Are you sitting comfortably? Without wanting to knock you from your perch, it turns out that where you choose to sit says a lot about who you are. The sofa in your living room can reveal a great deal about your priorities and outlook on life. But for designers or architects, there’s often an added layer of meaning: their choice can (or perhaps even should) reflect their core creative philosophies. This notion is explored in The Monocle Book of Designers on Sofas – available to buy now – for which we spoke to 50 leading architects and designers about their relationships with their settee, unpacking what it says about them and their design sensibilities.

For some, it was quite literal: take Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, who designed his own Brick sofa in collaboration with Lithuanian firm Jot Jot. Living on a houseboat in Copenhagen’s harbour, its shape is partly inspired by the sandbags found along the capital’s waterfront. Appropriate given that Bjarke’s “journey as a practising architect” ended up coinciding with his rediscovery of the harbour.”

The sofa, it seems, is both a silent witness and active participant in family and work life. For Hong Kong-based Betty Ng, her purchase of a Marenco sofa by Arflex symbolised the act of putting down roots. This informed the layout of her space, much like Naoto Fukasawa’s decision to install Maruni’s Hiroshima sofa in his studio-cum-residence. The Japanese designer was so intent on using this particular make that he had it craned into his top-floor living room prior to a renovation of the property; it was, he assures us, the only way to deliver the piece into the space.

In putting this book together, it became clear that the sofa is far more than just a place to sit. Australian architect John Wardle’s Gentry sofa by Moroso has witnessed years of use by his children, friends and family. Now, as he prepares to move, it’s the one significant piece of furniture that’s coming with him. So, while sofas are often the largest item in a room, they also play a large role in our lives, collecting memories of family milestones, quiet evenings and lively gatherings. With this in mind, join us as we visit the homes of leading creatives to hear about their sofas. Get comfy, read on and don’t forget to plump the cushions when you’re done.  
 
Nic Monisse is Monocle’s design editor. You can order your copy of ‘The Monocle Book of Designers on Sofas’ now. 

Fighter jets bearing Qatar’s maroon-and-white insignia will start ripping through Idaho airspace in five years’ time. That’s the plan as announced this month by US defence secretary Pete Hegseth and Qatari defence minister Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani. A Qatar Emiri Air Force squadron is set to train at Mountain Home Air Force Base from 2030. The detachment will consist of 12 Qatari F-15QA fighter jets, supported by approximately 300 Qatari and US personnel.

The arrangement isn’t unusual. Luke Air Force Base in Arizona trains 70 per cent of the world’s F-35 pilots, while Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas is home to the Euro-Nato Joint Jet Pilot Training Programme. Mountain Home has hosted the Peace Carvin V detachment of the Royal Singapore Air Force since 2009.

Yet the prospect of Qataris training on US soil has raised hackles on both sides of the aisle. Democratic strategist Max Burns called it a “national security crisis”, while Natalie Ecanow, a senior research analyst at the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies, deemed Qatar a “frenemy” at best.

But the sharpest critique has come from the Republican far-right, which counts Idaho as a stronghold. The most bizarre objections come from elected officials such as state senator Brian Lenney, who is leery of welcoming foreign nationals whom he alleges pledge fealty to a Sharia legal system incompatible with US constitutional law and represent a country where Christianity cannot be practised. Qatari pilots would, of course, be subject to US laws. While Islam is Qatar’s religion, there are actually churches in Doha, though surely fewer than in Mountain Home.

Isolationist by nature, these America Firsters don’t trust Qatar as an ally, pointing to its poor track record combatting illicit funding to terror groups. Their worst fear is a repeat of the December 2019 incident when a Saudi airman training to be a pilot at a naval air station in Florida shot dead three US service members in a jihadist attack. (Though Idahoans should feel secure if they follow Lenney’s advice to remain well-armed – he wrote an entirely sincere children’s book titled Why Everyone Needs an AR-15! A Guide for Kids.)

These parochial protestations miss the opportunity for the US to enhance its soft power through hard power and for Idaho to position its sparsely populated land mass as an ideal training ground for allied air forces with constrained airspace. According to Pentagon officials, the Qatari deal was in the works for at least three years but the public unveiling of the proposed long-term training scheme comes at a pivotal moment in bilateral relations. Mere weeks after Israel’s norm-shattering strike at Hamas leadership in Doha, the White House issued a security guarantee that elevates Qatar to near-Article V status.

Like it or loathe it, Doha has ingratiated itself with the US and savvy minds in Washington should use that relationship to their advantage. For one, training access keeps Qatar writing cheques for the blockbuster $12bn (€10.32bn) deal that it made with the US in 2017 to buy 36 specially modified F-15s. For another, interoperability and shared training makes the country, which hosts the largest US base in the Middle East, a more reliable strategic ally in a volatile region. It could also provide further leverage to pressure the Qataris to up their counter-terrorism bona fides.

Since the Florida attack, the US has rightly increased the scrutiny applied to foreign military students. I suspect that Idahoans meeting the Qataris who pass the vetting will find courteous and respectful young men with traditional values not so different from conservative Christians. They will certainly be anything but rabble rousers – a model of probity that US soldiers stationed abroad would be wise to emulate.

Gregory Scruggs is Monocle’s Seattle correspondent. For his take on why Trump’s troops on US soil might do some good, click here.

When I started tapping out last week’s column, somewhere high above Baffin Island, little did I know that I was creating an inbox monster that only stopped raging on Friday morning. In case you missed it, you can find it here. But to save you clicking around, the gist was how the language of travel marketing has become tedious and repetitive – particularly its rather misguided mission of helping fliers, guests and passengers find a sense of personal enlightenment when all they really want to do is get a tan around a pool with like-minded guests, shop, go for a good coffee after a brisk morning jog in a new city, shop again, find some well-priced art or objects that they can ship home and drink and dine till the wee hours. 

After 800 words and highlighting the issues with terms such as “meaningful journeys”, “purposeful escapes”, “authentic retreats” and the like, I asked readers to get a bit competitive, identify which overused word was not present in the column and send me a one-word answer in exchange for a prize from the Monocle retail world. Out of respect for time zones and to not give the Kiwis an unfair advantage, I said that the first correct answer from our three geographical regions would be getting a treat. While many complied with a single word, many tried to offer up a choice of terms (they were all disqualified) and many more used it as an opportunity to offer their own versions of fatigue and frustration with the feelings culture that has somehow seeped into almost every lobby, aircraft cabin and junior suite. Cheekier readers also used it as an opportunity to ask for some autumn Japan tips, so rather than writing a series of personal notes, this crowd will find a few tips at the end of the column. Before that – “Who won?” you’re asking. Here we go.
 
From APAC, Martina Bay was the first to my inbox and nailed it with “experience” and this: “The traveller walks slowly through the hotel lobby, looking ‘transformed’ – in reality, she’s wondering if the lobby’s scent diffuser is supposed to be this aggressive.”

From Europe, Aline Cristina Clementino da Silva was also quick on the comms front and will have a little something heading her way soon.
  
And finally, from the Americas, Michelle Lee gets the prize for being up so early/late and also identifying “experience”.
 
Many thanks to the hundreds who wrote in. Also, thank you for your kind words about the column, your love of Andrew’s column as well and all your support. For those of you who only get this newsletter and are not a paid-up subscriber, I encourage you to join the club by enrolling here. We’re talking less than the cost of a daily cortado (Spanish prices), so please treat yourself to some fine journalism, comment, imagery and more.
 
And now, back to Tokyo for those of you wanting the latest tips. After a full week in town, here are my responses to some of your queries.
 
Where to stay that’s fresh and new? 
Two answers here and both close by. Hyatt has just opened a branch of its Caption brand in Nihonbashi and it scores on a variety of fronts – buzzy lobby with good coffee, good rates and rooms designed for longer stays. Also nearby is Soil (it gets its close-up in our upcoming issue), a sharp addition to the increasingly cool yet still calm Nihonbashi.
 
Where do you recommend for a no-nonsense classic? 
Two words: The Palace. Balconies overlooking the Imperial Palace and Marunouchi, a great bar, good retail in the basement arcade and exceptional service make it my personal choice.
 
One retail hit worth checking out? 
I really liked the Takanawa Gateway City development. Yes, it’s a train station with a mall, offices and hotel atop but it’s exactly what Japan does best. This is the type of interchange other cities need to be building for locals and visitors alike.
 
What are you hearing about the return of the Park Hyatt? 
I’ve not just heard but also seen! I went for a spin around last week and I was relieved. All the bits we love about the PH are there, and they have been sensitive to John Morford’s vision. Of course, there are a few additions and deletions that will likely irk superfans but all in all they’ve done a good job and it reopens on 9 December.
 
Is there a bar where the Monocle team gathers after work? 
I couldn’t possibly say.

Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns. 

At long last Timor-Leste has been admitted to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). Asia’s youngest country and one of its poorest has become the 11th member of the regional grouping, which counts Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore among its number. Timor-Leste’s president, José Ramos-Horta, has been agitating for this since the 1970s but, as he told us this week, the real hard work begins now.

Confirmation of Timor-Leste’s accession comes at the start of Asean’s 47th summit in Kuala Lumpur, which begins on Sunday 26 October. Myanmar’s intractable civil war and the simmering tensions between Thailand and Cambodia are likely to overshadow proceedings.

This rare bit of good news for Asean is a monumental occasion for the former Portuguese colony. Timor-Leste won a long and bloody battle for independence from Indonesia in 2002 and being accepted into the international organisation has involved another arduous journey. It has been 14 years since Timor-Leste formally applied to join and 49 years since a young Ramos-Horta, during a trip to Jakarta in the chaotic period between the end of Portuguese rule and Indonesia’s military invasion, first floated the possibility of his country joining the bloc.

Ramos-Horta is now 75 years old, a Nobel Peace Prize-winner and is serving his second tenure as Timor-Leste’s president. “I’ve been pushing for this since 1974,” he said in 2023 when Monocle visited the country to report a story – a rare chance to eat soursop ice cream in a local café with a national leader and ride in his convertible Mini Moke. 

When we spoke this week, Ramos-Horta was sanguine, preparing to lead the delegation from the capital city, Dili, to Kuala Lumpur. He will preside over his country’s official welcome into Asean, a meaningful political win and a symbolic, long overdue recognition of Timor-Leste’s place in Southeast Asia.

During our reporting trip two years ago, it was hard to miss the neat row of flagpoles outside the presidential palace. The largest flag was Asean’s blue, red and yellow ensign, followed by those of every other country in Southeast Asia except Timor-Leste’s. At the very end was another flagpole, conspicuously empty. Nothing billowed from its finial until now.

The ceremonial hoisting of Timor-Leste’s flag in Dili has been hard-earned. Its 2011 bid to join Asean faltered after member states such as Singapore argued that Timor-Leste,  which was not even a decade old at the time, did not have the state capacity to meet the association’s requirements. It was a diplomatic way of saying that you don’t have the money or personnel to properly engage with a busy calendar – a difficult truth for a nation that endured 27 years of harsh Indonesian rule followed by a vengeful military exit that decimated Timorese infrastructure: no telephone lines, electricity, running water or roads. In hindsight, Ramos-Horta believes that delaying the country’s accession was the right call. “It forced us to increase the pace of our efforts to develop resources, infrastructure and so on,” he says. “Of course, we have made progress.”

Timor-Leste will now have a seat at the table – not just in Asean but at international meetings, including the East Asia Summit and other security dialogues with global powers. Membership will also provide access to preferential trade agreements and open the door to more investment, tourism and educational opportunities.

“A seat at Asean’s table gives Timor-Leste legitimacy and recognition as part of the Southeast Asian family,” says Joanne Lin, senior fellow and co-ordinator of the Asean Studies Centre at the Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore. “It helps to anchor the country strategically and provide it with huge economic potential.”

There are also opportunities for Asean. Timor-Leste far outranks the rest of the member states on global indexes of press freedom and civil liberties, and its constitution explicitly outlaws the death penalty. A vocal proponent of liberal democracy, it is joining a group whose members include repressive one-party states, an absolute monarchy and a military junta.

Ramos-Horta and prime minister Xanana Gusmão have openly criticised Myanmar’s ruling-army generals and hosted its pro-democracy opposition figures in Dili at a time when Asean, founded on principles of consensus and non-interference, has struggled to address the ongoing war and failed in its attempts to curb the junta’s behaviour. 

According to Lin, Timor-Leste boosts the credibility of Asean’s “political message of inclusiveness” while offering the bloc “a small but promising market”. But many of those opportunities – or “chocolates”, as Ramos-Horta quips – will take time and effort to develop. Timor-Leste will be the poorest member of Asean by a significant margin, making up just 0.1 per cent of regional GDP, and its economy relies heavily on fast-depleting oil reserves. Unemployment and child malnutrition are serious issues. Its fiscal capacity is probably still not quite up to Singaporean snuff.

“A country like Singapore that warned us how much hard work it takes, that said Timor should wait, will probably say ‘We told you!’” says Ramos-Horta. But he is deadly serious about what Asean membership will require and the level of reforms that are necessary across the economy, from trade and investment protection to land ownership.

“It’s not all rosy,” says Ramos-Horta. “There’s the realisation that Timor-Leste’s membership is only the beginning. The next day, after getting over the hangover from the celebration, we will be working even harder than before.” 

Spot the odd one out: “Ozempic, the Cookbook”; “Trappist Monks Sing the Hits”; “From Cicero to Starmer, a Guide to Oratory”; “Black Sabbath – The Ballet.” Yes, they’re all completely insane but the final one – a choreographed musical drama that mixes plié, demi-pointe and the heavy-metal legends behind “Paranoid” and “War Pigs” – is actually real. What fresh hell is this? Well, a devilishly good one.

On Wednesday evening, I attended the first night of a short London run of the Black Sabbath ballet at Sadler’s Wells before it heads to the Edinburgh Festival. I love Sadler’s Wells and warmed to this broadened church even more. 

Usually I’d see some well put-together ballet students peering bright-eyed into the auditorium, while men named Hilary listen with performative rapture to women named Hillary over white burgundy in the foyer. But on Wednesday, there were long-haired, black-clad metal fans rubbing shoulders with corduroy and amber necklaces. What a joy to hear snakebite and black being ordered – the ingredients for which had been purchased specifically for this run (Pina Bausch fans being more inclined to lemon kombucha). And then? Let’s relevé and let’s rock!

Black Sabbath – The Ballet is a joint effort between Birmingham Royal Ballet’s director, the great Carlos Acosta, and that other magus of the stage who you might not have expected to see in the same room, Black Sabbath’s lead guitarist and main songwriter, Tony Iommi. On stage, it’s a fruitful and beguiling mix of young dancers – in sheer black leotards or 1970s-style denim streetwear – and a Tony Iommi-alike leather-clad guitarist (charmingly played by Marc Hayward), who pierces the excellent contemporary classical score by Sun Keting with his Black Sab riffs. The ballet hangs together by virtue of the virtuosity and wholehearted performances of the sinfonia, guitarist and – pick of the lot – the dancers. 

The piece is at its best plotting Sabbath’s formative period in a very industrial early-1970s Birmingham, in which Iommi and fellow bandmates Geezer Butler and Bill Ward are gainfully, painfully employed in jobs noisy, dangerous and factory-related; while Ozzy Osbourne, after working in an abattoir, is doing a little jail time for burglary. The score is repetitive, loud and percussive – echoing the pounding rhythms of the metalworking machine that would deny Iommi, already an excellent guitarist, of the tips of two of his fingers. It’s true: no Black Sabbath, no heavy metal. The choreography is stark, precise, hypnotic and the dancers phenomenal. Later, there’s a black swan leitmotif, a likely portent to excess and addiction. “Paranoid”, moi?!

You get the classics – “Paranoid”, again, “War Pigs”, “Iron Man”, “Black Sabbath” – but it’s not a jukebox ballet. It’s a strange beast, that, like the possibly apocryphal bat whose head Osbourne was said to have bitten off on stage, is not quite all there but definitely contains a lot of blood and guts – and can certainly fly. That evening, Iommi slinked on stage for the encore of “Paranoid” and the house erupted, enraptured. The quiet man of the world’s once-loudest band, blinking happily behind his blue-tinged shades. Perfectly in tune and somehow en pointe. 

1.
There’s one drawback to sitting at the front of a plane: the people. On my many shuttles to and from Palma, you can find me on one of the once low-cost carriers and in seat 36C by the toilets. But, when the ticket prices are not totally unhinged, you can also spot me perched at the front of a nice flag carrier. While at the back, you risk being encircled by a sloshed hen party and the occasional penis-shaped hat (I’ve told the other half to stop wearing this in public); at the front you face the prospect of seeing the British middle class and their glorious mix of entitlement and slow-burn aggression.

When dashing down to Mallorca last weekend with my fancy 2A ticket, I watched a man decline to put away his laptop as we prepared to push back from the gate. He tells the young female steward that he needs “just two more minutes”. She returns two minutes later and tells him politely that he must put it away, and so he slams his laptop shut and snaps, “You could have just let me finish.” She smiles, says “thank you” and gracefully moves on with her day. Meanwhile, the couple behind me are having a squabble – apparently someone sneakily managed to get on the plane before them. The woman is furious, especially at her partner’s attempts to calm the situation. “I am warning you, I don’t feel any need to be polite to people when I am travelling and that includes you.” How aircrew don’t hand out the occasional slap across the face along with the warm nuts is beyond me.

2.
When picking up a hire car at Palma de Mallorca Airport, I discover that my dinky wheels of choice are no longer available and so they are going to upgrade me. How kind. I head out to find my vehicle, which is so big that it barely fits in the parking spot. A few centimetres more and it would be categorised as a bus. Now, my driving skills are not always gold standard – apparently I look at passing buildings, handsome strangers and cannot stay in my lane (I think that refers to my driving) – so this is going to be interesting. En route to the flat, I make sure not to pause too near any bus stops in case people clamber in.

I park the charabanc in our building’s underground car park and leave it well alone all Saturday until that evening when I need to run a few errands. I start gingerly driving up the exit ramp but, oh no, there’s another car coming down, so I find reverse and bang! I hit a concrete pillar (painted bright orange – how could I have seen that?) and with such skill that it creases my bus’s rear end from top to bottom. I phone the other half (he who jabs his foot on an imaginary brake pedal if he ever finds himself trapped as my passenger and who also shouts “car, car, car” quite a lot when he believes that my focus has drifted). He asks whether I could suggest that it’s a scratch that was there before. I send him a picture. “Perhaps not,” he says.

3.
There’s something very liberating about driving a crumpled car. What else can go wrong? The following day, I head out early. It’s a big, sunny, blue-sky day and I pootle about, navigating narrow lanes and nippy motorways with aplomb. Occasionally, old people try to flag me down, thinking that the village bus has arrived. But while I have space for them, and a few sheep, I am now luxuriating in my vast Tuckmobile. Honk! Honk!

4.
On returning the bus, I mentioned to one of the team that I had a small incident. He comes to see the damage, “Wow, you have broken so many things,” he says with what I take as a mark of admiration. Next, he takes me to see the manager, who also resists scolding me and again seems rather impressed by the precision of my hit. “I might have to send you to the gulag,” he says. “This is going to cost a lot of money,” he adds, a little too giddily for my liking.

5.
On the flight home, there’s nobody sitting next to me, nobody for me to regale with the tale of the bus that ended with a bum crack on its rear. Instead, I have to tune in to people complaining about the food and talking too loudly about their yachts. I eventually nod off, dreams of being a Mallorca bus driver slowly taking over. Opportunity arising out of adversity.

To read more of Andrew’s columns, click here.

The words “public art” can strike dread into the heart. The term has been bandied about to cover everything from expensive but bland trophy sculptures in corporate plazas to graffiti “art” despoiling yet another building. But don’t lose heart because Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson believes that public art, if done well, can make us better citizens, create a sense of community and allow us to think differently. He’s out to prove the point with his first permanent public artwork in the UK, which was recently unveiled at Oxford North – an innovation district focused on nurturing the nation’s science and tech players.

Titled “Your Planetary Assembly”, the installation features eight illuminated sculptures along a meandering park path, with colours inspired by planets including Mars, Neptune and Mercury. Each polyhedron, elevated on a giant tripod, is surrounded by a circular bench. It looks pretty but Eliasson has bigger ambitions for this project than providing an Instagram moment. He is an artist who has used his large-scale works to engage us in conversations about nature, climate and how we want to live. His 2002 Tate Modern show, The Weather Project, was visited by more than two million people. 

“If a space is well designed, it can reflect our unmet emotional needs,” says Eliasson. “If we feel comfortable, if we feel as though this is a space where there is a relative degree of safety, it means we could sit down and say to someone, ‘Hey, how are you today? I’ve seen you here before.’” 

The benches, he says, function as seats around a campfire. “Each planet is like a fireplace, a warm gathering space. And because they’re not in one row, unorganised and drifting in their own orbital reality, it provides an opportunity for you to question things.” How about being left to contemplate all of this after simply sitting down to have a Pret sandwich at lunch?

In the hands of an artist such as Eliasson, who famously works with a large team out of his studio in Berlin, the “public” element of his art becomes potent. He is not making pieces to hang out of view in an oligarch’s mansion or be hidden away in a Swiss art vault. He creates art that people can use, test, experience and engage with. And these are often monumental, such as the four “waterfalls” he erected in New York Harbour, including one under the Brooklyn Bridge, in 2008. 

“Public space belongs to all of us, to the people who intend to use it,” says Eliasson about the arena for much of his work. “It’s something that we must look after together, which hopefully represents our values. We could say that we want our public spaces to reflect our beliefs and our intentions for how we want to live.” 

For the artist, one thing that public art can deliver is the feeling of being anchored to a place. “Once you have a sense of belonging, when you feel acknowledged and you experience dignity in the way you can be in a space, then you have something truly unique. And, in that space, you can evolve, contribute and become part of a community. When you’re part of a community, you also become a stakeholder in its future, which will then encourage you to vote. In that way, art is an incredible asset. In fact, one of the greatest things that you can do with public funds is to put them into art. There is a return – it’s an investment with societal upside.”

To hear more from Olafur Eliasson, listen to the Thursday 23 October episode of ‘The Urbanist’. And, for more on the perils and pitfalls of public art, click here.

Read next: If public art is meant to inspire communities, why do cities often get it so wrong?

Examining recent and current events, you would be forgiven for thinking that the EU was pursuing expansion in the Western Balkans. On the surface, things seem to be moving in the right direction, from the recent tour of the region by the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, to this week’s high-level Berlin Process Summit of Western Balkan leaders in London. But haven’t we heard all this before? 
 
Two of the region’s six nations, Montenegro and Albania, appear close to joining the EU. But other countries are in troubled waters: Serbia has anchored mid-voyage; North Macedonia is struggling to leave port; Bosnia and Herzegovina must make its ship seaworthy; and Kosovo is landlocked. 
 
On matters of EU enlargement, Brussels has been leading these nations up the garden path for decades. It is a misguided strategy – if indeed it has been a strategy at all – that has damaged the EU’s image in the region and caused people in Western Balkan countries to lose faith in the European project.

These young democracies need help and encouragement from Brussels to enact reforms, particularly concerning the rule of law, corruption and media freedom. But they need to know that there is a genuine chance of EU membership at the end of the process. All the available evidence from the past two decades suggests that this is not a particularly safe bet. 
 
EU member states asserted that “the future of the Balkans is within the European Union” at the Thessaloniki Declaration in 2003. Since then, only Croatia has completed the accession process. For the other countries in the region, there has been little more than frustration as the EU moved the goalposts or placed fresh obstacles in the path of would-be member states. 
 
No country has made a more dramatic effort than North Macedonia. In 2019 it took the radical step of changing its name from plain old Macedonia to resolve a daft but damaging dispute with Greece. The prime minister who promoted the new moniker, Zoran Zaev, persuaded a reluctant electorate to vote for a name change on the promise of unblocking Nato and EU membership. The military alliance swiftly made good on that commitment. The EU, however, allowed Bulgaria to veto the process by raising an even dafter dispute over arcane identity issues. During Von der Leyen’s brief stop in Skopje last week, she took the usual Brussels line, telling North Macedonia that “the ball is in your court”. In other words, the EU is not going to lift a finger to help.
 
In Serbia, support for EU membership has hit an all-time low of 33 per cent. This is partly the consequence of Belgrade’s own equivocal attitude towards Brussels – and the West – under the country’s president, Aleksandar Vučić. But it also reflects the EU’s mercurial behaviour, dangling the carrot of a clear path to accession only for it to be snatched away when former European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker declared that there would be “no further [EU] enlargement”. Serbia’s accession momentum never recovered. 
 
These are the most egregious examples of Brussels letting the Balkans down. Despite Von der Leyen’s cheer last week that “Montenegro can do it” and join the EU by 2028, there are plenty of reasons to be sceptical. Likewise, Albania should beware of her tepid comment that “we like [your] ambition” of completing membership negotiations by 2027. If the past two decades have demonstrated anything, it is that only a landlubber would expect smooth sailing from the Western Balkans to Brussels.
 
Guy de Launey is Monocle’s Ljubljana correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today. Further reading? Click here to see how Serbia’s foreign minister, Marko Djuric, could bring unity to the Balkans.

There are a lot of themes threaded through this issue – the potency of good design, legacy, our shifting perceptions of health and ageing – but when I looked at the final proofs, one word seemed to link many of the narratives that run across its pages: determination. This November outing of Monocle reads like a playbook on how to follow your own path, fight for your independence and ignore the naysayers.

Let’s start with the Expo. A few months ago I went to an exhibition at the Saatchi Yates gallery in London. It was the opening night and the space was rammed, guests spilling out onto the street to smoke and talk art. It was a cool crowd and, inside the gallery, the punchy, political canvases on show were being scrutinised by lots of twenty and thirtysomethings. These new works were not the creation of some fresh-faced enfant terrible but Peter Saul, an American artist who is still at the top of his game at 91. Later I spoke about the show with Sophie Monaghan-Coombs, who runs our culture pages. She pointed out that there is a whole host of artists in their eighties and nineties being championed by galleries and museums – many are women who are only now getting the recognition that they deserve. So Sophie put together a feature on seven in-demand senior artists who continue to push boundaries; who live through their work. It’s an inspiring tale of artistic determination.

Giorgio Armani, who died in September, ran an extraordinary business, not least because in an era when key luxury groups have come to control many of the most potent and important labels, he stayed independent – the sole owner of his empire. This allowed him to do things his way, whether that was telling models to smile and look happy or being the only spokesperson for the company. Our fashion director, Natalie Theodosi, was granted backstage access to report on the runway show for his final collection to see how his determination will live on. Her report is combined with the glorious photography of Andy Massaccesi.

A cultural shift is shaking up the health-and-fitness industry. Younger folk – well, a lot of them – see going to the gym less as a necessary evil to combat their daily excesses of food and booze, and more as a way of life. This cohort of clean-living Gen Z consumers will happily spend all day tending to their body’s needs. Enter the “super-boutique” gym, a place not just for taking a class but also for health tests, spa treatments, dining on virtuous meals and hanging out. For this issue, writer Grace Cook travelled to Brussels to meet entrepreneurs (and health advocates) Alexandre de Vaucleroy and Antoine Derom at their recently launched Animo Studios, a space designed to be the backbone of members’ fitness, social and even work lives.

Political, military and diplomatic determination also makes an appearance in this issue. In our Affairs pages, we head to Poland to see how the country is preparing to defend itself should Russia attack. We also sit down with former Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas, who now, as vice-president of the European Commission, is in charge of the EU’s foreign policy (even if member states are hard to align). In an interview with our foreign editor, Alexis Self, she explains why she is determined to stand up to threats from the East and unwanted challenges from Washington.

You will also read about the doggedness of art sleuths, the firm focus of three Pritzker Architecture Prize-winners and how Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, minister of state for the UAE, is unwavering in her belief that we need to listen to everyone, while maintaining red lines. I hope that this issue will harden your resolve, as you look ahead. It’s an issue that shows you how you can stick to your principles and do good too.

Though crafts that rely on the dexterity of your hands become more difficult as you age, your decades of learning and life experience can imbue what you create with depth and unique perspectives. Here, we visit the studios of seven artists who continue to paint in their eighties or nineties, still staging big exhibitions, selling work and finding inspiration.

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Isabella Ducrot
Rome, Italy

Isabella Ducrot’s craft is something of a patchwork. It incorporates textiles procured on her travels in Russia, Turkey, China, India and Tibet, and stories from her voracious imagination – Ducrot has been writing for far longer than she has been painting.

Born in Naples, Ducrot moved to Rome in her thirties, lured by the promise of freedom and anonymity. “Romans are indifferent,” she says. “They’re not particularly interested in each other. That’s a good quality.” In the Italian capital, Ducrot surrounded herself with intellectuals, including novelist Alberto Moravia and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini.

She picked up a paintbrush in her fifties and now, in her studio in the 16th-century Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, she paints on Japanese gampi, a fine, fibrous paper with a satin-like sheen and a fine weft. Made for etching, inking and painting, the delicate material is as recognisable a part of Ducrot’s output as her ochre, green and rust flower motifs, which are achieved with a brush tied to a stick.

Ducrot says that she came to painting so late because of an early education that instructed her to respect tradition and not make changes to the world around her. “It took many years for me to dare to begin this unusual adventure,” she says. Today, at the age of 94, her adventure continues.

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Peter Saul
Germantown,USA

“Except for occasionally talking about modern art to college students, I haven’t done anything but paint pictures since 1959,” says Peter Saul. Those pictures are hard to forget. Saul’s subjects bend, distend, wriggle and writhe across the canvas, transforming into colourful, twisted monstrosities along the way.

Those subjects have changed with the times too: the Vietnam War, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump. American life – its vividness and its vulgarity – is a loose theme. That and, as Saul puts it, “bad guys”. “I have more freedom to distort, invent motivation or do anything I want to bad guys,” he says. “Whereas with ‘good guys’, the artist is supposed to follow the rules.”

Saul works from preliminary sketches that have a sense of “freshness”, which can be developed as he paints. As he adds his cacophony of colours, he thinks about how to make the painting interesting to the highest number of people. “The picture has to live in the world,” he says. Saul’s work has done just that for a long time but the critical response to it has become far warmer in recent years. While he is appreciative, the change has had little effect on his practice. “Unlike most artists I know, I don’t seem to respond much to encouragement,” he says. “As long as I’ve got the art supplies, I’m going to paint a picture.”

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Rose Wylie
Kent, UK

When a particularly big globule of paint falls off Rose Wylie’s brush, she’ll simply cover it with a sheet of newspaper to stop it getting on her shoes. “I’m not a precious worker,” she says as we stand in her studio. A soft layer of newspaper carpets the floor, paintbrushes stick out of cans stacked on chairs and colourful splatters obscure the skirting board. Wylie’s unruly garden has crept up the side of the house and into this first-floor room – a jasmine plant pushes through a window in one corner. “Mostly you’re criticised if you don’t tidy up,” she says. “But if you get through a certain threshold, it becomes iconic.”

Wylie’s artistic training went unused for years while she raised her family but, since returning to painting in her forties, she has become a critical and commercial darling of the art world. She is currently working on a painting that features a large, “nonchalant” skeleton. It will appear in her upcoming exhibition at London’s Royal Academy in early 2026, her biggest show to date.

Wylie’s bold canvases often combine text and figures from history, mythology or contemporary pop culture. And while Wylie’s process can be messy, she is exacting about her practice, regularly working late into the night wrestling with a painting. “Often it’s horrible, slimy, trite, pedestrian,” she says. “There are 100 things that can go wrong, particularly with faces, and then, for some odd reason, suddenly it’s alright.”

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Martial Raysse
Bouniagues, France

When Monocle meets Martial Raysse at his home in Dordogne, southwest France, the chill of autumn is creeping in, giving the light a quality that we can’t quite put our finger on. “In Paris, the shadows are blue but here they are pink,” says Raysse. “That’s what seduced me.” Though at 89 he is focused on painting “in strict obedience to the great masters”, the multidisciplinary artist can look back on a remarkably diverse body of work.

Raysse is cryptic about his artistic awakening but, according to his gallerists, he was already painting and writing poetry at the age of 12. By the time the Centre Pompidou put on a retrospective of more than 200 of his works in 2014, Raysse’s artistic expression had taken on dozens of forms, from poetry and painting to neon sculptures and cinema. “The interaction of these different forms enriched my artistic practice,” he says. “But I haven’t adopted any digital tools. I prefer pencil, which I think gets much closer to rendering emotions faithfully.”

Raysse is considered one of the earliest French champions of pop art. In 2011 his 1962 painting “L’année dernière à Capri (titre exotique)” fetched €4.8m at auction, for a time making him the highest-valued living French artist. But as a testament to his constant evolution, today he describes his association with the movement that made his fame as “a youthful error”, denouncing it as an “avatar of ready-made culture”.

Is creativity linked to longevity, we ask? “Unfortunately, creativity doesn’t extend your life,” says Raysse. “But with experience, what you do gain is progress.”

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Frank Bowling
London, UK

At 91, Frank Bowling is still searching for new ways to let paint speak for itself. “I’m always following my instincts,” says Bowling, who has painted, poured, sprayed, stained and stitched vivid colours onto unprimed canvases for more than 70 years. “There was a time when I didn’t have a dealer and museums weren’t buying,” he says. “Now, my paintings are in more than 70 museums around the world.” His work is currently on show at the Bienal de São Paulo 2025 – a full-circle moment for the South America-born artist in the bright throes of his twilight years.

A Bowling artwork begins on the floor. Every cotton-duck canvas receives its first colours in the form of drips of paint that fall from an earlier in-progress painting hanging above – a sort of artistic assembly line. “Then my assistant fills a bucket with paint and water and pours it down the canvas while I direct the flood,” he says.

When Monocle visits his studio in South London, Bowling is directing his son, Ben – who’s armed with silver glitter-laced spray paint – from a wheelchair. “Brighter,” says Bowling of a long white streak that cuts down the canvas like a coastline, “all the way.” When Ben reaches a patch of empty space, Bowling reacts instinctively. “Put red in it,” he says. But the painting is still not finished. Later, it will appear “on the ceiling of my room”. Bowling’s imagination never rests. “I’m preoccupied with the search for something new in painting so I’m always working in different ways.”

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Inson Wongsam
Lamphun,Thailand

Inson Wongsam is a key figure in the history of Thai modern art and the scene’s evolution from staid and traditional to colourful and contemporary. The son of a temple goldsmith, he studied under influential Italian sculptor Corrado Feroci, who changed his name to Silpa Bhirasri.

“Professor Silpa once told me: ‘Inson, if you wish to be an artist, you must sketch and work every day,’” says Wongsam from his studio and private museum in Lamphun, a small city near Chiang Mai. Wongsam has been an artist his entire adult life, creating metal sculptures and wood carvings in the 20th century and, in recent decades, wood block prints and paintings. His days begin at about 04.00, drawing in bed with watercolours or red and green pens or pencils. This is followed by some stretching, breakfast and more drawing in his studio. “When I cannot work, such as on days when I must visit the doctor, I feel uneasy,” he says.

Wongsam celebrated his 91st birthday in September with an exhibition at Bangkok’s Nova Contemporary. “Age has never affected my determination because I believe that the spirit is more important than the body,” he says. “As I grow older, I aim to make my work even more vibrant – never dim or lifeless.” Wongsam is currently working on an exhibition that is planned for next year. “I have reached a point in my life where everything feels clear,” he says. “I don’t need to look elsewhere for inspiration. Ideas come from me, pushing my work forward.”

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Martha Jungwirth
Vienna, Austria

At 85, Martha Jungwirth remains as industrious as she was when she first appeared on the art scene in the early 1960s. Her belated recognition (she only began attracting serious attention and staging large solo exhibitions in the 2010s) and the attendant title of grande dame of Austrian art have not made her aloof. Instead, she is kind and inquisitive, asking as many questions as she answers. Jungwirth works in watercolour or oil on paper rather than canvas and her style is marked by colourful abstraction, with pinks and reds at the fore.

Jungwirth’s wanderlust has taken her across the world, though in recent years she has favoured Greece, which she first visited with her late husband, art historian Alfred Schmeller. “When you travel, you meet people, you eat differently and you feel that you don’t understand anything,” she says as she shows Monocle a series of watercolours from Bali, comprising her impressions of the custom of placing small, stylised houses outside homes. “That activates you again.”

In Jungwirth’s large, light-filled studio, pride of place is shared equally between her current works and her sources of inspiration: reproductions of baroque paintings (classical art has always moved her), alongside newspaper clippings and photographs scattered among countless paint tubes. “I don’t even know what colours are in them,” she says. It is this disorder that drives her to keep working and exploring.

“I always try to surprise myself. Otherwise, you stiffen up and get stuck.”