45/2025: The poetics of living

Image © Jose 2025

I love physical paper magazines, I’ve always loved them. In the many past lives I’ve had, one of the few constants was always having some magazines around me. Both times I founded design studios, there was always a large area for magazines,  not only so-called design magazines, but from robotics to economy, from crafts to the universe: anything and everything that could provide inspiration. If there were a hidden counter keeping track of how much I’ve spent on them, I’d be embarrassed. Even when I’ve cut off everything else, there are always a few that pass the essentials filter.

Right now, I’m enjoying getting to know two magazines that, at first glance, look almost identical but are, in truth, quite different: Never Too Small and Apartamento. From afar, on the table, they might look like the same thing. They both measure a bit under 7” × 10”, a sort of B5-ish format, with roughly the same number of pages (238 / 283). Both have glossy covers with textured, embossed details and both are enigmatic about what they put on the cover.

Never Too Small is newer, Australia-born, YouTube-first, then book + quarterly magazine. Focused on tiny spaces, strong architectural logic, lots of practical detail. The tone: calm, solution-oriented, sustainability-tinged. Apartamento is Barcelona-born, print-first, a cult interiors magazine; any size space, as long as it feels personal and lived-in. The tone: literary, idiosyncratic, relationship-driven. In short, one is obsessed with the spaces, the other with the people living in them, one focused on the how, the other on the who. Both are inspiring, both instructive. They share traits I enjoy: anti-showroom (though still a bit show-off), committed to lived-in spaces, showing how everyday creative people live (not just the mega-artists and designers ). They’re both independent and part of the Print Is Not Dead movement.

In simple terms, Never Too Small might feature an article about an abandoned 45 m² third-floor Madrid apartment turned into a bright creative haven, while Apartamento would go for “Lúcia and Diego, paint, dust, light on the third-floor approach.” One is fascinated by clever design details and the architect’s rationale; the other by how they met, where they found that absurdly weird piece, the language literary and metaphorical. What I love about these two magazines is that they mirror my own state of being when it comes to space. I’m obsessed with how to make things work, but also with what and why things are the way they are , the poetics of objects and stories.

One of the things I’m noticing, which places me somewhere between the two magazines, is this idea that a lived-in house feels different yet the same, regardless of how long people have lived there. Someone who’s spent a lifetime in one place creates a layered reality, scattered but organized, everything landed for a reason, every object with a story, even one of abandonment. But then you might have a twenty-five-year-old living in a rental for just two years, and that place is also full of layered meaning and chaotic storytelling. The mask in the first house reminds the couple of their honeymoon to Bali; the same mask, in another home, reminds its owner of the morning they saw it lying on top of the trash behind a bar. Both stories are lived, both full of meaning that transcends time. It levels things and puts the person in charge, while the objects have a history, the person living with them creates the next chapter.

I’m now living with many objects that belonged to the previous owner, some large, some very small, all still here for a reason. Some might say he kept too many things, even worthless things, but as I go through what he left behind, nothing feels without reason or purpose. Even the 123 wood and metal files make sense when you realize he was a sculptor who turned them into stone-carving tools. I’m going through these objects, tools, components almost one by one. I don’t know their stories, but the moment I choose them, clean them, fix them, and place them somewhere among other objects that are mine, they become part of my story, my life. I may have found that mask beside the trash, but when I bring it into my home, that becomes its story, another chapter that may not even end with me.