EDITOR'S LETTER OF ISSUE No.25

OBSESSIONS: A SELF PORTRAIT

There is a moment, difficult to pinpoint, when the things we love can begin to consume us. This is not always a bad sign. Sometimes it is simply an indication that something truly matters to us. This is how we live today. We are in the age of the “-holic”: the workaholic, the shopaholic, and whatever comes next. A mode of existence that begins as something deeply personal and that technology has turned into something communal. Social networks did not invent the phenomenon, but they have sharpened it with an algorithm that, the moment it detects our attraction to something, returns it to us multiplied, amplified, almost hyperbolic; until it becomes difficult to distinguish where genuine interest ends and where vertigo begins, as though obsession were the only valid measure of desire.

“It becomes difficult to distinguish where genuine interest ends and where vertigo begins, as though obsession were the only valid measure of desire.”

At Openhouse, we are fascinated by people who are obsessed with something and, in this issue, we introduce some of them. There is Luis Sendino, whose devotion to post-war Japanese design has led him to build a collection that speaks for itself across our pages. More eclectic, intimate, personal and contemporary is the one Andrés Carretero has been quietly gathering over the years, with no greater ambition than the pleasure of surrounding himself with pieces that stir something in him.

For some, it is not the object but the process that takes hold. Those who live in that eternal tension between honouring the passage of time and intervening in it. Casa Albero exists in that limbo: an architectural gem that bears its cracks without shame, that coexists with nature and merges into it. That begins in the past yet carries the scars of everything it has lived through, worn close to the surface.

“Obsession is a double-edged sword. A line upon which certain people choose to walk, tightrope-walker-style: measuring their weight, taking three steps forward and one back, arms outstretched towards what is yet to come.”

Obsession is a double-edged sword. A line upon which certain people choose to walk, tightrope-walker-style: measuring their weight, taking three steps forward and one back, arms outstretched towards what is yet to come. That is how I like to see our protagonists. From the Enrich family to Studio KO, whose understanding of architecture as a sinuous intervention in place has led them to create a gallery with Nathalie Guihaumé, called L’Œil de KO. All of them have made their passion a way of inhabiting the world. Because all these obsessions make life a far more interesting place to be. Even if, at times, they make those who carry them suffer. Like a wound one returns to every so often, just to check it is still there, still alive, still with something to say. Perhaps that is the most honest thing a human being can do: stop pretending it no longer hurts.