Kinfolk

The Touch is a new collaboration between Nathan Williams of Kinfolk and Jonas Bjerre-Poulsen of Norm Architects that welcome readers into over 25 inspiring spaces where interior design is not only visually appealing but engages all of the human senses. Through beautiful homes, hotels, museums, and retail stores--from contemporary designs by Ilse Crawford and Bijoy Jain to classic cases by Arne Jacobsen--readers are invited to explore how experiencing elements such as light, nature, materiality, color, and community can deliberately bring us back to our senses and imbue every day with a richer quality. In addition to stunning photography and interviews with design industry leaders as John Pawson and David Thulstrup, the book also details philosophical and art history references that reflect the tradition of design and color theory. For a deeper understanding of the concepts explored, The Touch includes an appendix which profiles architects such as Lina Bo Bardi and Richard Neutra. Heritage design pieces that helped influence this movement are also listed in the book. The Touch--Spaces Designed for the Senses by Kinfolk & Norm Architects. Published by gestalten.

Spaces Designed for the Senses

The Touch

Kinfolk Issue Forty-Two, on sale December 7, 2021

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Kinfolk is a slow lifestyle magazine that explores ways for readers to simplify their lives, cultivate community and spend more time with their friends and family. It is the place to discover new things to cook, make and do. The fall issue of Kinfolk explores one of life's simplest pleasures: sharing a meal. The act of eating together - whether at a well-appointed table or in the simple breaking of bread - is an essential element of a well-lived life. As MFK Fisher famously wrote, sharing a meal can be more intimate than sharing a bed. In this issue, we examine the role of food in forming and sustaining relationships, its place in art and political history, and its significance to the arbiters contemporary culture. We visit a breadmaker in her Brooklyn studio, test a curated selection of recipes by a celebrated chef, thumb the pages of Dali's surrealist cookbook and revisit MFK Fisher's seminal writing on the joy of simple meals.

Winter 2017

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Kindling is the new magazine for people with children from the team who make Kinfolk. Packed with thought-provoking features, fun activities and playful photography and illustrations, it’s a place to explore the fresh perspectives that come with raising a child. For the Body Issue, we’ve teamed up with Wow in the World to answer children’s most curious questions about their bodies, from “What is a vaccine?” to “Why do my teeth fall out?” We also hear from the Swedish social worker who successfully campaigned for the “snippa”—a neutral word to replace the many euphemisms used for female genitals, and report on the important role of parents and caregivers in making children feel good about their bodies. Kindling is made to be read by adults and shared with children. In our fashion shoots, we’re making DIY hi-vis outfits and customizing crutches, wheelchairs and casts. PRAISE FOR KINDLING “A fresh approach to parenthood and a genuinely exciting new launch.”—MagCulture “Clever design and insightful articles... Having fun while making a magazine.”—Monocle “Graphic shapes, quirky illustrations, and the superb photography that Kinfolk is famous for.”—Print Mag “Kindling is a reminder that childrearing can be treated as a lens through which people can view the rest of their lives rather than the defining characteristic.”—Eye on Design

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The other side of the seaside: With 22 countries sharing almost 30,000 miles of coastline, there is no one place or person that can exemplify Mediterranean living. Issue Forty-One of Kinfolk beats an unconventional path—from Tunis to Tuscany, Morocco to Mallorca—to meet the artists, cooks and cowboys at the heart of their local communities.

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The winter issue of Kinfolk revisits one of our guiding principles: good hospitality. Featuring a special section dedicated to the art of hosting, Issue Thirty looks beyond recipe repertoires and honed housekeeping to unearth the secret ingredients of having a good time. Drilling down into the heart of hospitality, we investigate its five pillars: acceptance, comfort, empathy, entertainment and trust. How has the rise in peer-to-peer services such as Airbnb changed our relationship to having strangers in our home? Does a lack of formality translate into a more comfortable environment, or do subtle rules actually make it easier for people to know how to behave? And, how do you get a guest to leave? We receive expert advice on hospitality from leading hoteliers, culinary artists, salon hosts and party planners, and meet wunderkind chef Flynn McGarry—host of New Yorker-reviewed dinner parties since the age of thirteen. Elsewhere, we speak to actress Teyonah Parris—star of the forthcoming James Baldwin adaptation If Beale Street Could Talk—explore seasonal subjects such as hunkering down, hometowns and ghost stories, plus much more.

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There’s no way to predict when we’ll suddenly be confronted with a new pathway in life. For every positive gain attributed to the idea of change, such as self-improvement, bold adventuring or collective hope, there often follows the very human instinct to feel quite the opposite: fear, self-doubt and loss. The latest issue of Kinfolk explores how best to navigate the conflicting forces of change and stability.

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A decade ago, the very first issue of Kinfolk made its way into print. To celebrate this milestone—our tenth anniversary—we’ve refreshed the design of the magazine and aptly turned our gaze toward one of life’s deepest and most searching subjects: the future.

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Issue Thirty-Two In Haruki Murakami’s breakthrough novel, Norwegian Wood, the young lovers spend days tramping the streets of 1960s-era Tokyo. The landscape unfurls boundlessly before them: ‘we kept walking…climbing hills, crossing rivers, and railway lines, just walking and walking with no destination in mind,’ Toru recalls. It’s a romantic vision of a city that, today, can feel impenetrable to the outsider. Building on the unparalleled popularity of our Japan Issue, Kinfolk is spending summer in the Japanese capital for Issue Thirty-Two. Anchored by an extensive city guide of her best places to eat, sleep, shop and read selected by the Kinfolk team, the Tokyo Issue will contain interviews with leading cultural figures, a local fashion editorial and an original essay by Moeko Fuji. Elsewhere, we spend a day with Danish musician Coco O, meet some fashionable cats, and—for summer—explore air-conditioning, showers and suitcases, before setting off to sail the southern Mediterranean sea in our fashion editorial.

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Kinfolk Issue Thirty-Eight, on sale from December 1st 2020

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Intimacy is what distinguishes those who are dear to us from those who are simply near. This issue of Kinfolk explores the balance between our contradictory cravings for both secure and stable relationships and the freedom to follow our hearts, our sexual desires, and our need to be whole without the help of another. We take psychotherapist Esther Perel as our lodestar. It’s a role she’s played for the clients at her New York practice and for millions of others through her books and the podcast Where Should We Begin, which offers the chance to listen in on anonymous couples during therapy sessions. Perel’s approach has always been to challenge the fundamental contradictions in how we think about romantic intimacy: Is it really feasible to expect one person to fulfill our every need—for the rest of our life? In Issue Thirty-Four, we experience the thrill of people and places spilling their secrets. Amaryllis Fox—an ex-CIA spy who spent her 20s negotiating in some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones—cracks open the mysteries of the Clandestine Service, and what they’ve taught her about peace. We also present the result of our own months-long international operation: To gain access to an art deco royal palace in Gujurat, India. As the nights close in, our contributors look beyond this world and into other more mysterious ones: They mull over the popularity of horoscopes and what to eat at funerals. Elsewhere, a photo essay by Gustav Almestål explores the solitary indulgence of comfort foods, so tied to our most intimate of spaces—our homes—and so appealing during break ups.

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We can never shake the back-to-school feeling that September brings. As predictable as the urge to hunker down in winter, then travel in the warmer months, the fall stirs up memories of sharp pencils and blank slates. Rather than dragging our heels reluctantly into the new term, the Education Issue rises to the challenge and asks: How can we keep on learning? From interviews with celebrated academics and alternative practitioners to a fashion editorial set in the most visually inspiring school in Denmark, Issue Thirty-Three of Kinfolk considers how education might be reimagined for a time when cognitive scientists are increasingly insistent that there is no expiry date on our brain’s ability to learn. Also in the issue, we consider what Roland Barthes might have to say about modern dating, interview Desiree Akhavan about making films now she’s no longer a Hollywood outsider, and ask whether hitting “rock bottom” is really a necessary part of starting over. Elsewhere, we break new territory with our first painted fashion shoot and a reported long read on why social media is sustaining, rather than exposing, the scourge of pyramid schemes.

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Issue Thirty-One The spring issue of Kinfolk builds on our foundational interest in design to consider the discipline in its most ambitious manifestation: architecture. Mid-century architect and furniture designer Charlotte Perriand, whose archives we delve into in this issue, once wrote: “The extension of the art of dwelling is the art of living.” We interrogate this close relationship between external surroundings and interior wellbeing and meet the architects chipping away at the partition wall between the two. Buildings affect the mood and behavior of their inhabitants. Equally, the things we build—or wish to build—reflect our own state of mind; blueprints of the ways in which we hope to reinvent the world. This issue of Kinfolk will pay homage to the architects with dreams too big for city planners to swallow—from an investigation into the history of utopian design to a photo essay about the most visionary projects that have been demolished, or simply never-built, over the last century. We also interview those who have bridged the divide and made their strangest whims a reality: like Asif Khan, whose belief in a future where architecture is “light, intelligent and simple” inspired him to build with bubbles. Elsewhere in the issue, we meet Sharon Van Etten, who talks about why she chose to study psychology while writing her new album, and we spend a day in the studio with Kyle Abraham—the choreographer making history at the New York City Ballet. As the weather turns warmer, our thoughts follow; this issue’s essays find our writers lingering on balconies, musing on the impossibility of “turning over a new leaf” and biting down on the juicy history of the peach.

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Kinfolk Issue Thirty-Seven, on sale from September 8th 2020

Kinfolk

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