Stories by name

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Interior design magazines tend to be the perfect setting for degrading architecture into something mediocre. In the name of decorators and interior designers, architecture is painted up and disguised to become just another piece in a vulgar game. Architecture is everything. In other words, it is understood as a whole, as a process involving many…

I love our life. For the first time I can really say that. We battle so hard to express ourselves in this world, god knows it’s hard but we love to fight. These pictures describe best what has become more and more our comfort zone. It’s a perfect reflection of what we are and what…

Barcelona: Unless you were very rich or very poor, my generation in Barcelona grew up surrounded by a very specific and limited number of design objects. Since Spain was a relatively poor country, design wasn’t really imported and sold until more recently. But in the ‘60s and ‘70s a few crazy young guys started companies to…

Émigré on tour Sète: It was a warm day in July and I was finally face-to-face with Omar Souleyman outside of his hotel room in Sète, a small town in the south of France. He was due to perform at a music festival a few hours after our interview. My tailbone was still sore from the…

Ai Weiwei People talk about the purpose of life, but I don’t think that my life has any innate purpose, nor does anyone else’s life. Living is about experiencing the world, fulfilling your curiosities and expressing yourself. Everyone has a different approach to living and to expression. But regardless of method, we all strive to…

It was love at first sight. Under the bridge, close to the water, an old abandoned chandelier factory with its trash on landscape. Mountains of old wires and electrical dust. Paint lakes. With one big skylight. A tiny toilet and a huge iron sink. Brick walls, wood-beam ceilings and concrete floors. We got together with…