SIDEWAYSCulture in motion
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Stories

Without the predictable angles.

Design, culture, music, food, travel and style — reported from the side streets of the world’s most curious cities.

9 stories

Cover story

Why small spaces are becoming culture’s biggest stage

From 20-seat theatres to one-room galleries, the most exciting work is happening where there’s barely room to stand.

Mina Cho · 9 min read
Design · Long read

The new intimacy

Inside the movement turning tiny homes into bold, beautiful lives.

Jonas Weber · 12 min read
Travel · Pick

A cabin in the clouds

A two-room hut at 2,400 metres, reachable only on foot.

Ana Ruiz · 6 min read
Culture · Pick

The museum inside a mall

How an empty department store became the city’s busiest gallery.

Priya Nair · 7 min read
Music · Pick

A freer sound from Lagos

A new wave of producers is mixing highlife, house and field recordings.

Tobi Adeyemi · 8 min read
Food · Pick

The noodle that travels

One bowl, four countries, a hundred years of migration.

Kenji Mori · 7 min read
Culture

In praise of third places

The cafés, barbershops and libraries where cities actually happen.

Lena Hoffmann · 6 min read
Music

Why we still buy records

Vinyl outsold CDs again this year. Fans say it’s about attention.

Sam Okafor · 5 min read
Style

Dressing loud on purpose

Colour is back — and it’s more than a trend.

Mina Cho · 5 min read
Cover story

Why small spaces are becoming culture’s biggest stage

By Mina Cho9 min readIssue 08

Ten years ago a new venue needed a thousand seats to be taken seriously. Today the shows people queue for happen in back rooms, shopfronts and converted garages.

“Small rooms forgive failure. That’s why the best ideas start there.”

Rents are part of it, but not the whole story. Audiences say they want to be close enough to see the sweat — and artists say small rooms let them take risks a big stage never would.

We spent a month inside six of these rooms, from a living-room cinema in Seoul to a laundrette that doubles as a jazz club in Lagos.

Explore the Seoul guide →
Design · Long read

The new intimacy

By Jonas Weber12 min readIssue 08

A new generation of architects is treating the 30 m² flat not as a compromise but as a brief. Fold-down beds, sliding walls and borrowed light are only the start.

“Every centimetre has to earn its keep — including the empty ones.”

The results are surprisingly generous: rooms that change shape through the day, built-in furniture that doubles as storage, and kitchens designed around the way people actually cook.

We visited four homes under 40 m² in Copenhagen, Mexico City and Seoul to see what living small feels like when it’s done well.

Shop design objects →
Travel · Pick

A cabin in the clouds

By Ana Ruiz6 min readIssue 08

The walk takes four hours, the last one through cloud. Then the hut appears: timber, stone, a stove and a window that frames the whole valley.

“Above the cloud line, time stops being something you manage.”

There is no signal and no menu. The warden cooks what the mule carried up that week, and guests share one long table.

It is, quietly, one of the most sought-after beds in the Alps — and booking opens just once a year.

Watch: Above the cloud line →
Culture · Pick

The museum inside a mall

By Priya Nair7 min readIssue 08

When the anchor store closed, the landlord expected another gym. Instead a collective of painters signed a two-year lease for less than the cost of security.

“People will walk into art if you put it on the way to somewhere else.”

Eighteen months later the space draws more weekend visitors than the national gallery across town — many of them teenagers who came for the food court.

Free entry, late hours and escalators turn out to be a powerful combination.

More culture stories →
Music · Pick

A freer sound from Lagos

By Tobi Adeyemi8 min readIssue 08

On a Friday in Yaba, a club that holds 200 is holding 400. The DJ is playing a track recorded on a phone at a market that morning.

“We don’t pick a genre. The city picks it for us.”

This is the sound of a scene that grew up online but is fiercely local: drum patterns from grandparents’ records, bass from London, samples from the street outside.

We met five producers shaping it — and asked what freedom sounds like.

Listen to Episode 141 →
Food · Pick

The noodle that travels

By Kenji Mori7 min readIssue 08

Ramen began as a Chinese noodle in a Japanese port. It reached Seoul, São Paulo and Lagos on the backs of cooks who adapted it to whatever the market sold.

“A recipe is a passport you can eat.”

We followed one family recipe across three generations and found a bowl that changes in every city but still tastes of home.

The broth, they told us, is the only thing that never moves.

Seoul food & drink →
Culture

In praise of third places

By Lena Hoffmann6 min readIssue 08

Not home, not work: the third place is where you go to be around people without needing a reason.

“A city is only as friendly as the places you can sit without buying anything.”

As rents rise, they are disappearing. But some neighbourhoods are fighting back with community-owned cafés and late-opening libraries.

We mapped the best new third places in five cities — and what keeps them open.

Browse City Guides →
Music

Why we still buy records

By Sam Okafor5 min readIssue 08

Streaming gives you everything. A record gives you twenty minutes, then asks you to get up.

“You can’t skip a song you have to stand up to change.”

For a generation raised on playlists, that interruption has become the point — a ritual that turns listening into an event.

Record shops are opening again, and many now double as bars, venues and meeting places.

Shop SIDEWAYS Sounds Vol. 1 →
Style

Dressing loud on purpose

By Mina Cho5 min readIssue 08

After years of beige, designers and wearers are reaching for red suits, electric blue and clashing prints.

“Wear the colour you’d be scared to paint a wall.”

Stylists call it dopamine dressing. The people we photographed called it something simpler: wanting to be seen.

Here is how five of them build a wardrobe that turns heads without trying too hard.

See it in Issue 08 →