Reading The Real Review is a little like listening in on a conversation of people more intelligent, witty and mannered than oneself, and this is meant as a compliment: intelligent conversation is always a joy. As is The Real Review, London’s impossibly smart architecture quarterly launched in 2016, and about to release their 6th issue.
But architecture only in the loosest sense, exploring space and its effects on people, and vice versa – the tagline is as broad as it is ambitious: ‘What it means to live today’. This might include online dating, the history of caffeine, fast fashion cycles or anything else you would not necessarily expect within an architecture magazine, dicussed with verve and humour and intellectual rigour that are equally surprising, entertaining, and sometimes irritating. In short, everything you’d hope for in a magazine, framed by the clever design of OK-RM around the ingenious idea of folding the magazine through the middle, and the many options of working with text and images this opens up to.
