We are very proud to be sharing an exclusive story on Samuel Ross’ new home in this issue. The designer is known for his London-based menswear brand A-Cold-Wall* and design studio SR_A – which has collaborated with the likes of Apple and Nike – as well as his work with the late Virgil Abloh. Since 2019 he has been renovating a Victorian home in the Northamptonshire town he grew up in – in fact, the house is one he walked past and admired every day as a boy. He’s come a long way since then and developed an aesthetic signature informed by the Bauhaus and brutalism, which has been beautifully applied to the renovations too.

Samuel’s home studio in Northamptonshire has seen the creation of a series of paintings, which form a solo show, ‘LAND’, at the White Cube gallery in Bermondsey, running until 14 May 2023.

Our series The Classics pays homage to the best examples of modernist and contemporary residential design by the likes of John Pawson and Team 4. For this issue, we asked architect and TV personality Piers Taylor to pen some words about Can Lis, the straightforwardly brilliant house Jørn Utzon designed for his family on the southern shores of Mallorca, Spain, in the early 1970s after getting truly fed up with the politics of realising his designs for the Sydney Opera House. Artfully captured by photographer Ricard López in September last year, the accompanying images are a vicarious journey into summer – or at least the one we’re dreaming of.

Piers has made a documentary film about Can Lis, which is out this spring. Check invisiblestudio.org for updates, and watch the trailer here.

One of the most rewarding things about doing a print magazine for us is working with new creative talent. We’d had our eyes on photographer Keerthana Kunnath’s work for a while, admiring her intimate portraits that explore expressions of identity. We were excited, then, to work with her on this issue, for which she journeyed to the south Indian coastal town of Beypore, Kerala, to capture her home from a new perspective: neither outsider nor resident. Backdropped by the thick rain of the monsoon season, her snapshots of youth, family, love, friendship and generational ties are a study in the complex relationships many of us have with our hometowns.

We first met designer/maker James Shaw at his studio for our Modern Makers film series, when he talked us through the way his process, driven by the malleable qualities of recycled plastic, transforms an overlooked and problematic material into aesthetically interesting objects. James’ latest project – his home – has had a similarly metamorphic evolution, in that what once an overgrown and neglected strip of land between Victorian terrace houses in east London is now a cleverly formed two-storey sunken house that James built himself with his signature wit and playfulness. At the end of the five-year journey to realising his plans, we call in on him for the tour.

Marie Cassis is a musical therapist and Instagram food sensation who has proven a hit with her pictures of simple dishes that radiate comfort, nostalgia and, somehow, the feeling of home. Perhaps that’s because cooking, for Marie, is a deeply personal expression of where she comes from and the culinary traditions that have passed through her family, as became clear when we worked with her for this issue. We asked Marie to capture a feast at her family’s farm outside Cairo where she grew up, and then, when back in London, to replicate a version of it as a way of vicariously travelling home. The result? Proof, if we ever needed it, that food is a lot more than what’s on the plate – although, in Marie’s case, they’re very pretty plates indeed.