Issue # 30
Archive stories

Los Angeles: For most of Solange Knowles’ adult life, she has had the same loft; a quiet, serene oasis set above the 24-hour buzz of downtown Hollywood. The space is a mix of organic modernism, her own furniture designs, and Black art and vernacular objects she has collected over the years. It is the private…

Milan: Many creatives of Italy’s bygone era are referred to as ‘Architetto’, irrespective of whether or not they’re really architects. Hence, when we met Ugo for the first time, that is what we called him too. He responded promptly, ‘No no! Non sono un’architetto!’ This is Ugo in his essence. It’s been his life’s pursuit to…

Vienna: When I arrive at the home of artist Marina Faust, I’m immediately aware of my location on the Ring in the centre of Vienna. The Burggarten, with its magical Butterfly House, is across the street, the Kunsthistorische Museum is around the corner, and the souvenir shop below sells images of Empress Elisabeth on silk…

New York City: Mel Ottenberg is the proud owner of one of Manhattan’s most iconic bedrooms. The all grey, late-70s-inspired sex den has wall-to-wall carpeting over a built-in queen bed located directly in the centre of the room. His closet doors are mirrored in a smoky glass and his ceiling is lacquered ivory. A bold statement,…

Gurugram: I was born and raised in Barking, East London, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, first generation born to my immigrant Sikh parents, who emigrated from farming villages close to Chandigarh, Punjab, to make a new life in the UK. Growing up, there were not many references for my family in mainstream media; it was easy…

Flash floods in and around Jaipur, Rajasthan, created sudden chaos in 1976–77. The only way to get to Jaipur was by air. Defence Ministry PR chartered a helicopter for photographers to fly in and capture the havoc played by the floods. I was one of them. The helicopter only covered 250 kilometres and the flying…

New York City: On a bright Saturday morning in New York City, Jon Gray is thinking about his next meal. ‘Peace beloved’, the text on my phone reads. The time: 10.43am. We are scheduled to meet at Jon’s crib in the Bronx that afternoon. I know this is a query about lunch. ‘Peace good morning’, I…

London: It’s been almost a year since I’ve seen Ángela in person and two since I’ve spent a lot of time in London. It feels weird, having lived there for so many years and travelled there so often. But Covid and Brexit have built a wall that physically separates us and many other people. Ángela was…

B+ is a collaborative architectural practice currently led by Arno Brandlhuber, Olaf Grawert, Jonas Janke, Roberta Jurcic, and Jolene Lee. It is, as such, a new office, but at the same time it has been active since the ‘90s under different iterations. Since the beginning of his career 30 years ago, Arno Brandlhuber has not…

It’s the mid ‘90s, before Myspace, Facebook, cell phones, Google. Carla lives in San Francisco, Ed in Chicago. For the past six months they have been lovers across every media available to them: dial-up internet (poets’ listserv and email), landlines with their exorbitant long-distance fees, the US mail, and in person (aka ‘mere life’). To…

New York City: I met artist Clayton Patterson in the early ‘90s when I was living with the godfather of street art, Richard Hambleton, and publisher Steven Neumann. I slept on the sofa in the living room, which Richard used as his painting studio. The place looked like an active crime scene. When Richard was broke,…

Posadas: As the rest of Spain starts flirting with autumn, the southern region of Andalusia isn’t ready to leave behind the scorching temperatures. We’re in the birthplace of flamenco, a land full of bullfighting aficionados, traditional fairs, and religious processions. In-between this rooted folklore and liturgy is where Alejandro Palomo has kept challenging assumptions defining menswear…

Tbilisi: We first met Levan Koguashvili on the sixth floor of a 19th-century apartment building that overlooks the Rioni River in the Royal Quarter of Kutaisi, Georgia. It was Valentine’s Day, close to midnight, and my girlfriend and I had stumbled home from Palaty restaurant after several bottles of saperavi wine. I suppose you could say…

Oakland: I’m driving to the Bay Area for a number of reasons, one of which is to meet and hang out with the artist Woody De Othello, someone whose work I’ve been following and admiring for some time. Woody lives and works here, though his work seems to be everywhere recently: in Los Angeles, New York,…

Tucson: Kitty Brophy epitomises how perception and reality are often at odds, how assumptions can be frequently wrongheaded, and the ways superficial attributes can mask deeper, darker, much more interesting depths of the soul. Behind and beyond the chic demeanour and sunny disposition is a person committed to her powerful, uncompromising art, belying the impression some…

Havana: I met Wilfredo Prieto in March 2014 at the Marais speakeasy, La Candelaria. On that day, Prieto went for dinner after a conversation with the artist Gabriel Orozco, which I transcribed and which was later published in a collection by Mousse. That text would be part of Prieto’s first retrospective catalogue and my first assignment…

Colombo: When Channa Daswatte and I start talking, I don’t have the opportunity to ask a question first. Channa—one of Sri Lanka’s pre-eminent contemporary architects and a disciple of Geoffrey Bawa—is almost disarmingly generous with his time and his stories, and immediately launches into friendly conversation. It makes everything easier, in no small part because this…

Paris: It was the last week of summer and we were going to eat lamb chops. The rest of us were dressed down, practically schlubby with exhaustion; it was the end of holidays. But Yasmine Dubois showed up in a pink silk dress, her long braids swaying. She wore knee-high white lace socks that tied…

We’ve been growing together. We’re in the age of Apartamento now. I say this casually, like the magazine-cum-institution itself. We’re celebrating every day, whether or not we’re living well or easily. Today is no different. There is a collective ‘we’ in Apartamento. But it is probably hard to talk about stuff through the lens of…

Alpha misfits inspire me most. I love the story of a confident outcast who didn’t fit into the life they were born into. Their biological families may not have seen value in their creativity, desires, or vision. This just made them more determined to make their own place in the world—sometimes at great personal cost….

The houses photographed in design and lifestyle magazines are all kitsch. Even when they are minimal, essential, of a measured modernity, of a refined simplicity. Even when they present sets of furniture and objects, books and ornaments, works of art and plants, perfect, without flaw, without excess, without errors of taste. Since the mid-19th century,…

A home is constructed with tools and building materials. ‘Home’ is also a construct, an idea or image we make in our minds. My home is not just the structure in which I live. It is the architecture of my life; everything that makes my life possible and joyful. This means living, working, and playing…

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…

I was 27 when I was invited to write for issue #1 of Apartamento. I was very excited about it and my different thoughts blended into a shapeless mass. I thought of writing about my neighbour’s immense Bang & Olufsen square television from the ‘90s and carefully selected collection of Scandinavian mid-century classic objects and…

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…

t’s always intriguing to step into someone’s home and find the unexpected. I think that’s because we tend to make assumptions about the people we meet, drawing conclusions about their personal style and the books they might keep on their shelves. Or we may believe we understand them from their public personas and track records,…