Issue # 14
Archive stories

We embarked from Braddock, Pennsylvania, where we stayed at a former convent now a rooming house for idealists attempting to turn Braddock into something it isn’t and probably never will be again. Though the steel mill is still operating, barely, Braddock is basically a broken-down ghost town, despite the efforts of a small band of...

Concept by Ana Dominguez & Omar Sosa            

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...

Welcome to the empire of the generalised rebellion Grenoble: In the winter of 2013—after a long trip from Barcelona on a very cold morning—I was walking in the streets of Grenoble, not really knowing where I had to go. I got another SMS that, again, ignored my request for an address: ‘Get some whisky and beer’. I...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The advantage of being a team Berlin: Birgitta Homburger and Florian Lambl are an art director/graphic design team in Berlin. With their studio, Lambl/Homburger, the couple and their eight employees work for furniture makers like Flötotto and Mattiazzi, Germany’s oldest music magazine, Spex, the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, and the New...

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...

‘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...

It all started when I began to read books about adventure and sailing cruises. I was a teenager and completely fascinated by the life philosophy of those great oceanic navigators. I already knew how to handle a boat and had been sailing in regattas since I was a child. However, despite sailing every possible weekend,...

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...

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 other day I stood in the kitchen of a little house in the quiet countryside, baking an apple cake. I looked out the window to the apple tree in my backyard, whence the apples came. After a while though, the feeling of accomplishment and country kitchen triumph faded into the realisation that I am...

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...

I would coach but I wouldn’t kill the umpire New York City: The artist Raymond Pettibon lives in what has become a polarising structure on the Lower Manhattan skyline—Frank Gehry’s first residential skyscraper, simply called ‘New York’. Although he says he enjoys the views from his 57th-floor perch and the impeccable amenities, he readily admits to...

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...