When people say, “Your home looks like a magazine,” we’re never quite sure if that’s a compliment or an insult. But at the very least, we’ve finally found a magazine that really does reflect most of our homes…clutter, dirty dishes and all.
Apartamento Magazine hails from both Barcelona and Milan and aims to tell “everyday stories, seen without the usual masks of look-a-like interiors perfect to the millimeter, because in real life the variables are infinite and unpredictable, since every environment has got its own dynamics and peculiarities that make it special.”
From what we can tell, this translates into pretty normal living spaces, the polar opposite of the “most interesting and innovative design hotels,” where the mag will be distributed.
The first issue isn’t currently available in the U.S., but the second issue is expected to land on our shores. If you want to buy it before then, contact the magazine here.
Coming to Terms with a Knockoff: Original vs. Reproduction Furniture Design
Monica & Austin's Charming Bungalow
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Ercol Bar Stool
True Greek Recipe: Paximadi Bread Salad with Tomatoes, Feta and Capers
True Greek Recipe: Paximadi Bread Salad with Tomatoes, Feta and Capers
hmmm...not sure if i want to see the mess - mags are about fantasy for the most part for me. i never expect my own to look as perfect but i like to see it in the photo. maybe one artful spilled glass or a few crumbs, but i wouldn't want dirty laundry or old congealed pizza in my house photos.
Actually, if someone can show real solutions to real issues, I'd be happy to see them.
It's like a fashion mag showing actual street gear rather than staged-and-airbrushed models; it has the potential to be more fun, more creative, and certainly more applicable to the space I live in every day.
Apartment Therapy has the same quality: that's what makes it special.
Dude, I've been waiting for this magazine... I saw it some months ago online and I'd like to be able to buy it here.
This is exactly what I'm interested in: real, not airbrushed homes of creative people like Mike Mills.
If anyone knows where we can buy this in the US, let me know.
BTW, another magazine features some great real-life interiors -- usually one per monthly issue -- Nylon. They've shown different fashion designers and boutique owners' homes... and interesting, quirky homes that are not necessarily trendy.
There's a thin line between discheveled and a mess. I wonder which side of the room this mag will fall on. Pretty much everyone can agree that they wouldn't let a camera crew into their home to shoot it without doing some tidying up first--even the neatest of us. I wonder in this mag if it's REALLY a mess or just a stylized mess. Personally, in my apartment I like to maintain a general degree of cleanliness that allows me to make everything perfect in 5 minutes if I get an unexpected visitor or someone drops by on short notice.
Yeah, I would like to see real solutions and just generally a different idea about how homes are supposed to look. The book Organized Living by Donna Walters said something to the effect that when you look at the mags, not only is the stuff of daily life hidden - there's no clue that it exists at all. To me, a home is supposed to be used. Whether your thing is electronics, or knitting, or cooking, or gardening, it probably involves stuff. I'd like to see the wires, or the wool, or the food processor, or the potting soil, dealt with.
Besides. If you'll permit me a tangent... my mother, an art teacher, went to this AP clinic where they were told to draw a cross on a piece of paper, the two lines perfectly straight and perfectly dividing the paper into vertical and horizontal halves - with a pencil at the end of a long stick. Every time they tried to do it, one of the instructors would come by, check with a ruler to see how close the lines were, and erase them when they deviated.
At the end of the alloted time, all of the crosses were tacked up on a wall and the teachers were asked which one they liked best. Invariably people liked the ones with the most eraser marks, because, they said, they were more interesting. You could see all these variations. The instructor said, that's something to remember when you find yourself in a creative block because you're afraid to mark on that paper and mess up. Light bulbs went on over all the heads in the room.
So sometimes it's the imperfections that make a home or a work of art more interesting. I'm not suggesting that we celebrate living like slobs. I'm just suggesting that we celebrate living.
Great post whytephoenix :)
The shots you show remind me vaguely of now-defunct Nest, though they were deliberately aiming to show shocking interiors...