini gymnasiums. And although well intentioned, the over designed corrugated cardboard models remind me too…

Locals only Buenos Aires: Gustavo Di Mario is an Argentinian self-trained photographer who, for 15 years, has been printing his fashion photos with a flavour of the local and native, faithful to the origins of the peaceful and modest neighbourhood where he was born, Ramos Mejía, where he still lives with his mother. But his roots…

Horizons of temperamental design Berlin: It’s cold in Berlin. It’s very cold. The wind accompanies, gentle yet insistent, the slippery roads, made treacherous by a heavy and silent snowfall of very light flakes. In Italy they call them ‘i giorni della merla’ (the blackbird’s days, the last three days of January), during which winter shows itself…

San Francisco: In the roaring ‘20s Bobbie’s parents—her father a lawyer, her mother a pianist—lived in a free-for-all San Francisco. The city was full of anarchists, and Bobbie’s father was a lawyer for many of them. In the ‘40s, following the Great Depression, Bobbie was left alone with her mother, Lil, who gave piano lessons in…

Youth prophet of the suburbs Moscow: Gosha Rubchinskiy is 26. He’s an average Muscovite who lives in one of the city suburbs in a huge Soviet blockhouse called ‘Khrushchyovka’. Buildings like this were built between the ‘60s and the ‘80s, and they still exist all over Russia and ex-Soviet countries including East Germany. Low ceilinged (around 250cm),…

Know thyself Paris: There I was, facing Christophe Lemaire and Sarah-Linh Tran. Because of my background, not being a fashion journalist, I thought of asking them questions about the fashion system itself, such as how it operates, to eventually find out that their work, the house they live in and their approach to life is solid and…

My house was built in 1921 in the neighbourhood of Guinardó, Barcelona. It’s of the noucentisme style, which was typical of the era. You can see this most clearly on its façade. The building’s previous inhabitant, a decorative painter, devoted himself to modifying and extending the friezes that were originally featured on the upper parts…

The Camelot Solution We heard about Camelot for the first time when Yorgo Tloupas, Editor-in-chief of Intersection magazine, visited Milan last April and told us about how incredibly cheap his rent in London, was £60 per week, while living in a beautiful huge building. Shortly after we realised it was not just Yorgo’s case but a…

I sit on the terrace and look out over the roofs of Bosa in Sardinia. On the floor I see the purple leaves of the Bougainvillea, and apart from their soft rustling, it’s very quiet. It’s always very quiet in Italy during the ‘siesta’ time. I’ve known this house for half of my life. It…

‘When I was young, my uncle brought me a vine leaf and placed it on the palm of my hand and said, ‘Touch this leaf’. It had a very delicate feel. You have to be sensitive to everything around you. You have to be sensitive to the sun, to the light, to the shadows, to…

I moved in in the winter of 2000-2001. I have lived here since then. I have worked as a graphic designer in Berlin since 2000. I have my own studio called ITF Grafikdesign. I run the label with Tim Reuscher, who lives in Hamburg. I tend to think we do a lot of interesting things….

Browsing through Marlene Acayaba’s book Residências em São Paulo: 1947-1975, we came across quite a surprise on the closing pages. The book centres on classic works by the Paulist School from the second half of the 20th century and explores their own interpretation of the Modern Movement in relation to concrete. At the end we…

Apartamento Magazine speaks about the appropriation of the space by the inhabitant, about the reflection of his/her personality at home. In short, about dwelling and its consequences. In this issue we deal with the fact of dwelling from the whole architectural process; From the project at its drawing board stages, until it is inhabited, passing…

Arturo Rhodes I met Arturo very late at night a couple of summers ago in Majorca, in the only bar of a small village by the sea that is flooded every summer by the crème de la crème of the international jet-set and the glamorous and good looking arrivistes that follow them. I met him…

‘Early man had to build with readily available local materials—canes and grasses, leaves and twigs. From these pliant and insubstantial materials he had to create a relatively permanent and structurally rigid unit’. (Di Lloyd Kahn, Shelter, by Shelter Publications, California, 1973) I’m guessing that if you were ever a kid, you have built (or helped…

The Anthroposophic colony in Dornach/Switzerland Driving from the Swiss town of Basel to the small neighbouring city of Dornach is a strange experience. You leave the speedy Swiss metropolis and dive into a strangely quiet and meditative surrounding, with people dressed in pastel colours, smiling at every stranger. They live in a kind of colony consisting…