Issue # 9
Archive stories

One family, one room Helsinki: Until I turned twenty I lived with my grandparents in a small town in Southern Finland. My grandfather Yrjö is an interior designer and my grandmother Irmeli is a graphic artist. My grandfather taught me the philosophy behind functionalism, how to climb trees and how to do a handstand. I…

From above the shop London: While the traditional bookshop feels the urge to recreate a new retail landscape for selling books in today’s economic climate, we sense a prominent resurgence of the highly independent bookshop. And no one else seems to translate this fable of rare book selling better than the Irish-born London-based Conor Donlon. Conor…

An increasing number of olfactive signatures are created in order to identify brands and businesses in all areas. What to think of a totally perfumed society? We asked trend forecaster Li Edelkoort to sit down with French researcher and affect everything Jean Abou and NY based designer of odours Ramdane Touhami, under the glass roof…

One bright, spring morning, five years ago, we happened to be visiting a neighbour whose chickens were busily clucking over nests of chicks. We returned home with a cardboard box of fluffy black feathers and a love story that has lasted years. The first two chicks grew to be two roosters called Jean Jacques and…

At the language school you made fifteen dollars an hour tutoring kids, adventurous housewives, mid-level corporate strivers, and everybody in between, almost all touchingly driven to improve their English. Two hundred Yuan for one hundred minutes, not bad, though later it was revealed the school charged six hundred Yuan, taking a big cut. Whatever, pretty…

Mental as anything Sydney: I can’t speak for the rest of the world, but if you’re Australian, you’ve probably heard of Reg Mombassa. Since coming into existence in 1951 Reg, aka Chris O’Doherty, has infected everything he touches with his askew, laconic sensibility. From suburban landscapes to Dadaist creations with religious motifs—his work is coveted by…

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…

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…

A modern Hellenist Athens: On my way to meet Nanos Valaoritis, I realised that I had lost the note with his contact details. I was in the area, but I couldn’t remember the street number; I stopped at the square nearby and walked into a bar. I saw a lady at the cashier, went over and…

Mexico City in 2-D Mexico City: At the moment Mexico City is one of the most fun places in the world. There is a new energy, and new sense of freedom fuelled by a new generation’s rejection of the long dominating religious and political status quo. This has created a feeling of openness and experimentation, sexual…

Book Cornered London: Settling down didn’t come naturally to Duncan Fallowell. He bought this apartment (his first and only) in London’s leafy Notting Hill just before his 40th birthday ‘in a panic’. Describing himself as a vagabond soul, Fallowell had spent the previous two decades travelling the world as a writer and journalist, interviewing and often…

The way we live with it all Introduction by Sean Kinnerly Portland: Chris Johanson and Johanna Jackson live their art. For them, art extends beyond the production of saleable objects to everything they do: riding bikes, growing food, doing yoga, being a positive part of their community and hanging out with their dog Raisin. A visitor…

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…

Paris: ‘Fucking amazing’ kept deceitfully coming from people around, referring whether to some future project description forced to be made up and spat, some Fancy tune I would deliberately drop in default provocation or a 15” long sunbeam. For hell’s sake it was about time to dispel this lame curse; I had to rescue myself from…

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…

When I moved to New York in the summer of 2010 I didn’t have any friends. I couldn’t afford my own apartment, so I made the novice mistake of moving in with a random stranger I met on Craigslist. You hear horror stories about Craigslist roommates—OCDs, junkies, money scammers, rapists– but still, I thought, how bad…

            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 Apartamento it’s a duty, involving serious research, lengthy shopping trips,…

There is something about stairs. Some of them we want to run up rapidly, whilst others we just want to dance down. In our everyday walks through life, they inspire and influence our behaviours and beings. Their distinct design brings forth subtle emotions hidden under layers of unawareness. Stairs are everywhere, all the time. Looking…

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…

If I for some reason talk about my background as a dancer, people tend to react positively surprised. When I say I was into contemporary dance most people start to look confused, which usually has me adding something like ‘that means I was rolling on the floor a lot’, to give them some sort of…

Genpei Akasegawa discovered the first ‘Thomasson’ in 1972. Returning to work from lunch he noticed something peculiar about an otherwise unremarkable staircase. Leading from the footpath and running alongside an old hotel, this humble stone stair was only about one-metre high. It had two facing flights and a new timber balustrade flanking the open side….

I may be stating the obvious here, but in my house, as a general rule, we sleep in the bedroom, wash up in the bathroom, cook food in the kitchen and so on. As with most rules there are exceptions, of course. On special occasions we get to have cookies and juice in bed; on…

One of my earliest memories is in the bath. My mother is sitting on the closed toilet with her one year old wedding cake sitting in her lap and I am two. There are flowers moulded out of chocolate decorating the top, she breaks one off and we share it. The bath is at the…

Annabelle reminds me of a contemporary version of Doris Day, in a romantic comedy. Her apartment; small and cheery in its decor, is a nook in the sky. It’s like a small boat that’s been cast optimistically out to sea: the vantage point is just a sliver of a view of the Hudson river, sandwiched…

I love our life. For the first time I can really say that. We battle so hard to express ourselves in this world, god knows it’s hard but we love to fight. These pictures describe best what has become more and more our comfort zone. It’s a perfect reflection of what we are and what…

From the time I left home until I was 34 I moved 35 times. Since then my moving gradually slowed down. For 11 years I’ve been living in a loft-like house in Paris above the Montmartre Cemetery. This is longer than I’ve ever lived in any place in my life. It’s also the first time…