Stories by name

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…

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…

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

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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)….

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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….

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

David Douglas Duncan will be 100 years old next January. Over the last century he has seen a lot, most of the time through the lens of his Nikon. From the Battle of Okinawa to the Korean War and, yes, a lot of domestic scenes from the time he spent together with Pablo Picasso—from 1957…

New York City: New York City is the birthplace of the namesake-mega brand, pioneered by Ralph (Lauren) in the late ‘60s and perfected by a handful of designers who have used their personas and lifestyles to embed their clothes with aspiration, so that the very mention of their names—Calvin, Donna, Tommy, and even Tory—evokes an…

Ten years ago, Kings Cross was a grotty area of decaying houses and 8am hookers. The arrival of the Eurostar saw the area bulldozed, and no doubt the new Kings Cross, slowly growing around us, will be clean, branded and homogenous. Meanwhile, though, it’s an industrial wasteland, acres of nothing where great machinery churns through…

A conversation chaired by Jonathan Olivares While video has never been more accessible, the sets created by cinema and TV continue their parallel and intertwined evolution with the physical spaces of everyday life. Production designer KK Barrett, set decorator Claudette Didul, and production designer and recent founder of the home furnishings shop LA Storefront, Coryander…

Madrid: Fernando Higueras (Madrid, 1930–2008) was an architect of powerful temperament. Over his lifetime he generated an extensive body of work with a radical personality—one that kept him on the fringe of trends. Despite having an overly mischievous and uncomfortable character for the strict environment of the academic world, his work drew global attention. From…

The final chapter of Home describes an important distinction. The way that we arrange and use our homes is governed by fashion, by custom, and by culture. Fashions change relatively quickly. Chintz, for example, was fashionable in the 17th century, distinctly unfashionable in the 19th (‘chintzy’ meant cheap or vulgar), and fashionable again in the…

Each time we come back, it’s the same bliss. The road high above the sea gives you the sense of diving into the sky. Then it’s a drive down a winding road carved into the cliff on the wilder side of the island, so narrow that you’d rather not cross another car. We never remember…

After passing through innumerable homes, each with their own unforgettable memories, I’ve now got a little piece of each collected together in this space. In the past, when my apartments got too small, I lent out a lot of my possessions to friends for safekeeping. Now at last, in Ensanche, these objects tell my story…

Tokyo: Working as a graphic designer in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and then becoming a painter and contemporary artist in the ‘80s, Tadanori Yokoo continues to send Japanese creations out onto the world stage, expressing his strong sense of individuality to his heart’s content. In 1972, his solo exhibition ‘Graphics by Tadanori Yokoo’ was held at…

A unique legacy across three generations Sometimes the best things in life happen by chance. Our trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico was really one of those moments, one in which you really didn’t know what you were about to experience but you could sense that it would remain with you forever. Early last year…

There are houses which, seen from the outside, appear small. Then you go inside and it is as if you have stepped through an enchanted doorway. Behind the door, everything is vast. Inside, the seemingly small house suddenly becomes as large as the cosmos of a life that has blown open boundaries. A blending together…

Potter & weaver Cornwall: Penhale Jakes is the home, pottery and weaving studio of Nic and Jackie Harrison, lifelong friends of my family, who 37 years ago moved to Cornwall to dedicate their lives to their crafts. As children, my sister and I spent many a day with them either covered in clay or tangled in…

Concept by Ana Dominguez & Omar Sosa        

Pittsburgh: The sculpture of Thaddeus Mosley started with an appreciation of the wooden figures that appeared in Scandinavian design, a binding element that brought together the interiors he saw in books and department store displays. These images sparked in Thaddeus the idea that he too could try his hand as a sculptor. Looking also at…

Auerhouse New York City: The first time I met Tauba was also the first time I was introduced to her Soho apartment. I was staying there with one of her best friends and I had an absurd amount of bags. It was my first trip back to New York after moving to Germany seven months before….

Terence Koh Terence Koh re-imagines the world wherever he goes, generally in white. The monochrome is perhaps the ultimate trope for Terence, for its various incarnations as interpretable abstract gesture and ‘dumb’ minimalist object. Terence insists that you do not differentiate between his art, his work, and his Margiela Incognitos; hence Asia Song Society (ASS),…

When we saw it for the first time it was the extension of a small private clinic: doctors’ offices, a room for x-rays, rooms for the nurses on the upper level. The spaces were all small, and the overall effect was quite jarring. But we liked the place because of the terrace and the garden…

New York City: Ted Muehling is not only one of my most beloved friends, he is also one of the most gifted designers in the world today. Ask any great designer or architect worth their salt and they will concur. The respect is unanimous. As sometimes happens with extraordinary talents, Muehling is a hider—success, hype, and…

Portland: I’ve gotten to know many brilliant talents throughout my life and career, but my friend Thomas Lauderdale is truly one of the most amazing, gifted, and unique people I have ever encountered. Best known as the visionary who, 25 years ago, founded the inimitable little orchestra from Portland, Oregon, called Pink Martini, Thomas still…

The house we live in is in the beautiful city of Bienne. We are about 6-8 friends living in it, among them my girlfriend and Eliot. It’s a nice old house and rent is cheap. Around us they are tearing down the other houses and build new ugly ones. So it’s only a matter of…

For too many people, being happy at home is pretty much an abstract idea, something they can’t know or imagine, until it appears on some taste maker’s must-have list, or in a magazine, or reposted on Tumblr. A home sweet home is not curated or produced by acquiring a perfect arrangement of chairs, lamps and…

Palau: On a flight from Barcelona to Olbia early in the morning, we catch the sunrise over the northern part of Sardinia, the island’s astonishingly vivid peachy-pink granite reflecting the sun’s early-morning rays. Touching down, we then drive to Palau, where the Italian architect Alberto Ponis and his wife, AnnaRita Zalaffi, receive us at their home….

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…

Around the world in several thousand objects London: Jamaican-born Terry Ellis is a fervent collector and has spent the past two decades as a buyer for Tokyo-based Fennica, a brand dedicated to bridging the gap between design and craft. His curation of the store is first-rate, combining Japanese handicraft with contemporary and traditional craft from Europe, so…

Our house was elephantine. It was a big, gabled bungalow supported by pillars that stood in the centre of a fast-growing lawn, flanked by rambutan and banana trees. To its left and right were identical houses and identical lawns, and somewhere behind each house was an incongruous hump, about five metres long and two metres…

New York City: At 2am in the middle of a fun-filled Saturday night that’s no where close to ending, the next stop would have to be Montrose Ave, an unassuming street in the Puerto Rican section of Williamsburg on the edge of both Bed-Stuy and Bushwick. Looking at a group of quiet row houses you wonder,…

Copenhagen: Have you ever compared your routines to those of others and wondered how Bohemian your life is? Sara Sachs and Frederik Jacobi are the most Bohemian couple I know, they’re laid back, but make absolutely no compromises. They live part time in L.A., and part time in an old bunker in Copenhagen’s harbour together…

From Jasper Morrison’s tape collection I should confess that it’s not a collection at all, just as many nice tapes as we could find for an exhibition we planned for our shop in London. Having a tape collection sounds a bit sad to me, I imagine a 30 year-old Japanese guy who lives with his…

Over the past five years, due to a break-up, a change of neighbourhood, a search for a larger space, then an even larger space, and a move to a new city, I ended up moving apartments six times. All but the last move involved building or taking down an interior wall, so drywall, steel studs and…

Heather Boo is a singer/songwriter/musician whose innocence and passion for her music project, BEAÛ, is enchanting. Long and lithe, with the grace and elegance of a swan, Heather’s dreamy presence evokes Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’. Claudia Schwalb (Heather’s mother, with whom she lives) is one of those glamorous, passionate, bohemian painters who was raised in New…

The dominatrix I ask the dominatrix if she ever brings the men she dates back to her apartment. ‘Here? Oh God, no,’ she says. ‘I mean, just look at the place. I couldn’t. Any man in his right mind would run for the hills’. The dominatrix, Dee, stands with her back arched in a pair…

Paz De La Huerta is beautiful, impossibly cute, tempestuous, and candid. It’s disarming. When I meet her, she’s got her hair piled up in a leftover style from the night before, no doubt one of the many premiere events she’s been attending. This 26 year old innocent is very accomplished as an actress, and has…

portfolio Tender Barcelona Originally published in Apartamento Magazine Issue 10, 2011-12 A portfolio by Aurora Altisent Introduction and photography by Nacho Alegre Despite seemingly out dated, all these places were drawn from real life in the ‘70s and ‘80s, showing real interiors and buildings as they were at the time. Certainly they were selected with a high…

Well… free… okay… so you have to buy the paper and pay for the copies yourself, but the design is free. I like the idea of giving away stuff for free. I have always liked making presents for birthdays or other occasions. There is something innocent about presents that makes them better than stuff bought…

Julio Iglesias is a fine artist that in the sixties decided to take on an ambitious project where he would embody a successful singer, always tanned and surrounded by curiosities such as the fact that by contract his left angle cannot be shot neither in photos nor in television. The farce went too far due…

My mother’s husband was a painter. Every Saturday he met other friends, also artists, to paint and discuss each other’s work. The eldest of the group provided the studio. The studio was lost amongst the gardens of his house, on the outskirts of the city. I spent many Saturdays of my childhood there. The place…

Our studio has recently been commissioned to transform a 16th century traditional Basque house into two dwellings. When you face a project of this kind, more factors than usual come into play. You rarely deal with a tabula rasa, and sometimes the context is the background; however, in cases like this, its presence is so powerful…