The Thousands

APARTAMENTO is exactly the kind of magazine that you look at and wonder why it’s only up to issue two. Why hasn’t this magazine existed for years? It’s such a perfectly obvious idea. And such a wonderful departure from the pomp and ceremony of architecture and interior magazines (and the underwhelming pretension of Sunday newspaper magazines’ appalling two-page features on middle-aged lawyers surrounded by ‘bohemian’ vintage furniture and a North African fertility object collection). Yes, I would like to know about how a range of interesting people live. No, I’d prefer not know how rich Bondi locals pretend to live.**APARTAMENTO is attentively designed by Albert Folch Studio in Barcelona (Albert Folch is one of the four creators of the magazine), and, while the magazine has a trans-Atlantic focus, it is clearly a European venture, down to the often clumsy Euro-English. Reading it, you come to realise that this European-ness is vital to the whole. It epitomises an approach that is kind of ad-hoc, working inventively with an inherited legacy of places and things, while taking none of it for granted. It, and APARTAMENTO, is both smart and understated, real and inspiring.