The Art Lover's Guide to Munich: The Best Museums & Galleries to Visit - W Magazine

It begins on Christmas Day, 1996: “It’s been a lovely day … I realised how much I love my family.” It ends three years later: “I’m lying on the floor in floods of tears and all I want to do is die.” Say what you like about adolescence but it is nothing if not an emotional tumult. “If I’d known as a teenager,” says the comedian Jon Richardson ruefully, “that I’d one day write a book about them, I couldn’t have bookended my teenage diaries with better quotes to show what a storm of shit those years can be.”The book is The Teenage Diaries of a Stand-Up Comedian, and it has been two years in the making. Two years that, if not quite the hormonal rollercoaster the book itself records, have been quite the ride. The project is borne of a crossroads moment in the Lancashire man’s midlife, after he experienced bereavement, serious illness among family and friends, and the breakdown of his marriage to fellow comic Lucy Beaumont. The last was an inevitably very public ending, splayed across the tabloids, to a relationship which itself played out in public, courtesy of the couple’s acclaimed mockumentary about their domestic arrangements, Meet the Richardsons.

red-and-white safety barriers reimagined as public seatingA signature element of Dutch urban infrastructure, the red-and-white aluminum traffic barrier (schrikhek), serves as the primary design reference for ‘stop!’, a new collection of outdoor benches and stools by Studio Martins Mezulis and 13_0663_tsx. Typically deployed across the Netherlands to signal construction zones and redirect public traffic, these standardized aluminum structures have been reconfigured to serve a social rather than restrictive function in public spaces.all images ©Studio Martins Mezulis and 13_0663_tsx recontextualizing utilitarian infrastructure into furniture The ‘stop!’ collection by Studio Martins Mezulis and creative 13_0663_tsx reinterprets the visual language and material composition of traditional safety infrastructure into functional street furniture. Instead of diverting pedestrians and cyclists away, the modified forms invite users to pause, sit, and gather. By recontextualizing the familiar high-visibility aluminum panels into seating, the project explores how utilitarian safety elements can be adapted for community interaction.

porsche 550 spyder at 80 percent of its original sizeThere’s a tiny silver Porsche parked among a sunlit meadow in the English countryside. With its rounded rear fenders and tiny windshield, it’s quite similar to the 550 Spyder that Porsche raced in the 1950s. The proportions are familiar, but something is slightly off. This is the Porsche 550 J, a miniature, fully electric version of the historic race car, recreated by British manufacturer Hedley Studios at roughly 80 percent of its original size. Developed in collaboration with Porsche to celebrate 75 years of the company’s motorsport history, the 550 J is an officially licensed, handcrafted vehicle limited to 250 examples. The ‘J’ stands for ‘Junior,’ although the little roadster is large enough to accommodate two people. Measuring just 2.9 meters (9.5 feet) in length and 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) wide, it retains the low profile and flowing aluminum-like contours of its predecessor.the miniature Porsche 550 J’s silver bodywork recalls the original 1950s racer | images courtesy Porschea miniature tribute to porsche’s first purpose-built racing carThe original Porsche 550 Spyder holds a special place in the company’s history.