Issue # 10
Archive stories

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…

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….

Sex, comics & voguing New York City: Devonté Hynes wears many masks: musician, producer, actor, nerd, comic whiz, synaesthete, sex symbol, and ostensible playboy. Today, he is perhaps best known as Blood Orange, the moniker under which he makes sexy, early ‘80s disco infused with Eastern melodies. Throughout his career, Hynes has become known for changing…

Small things big London: At 71 Albert Street, Camden Town, lives a little man called Ken Garland. He was born in Devon, in the Southwest of England, 82 years ago. As a teenager he was a conscript soldier in Germany, where he bought his first camera and learnt to speak a bit of German. When…

Movies & TV series London: I didn’t have the chance to meet Yorgos Lanthimos in person. We did this conversation over the phone, with him sitting in his neat and bright pad in London and me hiding in my brother’s cavernous bedroom trying not to get... Read more

A ceramic legend Stockholm: Ask pretty much any Swede, and even those that have been living under a rock for the last 60 years would probably still be familiar with the ceramic artist Lisa Larson. Today in her 80s, Lisa is probably as close you can get to a national ceramic legend. I, as many others, grew…

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….

Under the radar & over the top New York: Jim Walrod is the most famous interior designer you have never heard of. Since opening his first shop on a desolate block on Lafayette Street in 1987, he has developed relationships with the widest range of legendary New York characters. If you’re an old-school rapper, graffiti artist,…

Queen of Ndebele art Weltevreden: She may be a celebrated international artist whose work has been exhibited alongside the likes of Warhol, Hockney, and Rauschenberg, but Esther Mahlangu remains relatively obscure in her own country. It’s hard to find South Africans who know her well. Indeed, it’s hard to actually find her at all, living as…

A day in the strife Los Angeles: The doyen of Southern California punk photography, Edward Colver vividly and thoroughly covered its heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with countless now-classic records featuring his indelible images. Iconic pictures such as Chuck Burke flipping over the crowd on the back of Wasted Youth’s ‘Reagan’s In’ LP,…

DIS lifestyle options New York City: David Toro and Solomon Chase are boyfriends, collaborators and two of the founding members/editors of DIS magazine. Since DIS’s launch in 2010 the online magazine has caused a stir, setting forth a definitive new look and editorial position that encapsulates the attitude of a generation that grew up with the…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

I find a little bit of a mess relaxing, so I have to make an effort not to clean up when someone comes over. Of course I don’t like dust and I hate mould, but some things lying around give a room character. There are a lot of things on a particular side table we…

Outside my living room window, the David Childs and Daniel Libeskind Freedom Tower has been rising, for the past year or so, to its full symbolic height of 1,776 feet. Inside my living room, a much smaller, though in my humble and, admittedly, heavily biased opinion, a much more imaginative tower rises—and falls and rises…

It’s not nice to admit to ourselves that we’re swayed by material things when it comes to matters of the heart, but early on in a relationship I can be instantly turned off by certain things—futons; Sony PlayStations; an excess of sporting paraphernalia. It’s not that these possessions are a measure of status: it’s that…

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….

The thing to know about Rachel is that she’s a natural. Like a young Gena Rowlands, she plays each character with charisma and integrity. She really puts herself out there, and is exactly who she wants to be. As a person Rachel is sparkly and warm with good, wholesome values. Rachel is the wife and…