Issue # 3
Archive stories

Simplicity New York City: For many people JD Samson represents a sweet mystery. All the fans of her bands and achievements (Le Tigre, Peaches band, Men, or any of the other many things she’s been involved with), or just her androgynous persona (I would normally forget to mention that simply because it seems so natural) seem unable...

I was born in Manhattan but my family moved to the suburbs of New Jersey when I was very young. We still spent a lot of time in the city, especially visiting friends on the Upper West Side. At that time my impression of the Upper West Side was that it was a kind of...

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...

Up early, eating a banana, walking over to Brownstones with its pirated (almost exactly like Starbucks) logo to say hi to the painfully sweet and smiling girls, the same two who worked there three years ago. Three years from now they’ll probably still be there. Got a coffee in the too thin cup that makes...

          A tribute to Ettore Sottsass Special thanks to Marmoles Sant Esteve We’ve all enjoyed the childish game of making a stack out of seemingly inappropriate materials, and though it might be more for kids, it’s nevertheless a lot of fun. For most of us it’s an occasional pastime, but for...

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...

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...

Karin Thermaenius Home of: Karin & Bertil Thermaenius, 1 cat and 5 hens since 1975 Date: February 30th, 2009 Location: Bromma in Stockholm, Sweden. A 2-floor house (b. 1927) with 4 rooms and a garden. Indoor plants in total: 32 on ground floor, 2 on second Species: Living room; 4 Christmas Cactus, 3 Clavias, 1...

This year sees the 20th anniversary of two of the most pioneering and influential design institutions in the world, which have both continuously redefined how we see, analyse and understand design. To mark the occasion we have met in The Design Museum with Deyan Sudjic, director of The Design Museum in London, Alexander von Vegesack,...

Tudor village in a warehouse New York City: On the outskirts of Brooklyn you find a world of enormous factory buildings, which some old timers refer to as the East Williamsburg Industrial Park. There is a handful of companies here still in operation but most buildings have far out lived their original use. The streets...

We arrived in Basel on a rainy afternoon. We had been driving from Milan with Marco’s parents’ car and we were tired. Marco had arranged for us to stay on a couch of some friends’ friend’s place. The flat was nice and cosy, but of the kind where all the furniture is new from Ikea...

It is said that there are magnetic cores of the earth, and similarly, in every story there also appears to be a vital centre. Houses, corners, a bench, the fifth floor of an office building, a bar, the road back home, a boat, a table in a café… Anonymous corners of a street, places you...

I came to Bed Stuy ten years ago because I’d taken the wrong train and I never left. I think that was in 1998. I’d lived in Manhattan since ’77 and had been to Brooklyn, at the most four times during those twenty years. At that time, I figured out that I had lived in...

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...

binocolo                  

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...

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...

Flashing pink notes, quite hysterical, written here and there—‘THINGS TO DO’, ‘THINGS NOT TO DO’—all over yellow Post-Its. I’ve never thought of them as threatening, rather funny instead. Antonio and I had never met. He had left me his house keys after hours chatting on the phone, a few interviews; more questions, I’d say. Probably...

In early July of last year, my roommate, Piper, and I moved into our two-bedroom apartment on the corner of a main drag in Chinatown. As sublets in New York are expensive and my neighbourhood is a popular tourist destination (and I owe a lot of favours), my bed gets international traffic. And being that...

The house we live in has a name, it’s called ‘Ma Mere’. It was built about 50 years ago by the owner’s father, who was Chinese. After his wedding, he built two houses: the one where our owner Miss T. lives, located in Daikanyama, which is a very comfortable area of Tokyo that became a...

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...

The celebrity of freedom The actor Paulo César Pereio has a huge participation in the Brazilian scenic arts. He has been a controversial person all the way back from the small city he originates, Alegrete, Rio Grande do Sul. He acted with and dated a few of the most notorious Brazilian actresses, which has only...

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 house is repulsive. If you saw it, you wouldn’t believe that any well-minded human being could inhabit a place so vile. The floors are lined with rotting garbage. Most of the windows are either smashed or covered in graffiti. There’s no heating or hot water. The whole place smells like a combination of wet...