PIN–UP 24, THE MENTAL ISSUE: AN ANNOUNCEMENT AND A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

“The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world,” James Baldwin once wrote. While architecture and design are usually thought of in terms of their physical existence on Earth, that existence is always the result of a mental process, a leap of faith the creator takes in order to share his or her vision — architecture and design are a bridge between that individual dream and the shared lived experience. And the spaces they create continue to occupy, and sometimes shape, our minds long after we’ve been exposed to them — the walls of the house we grew up in, our grandmother’s favorite chair, the first club we went to, our first lover’s apartment. Their presence is burned into our brains, a testament to the role of architecture and design in our psychological development. And it doesn’t all have to be built and made: as a direct extension of our psyche, drawings sometimes have a more lasting impact than any physical structure — just ask the early 20th-century Futurists, or the more recent wave of Instagram “architects” who create digital images exclusively for social media. In the flatness of the Internet age’s constant stream of content — double tap to like — it’s important to combat the tyranny of aesthetic algorithms and delve deep into our subconscious. Because the lines between what’s real and what’s fantasy are not, and never were, clean cut. PIN–UP 24 is an expedition into the mental, a celebration of the plurality of perception, and a voyage into the deepest corners of many brilliant minds. Enjoy the trip.”

Felix Burrichter
Editor/Creative Director

PIN–UP 24, Spring Summer 2018, featuring:

AMANDA LEVETE

With a range of new global projects to her name, this British architectural powerhouse has decidedly come into her own.
Interview by Felix Burrichter
, Photography by Mathilde Agius.

JONATHAN OLIVARES AND DOZIE KANU

One of the design industry’s leading voices meets one of its brightest young talents to talk the legs off a chair.

Portraits by Ian Markell.

FRIDA ESCOBEDO

This erudite Mexican ingenue brings economy of form to complex architectural ideas.

Interview by Eva Munz, Portraits by Dorian Ulises López Macías.

WILLIAM SCOTT

With his boundless imagination, this self-taught “architect” conjures hybrid utopias where peace and Diana Ross reign supreme.
Interview by Michael Bullock
, Portraits by Daniel Trese.

Also in the issue:
A 24-page portfolio of mental furniture including work by the likes of Matt Ager, Dora Budor, Archille Castiglioni, Christophe Delcourt, Elias Hansen, Paul Kopkau, Hannah Levy, Mary Little, Rich Mnisi, Jessi Reaves, Andy Robertson, René Roubíček, Chris Schanck, Bořek Šípek, Soft Baroque, Ian Stell, Sam Stewart, Katie Stout, Zhipeng Tan, Anna Uddenberg, Wentrceck + Zebulon, and Casja von Zeipel; the drawings of Pezo von Ellrichshausen; the surreal landscapes of the Spanish island of Lanzarote; an interview with Robert Yang on designing sex video games; an exhibition by Arakawa and Gins; Florian Graf’s use of architecture as art; a new book by Grafton Architects; an interview with Andrés Jaque on imagining urban desires; Donald Judd’s furniture; a look inside Sigve Knutson’s Oslo studio; Snarkitecture’s first monograph; a portfolio of melting beds by Carlos Saéz; the romance and neglect of Rome’s post-war architecture and of Athens’s last Olympics; as well as essays about the architecture of 19th-century insane asylums and the connections between drone warfare, mental health, and suburbia.

Plus: A special supplement in collaboration with Yeezy in Calabasas, photographed by Nicholas Cope and with text by Mimi Zeiger.