This book is in itself a Serban Ionescu sculpture, its 68-page oversized board book format having been printed and precisely die-cut to mimic the rambling contours and dazzling colours found on the steel sculptures of this prolific New York-based, Romanian-born artist. It also doubles as a play, penned in three acts by Serban’s fellow artist and close friend James English Leary, who fully embraces Serban’s artistic approach and explores his ideas in a highly absurd series of events that feature an all-star cast of bizarre characters: Happy Lattice, Dog Bench Loaf, and Assembled Chair, to name a few.

Gathering together pieces from between 2017 and 2021, a flick through A Thing on a Table in a House transports you directly into Serban’s anthropomorphic world, one that straddles the ever-fine line separating furniture and sculpture. If one were to classify these pieces as furniture, then you’d be looking at pieces that’ve been overrun by some sort of menacing, playful poltergeist. Possessed, they are halfway gone on their transformation into something entirely unclassifiable.

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New York Living Rooms is the first instalment in Dominique Nabokov’s holy trinity of interior photography works, re-issued by Apartamento Publishing more than two decades after it was first published in 1998. Originally commissioned as a photo essay for the New Yorker in 1995, it offers a frank and intimate study of the interior living spaces of some of the city’s most fabled cultural figures, including Susan Sontag, Norman Mailer, Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Clemente, Allen Ginsberg, and Joan Didion.

With nothing added and nothing altered, Nabokov calls these images her interior ‘portraits’. Some spaces are indulgent and ostentatious, others shelter the bare necessities, but Nabokov simply records them all for her fellow voyeurs and leaves us to decipher the rest. Long out of print, this updated edition brings back to life an era of New York City history, seen through Nabokov’s original Polaroid photos and the original introduction by English poet James Fenton. It also sets the stage for the following editions in Paris and Berlin, which Apartamento will be re-issuing later in 2021.

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Inspired by the early style of Corbusier and ideas on Mediterranean architecture espoused by the likes of Bernard Rudofsky and Josep Lluís Sert, a younger generation of architects found the perfect conditions to explore the future of the Mediterranean house in Cadaqués—a small fishing village on the Spanish Costa Brava that was also home, or the summer meeting ground, for some of the past century’s greatest artistic figures, including Dalí, Picasso, Miró, and Duchamp.

In this new book, photos from the period show the distinctive style and environment of Cadaqués and 22 homes designed by Federico Correa, Alfonso Milà, José Antonio Coderch, Francesc Joan Barba Corsini, Peter Harnden, Lanfranco Bombelli, Oscar Tusquets, and Lluís Clotet. Written and edited by Nacho Alegre, it features an introduction by Oscar Tusquets and afterword by Marc Arnal also tells of the friendships and influences that existed between this group of architects, and how their architecture came to be.

By Nacho Alegre, with an introduction by Oscar Tusquets and afterword by Marc Arnal.

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APARTAMENTO COOKBOOK #5

In this most tumultuous of years, Apartamento’s back with its trusty companion to cooking, our fifth annual cookbook that in 2020 we’ve dedicated to spices and herbs, the magic, medicinal stuff of legend, the foundation of whole civilisations, and the hot and fiery but also calm and soothing starting point for all 16 recipes in this book. Whichever you need, Cookbook #5: Herbs & Spices has you covered—this year with illustrations by US artist Zebadiah Keneally.

Apartamento Cookbook #5: Herbs & Spices
Featuring: Charles Perry, Dalad Kambhu, David Zilber, Enrique Olvera, Fanny Singer, Helina Tesega, James Henry, Jekka McVicar, Kouki Watanabe, Lowena Hearn, Maria Solivellas, Omar Koreitem & Moko Hirayama, Stephen Harris, Sunita Kohli, Tara Thomas, and Tiberi Club.

Published by Apartamento Publishing S.L.
November 2020
First edition
Dimensions: 170 x 240mm
Pages: 44
Binding: hard cover + dust jacket

Original photography by Ryan Lowry. Texts by Tezontle Studio & Luis Orozco Madero, Carlota Pérez-Jofre, and Enrique Giner de los Ríos.

Published by Apartamento Publishing SL
First edition, March 2020 
Dimensions: 170×240 mm
Pages: 88 
Binding: hard cover