During a recent trip to Shanghai, I called in on the headquarters of tile company Yi Design and had a fascinating chat with founder Caroline Cheng about all things China. Among the many things that we discussed was the need for Chinese brands to represent themselves abroad. Cheng floated the idea of a “China House” in London to represent the best of the country’s culture and commerce, similar to Japan House on Kensington High Street.

It’s a genius idea and it comes at a time when some in London are oddly spooked about Beijing’s new embassy at the former Royal Mint Court near the Tower of London (yes, it will be home to Chinese spies, just like the existing embassy in Marylebone and pretty much every UK and US embassy in China).

Since China House should be a shop window rather than a show of strength, a street-facing address in Covent Garden would do nicely. Xie Ke could design it, Li Xibin could brand it and Yi Design could supply the tiles for the ground-floor café and retail space. Private companies should bankroll it entirely and showcase some real-world companies and products that are not yet household names in Europe.

Here are the five that we would start with, including a tea brand ready to take over Western capitals, an airline’s front-of-house staff, the shoe we should all be wearing and a very good air-con maker. 

1.
Midea 

As Europe swelters through another scorching summer, it’s time for Midea – one of the world’s largest air-conditioning manufacturers – to make its consumer mark. The white-goods powerhouse from Foshan is a hidden giant of Chinese industry. It already makes much of the behind-the-scenes machinery for other brands and owns a stable of international home-appliance companies, including Toshiba and Teka. Own-brand Midea has been winning multiple awards at European trade fairs for design and its logo will appear on FC Barcelona’s home shirts next season – a sure sign of its ambitions to compete at the top with the likes of Daikin, Samsung and LG. Premium brand Colmo should be showcased at China House and Midea’s founder, He Xiangjian, could cover the construction costs. One of China’s top-10 richest people, Xiangjian is a generous benefactor of science and the arts. He also owns his own vineyard in Ningxia, so that’s the wine list sorted.

2.
Chagee 

The birthplace of tea should have a teahouse rather than a café. A high-traffic corner of Covent Garden would be a strong London debut for Chagee, which has already taken Asia by storm. My local in Bangkok replaced a La Cabra from Denmark and it’s only a matter of time before Europeans are walking around the streets of London, Paris and Copenhagen carrying cups of Bo Ya green tea and Da Hong Pao milk tea. The brand’s roots go back to Kunming in Yunnan province. Founder Zhang Junjie spent years working in a second-tier milk-tea business before launching his own brand in 2017. The positioning is similar to Starbucks and its red-and-white logo has the same impact in Asia as the Siren of Seattle. It’s a complete package and this should take Chagee beyond other brands such as Heytea. 

3.
Juneyao 

Recruiting airline crew to be front-of-house staff would be a smart choice for China House, given their existing roles as de facto country ambassadors. Alas, most of China’s airlines are state-owned and generally drab (except Sichuan Airlines, which leans into its native panda population and famous cuisine). So, we would team up with an under-the-radar rising star of the private sector, Juneyao Airlines. The Shanghai-headquartered airline is known locally as “milk air” because the founders – three brothers from Wenzhou – made their money in the dairy business. The airline targets higher-end travellers and frequent flyers talk highly of the lounge experience. Twenty years after its maiden commercial flight took off from Shanghai, Juneyao is growing its direct flights to European cities. The Wang brothers pioneered private flights in the mainland in the 1990s and, with a new livery, they could be the ones to build the country’s first international aviation brand.

4.
Pane

Uniforms will be another key component of China House’s success. As those who attended Monocle’s The Entrepreneurs conference can attest, China has no shortage of fashion designers. We could go with talents such as Shushu/Tong, Samuel Guì Yang or any number of the up-and-coming graduates being mentored by Tasha and Justin from Labelhood. Staff at China House would look sleek and nimble-footed in a pair Pace Nostalgia 60s by Pane, which was established in Shanghai in 2022. Founder Chen Ning went from finance and fashion to footwear and Pane’s classic styles take cues from the German army trainer. Demand for its shoes is even causing supply issues. I went to buy myself a pair at Pane’s beautiful flagship on Yongyuan Road and watched most groups walk past the neighbouring Onitsuka Tiger shop. Several Europeans walked out with boxes to bring home before Pane’s international expansion gets under way.

5.
Zeekr

Cars are a pillar of any national brand-building exercise and China’s best chance of following Japan and South Korea’s route from cheap manufacturing threat to genuine competitor and respected leader. BYD has done an admirable, Toyota-style job of establishing a reputation for quality and value for money. Now it is time for rival Geely, based in Hangzhou, to deliver a premium brand that can tempt the Lexus customer. Volvo-owner Geely launched Zeekr in 2021 and put an ex-Audi design veteran behind the wheel. The Zeekr 9X is already the executive ride of choice in Shanghai and the flagship model is expected to hit the UK capital by the end of this year. Parking one outside China House would be a fetching advertisement. But there should also be a fleet in the basement carpark to provide a set of wheels for high spenders at the shop. Geely already makes London’s black cabs and China knows better than most how to chauffeur its VIP guests in style.

Tokyo is a treat for art lovers. From big public institutions to private museums and galleries, there are thousands of venues across the city that show everything from precious Japanese artefacts to global names in contemporary art.

Some sites are noteworthy for their architecture: the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum is housed in a 1933 art deco residence adorned with glass by René Lalique (currently the backdrop for an exhibition of works by British ceramic artist Lucie Rie). Other locations are known for their speciality: the Ota Memorial Museum of Art is dedicated to the art of ukiyo-e (with a collection of some 14,000). While there are plenty of spaces to head to in the city, here are three photography exhibitions to start with this summer.

‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Extinction’
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

Hiroshi Sugimoto is Japanese art’s most impressive polymath: antiquities dealer, tea practitioner and architect (his Enoura Observatory in Odawara is a notable example) are just some of his many hats. At the heart of his creativity, however, is his exquisite gelatin silver photography, which is the subject of this extensive exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art. 

The show features works from all 13 of Sugimoto’s photographic series, taken from the 1970s to today, in three roughly chronological chapters. New additions to renowned series such as Seascapes, Dioramas and Stylized Sculpture are seen for the first time. The show was hung and lit by the artist and his team, putting Sugimoto’s technical brilliance on display. 

Also worth a look is the side exhibition on the third floor, featuring the museum’s own collection of works by Sugimoto and the artist’s thought-revealing notebooks. The exhibition title is double edged: a reference to the anticipated extinction of silver gelatin as a medium, and eventually, the work of the artist himself. 

‘Hiroshi Sugimoto: Extinction’ is on view until 13 September; momat.go.jp

‘I’m So Happy You Are Here’ 
Hikarie Hall, Bunkamura Museum of Art

This touring exhibition (which accompanies the English-French bilingual book of the same name) is finally making its way to Japan. The show celebrates the work of female Japanese photographers who were active from the 1950s to the present. First opening to great acclaim in Arles in 2024, this expanded Japanese iteration, curated by art critic Mariko Takeuchi, features more photographers – bringing the line-up to 30 names – and comes with its own catalogue.

The artists featured in the exhibition span generations and photographic approaches. Artists include Eiko Yamazawa, born in 1899 and one of Japan’s first female photographers; Hitomi Watanabe, who began working in the 1960s; and contemporary star Mari Katayama, whose work often explores her identity as a double amputee. Seen together, the works offer fresh perspectives on historical events.

The roughly 200 works on view address memory, the body and the everyday through installations, collages and moving images, in addition to traditional still photography. The exhibition is presented by the Bunkamura Museum of Art – currently mid-relocation and expansion – which has staged the show on its home turf in Shibuya. To complement the exhibition, the museum is hosting related events, including art screenings at Bunkamura Le Cinéma Shibuya Miyashita.  

The exhibition runs from 4 July to 26 August; bunkamura.co.jp 

‘Tomorrow’s Dining Table’
Tokyo Photographic Art Museum

Step inside Yebisu Garden Place in Ebisu and you’ll find the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (TOP). Founded in 1995 by Tokyo’s metropolitan government, it’s the city’s only public museum dedicated to photography, serving an important role in displaying historical and contemporary still and moving images.

Tomorrow’s Dining Table draws from TOP’s roughly 39,000-strong collection to look at food from a social perspective, focusing on its connection to families, aging, farming and the environment. There are photographs by 14 artists on display, including Rinko Kawauchi and Tokuko Ushioda, whose works tap into the shared memory of the family dinner; and Minoru Yamada, one of the first generation of postwar Okinawan photographers, represented by a touching image of a man and his children at Itoman fishing port in 1960. 

The exhibition is open from 2 July to 21 September; topmuseum.jp 

Bars-tabacs, bars that sell scratch cards and tobacco products among other paraphernalia, are closing across France. There was once a time when almost every village had one. Now barely a day goes by that I don’t pass by a boarded-up bar with faded, peeling letters spelling out tabac. Where these institutions have closed, votes for the Jordan Bardella-led Rassemblement National (RN), France’s most prominent far-right party, have risen sharply. Bars-tabacs were never hotbeds of liberal thinking like Viennese cafés – but here lies the opportunity. Should Renaissance, president Emmanuel Macron’s party, and the left begin to court the boozing, smoking and gambling sect of France’s population by reopening them?
 
A study conducted by the Centre for Economic Research and its Applications (Cepremap) found that some 18,000 bars-tabacs had closed across the country between 2002 and 2022. It revealed that while the initial effect of their closure on the far-right vote was small, as time went on, the RN vote increased dramatically in affected districts.

With the next presidential election set for mid-April and early May 2027, France faces the very real possibility of a far-right president for the first time in its history. The RN already saw dramatic gains in the March 2026 local council elections.
 
There’s a comforting universality to bars-tabacs in France. Similarly to an airport bar, the laws of time are different. Go mid-morning and there will be plenty of customers drinking lager, while others are still nursing an espresso. There’s always a wall of tobacco products and countertop shelves filled with scratch cards. More often than not there’s also a TV showing a sports match or horse race. But much like the airport saloon, a bar-tabac isn’t the first place where I’d personally choose to announce my political leanings. The discourse in these establishments is, in my experience, generally more right-leaning.
 
I called on friends that come from regions with particularly dramatic increases in votes for the RN in the 2022 presidential elections: the Gard, Pas-de-Calais and Lozère. Marine Le Pen won the majority in the first two and took home almost 46 per cent of the second-round vote in the third. All had seen the number of local bars-tabacs decline significantly over the past few decades. 
 
Each source told me the same thing: the bar-tabac is often the only place to socialise in rural areas. Everyone goes, regardless of their social class or economic means because it’s quite simply the only place nearby. It’s regularly the last place to shut down, a symbol of the final death knell for a once-thriving village high street. If there’s no bar, there’s probably no library, no cultural centre and no restaurant. The friend in Lozère reported the most significant drop in her town: from 15 bars to one between the 1960s and the present day.
 
Without a space such as a bar-tabac to come together, villagers inevitably spend more time alone. Instead of going to his local, where someone might contradict him, Jean-Claude stays at home (“likely watching CNews,” [France’s most-watched, far-right-leaning news channel], says one friend).

In the run-up to the previous French presidential elections in the first trimester of 2022, a disproportionate amount of airtime on news channels was accorded to far-right candidates, namely Le Pen and Éric Zemmour, the leader of Reconquête (France’s other major far-right party). Centre-right and far-right candidates consistently held the most airtime during the first 12 weeks of 2022, with only the 13th week, right before the first round of voting, bucking the trend. 
 
Centre-left candidates are missing a trick. Voters miss their local bar-tabac and the RN are weaponising the isolation caused by these closures. “La France des oubliés” (forgotten France), the idea that rural parts of the country have been left by the wayside, was a political slogan successfully used by Le Pen during the 2017 and 2022 presidential campaigns. But since Cepremap found that the effect was also reversible – where bars-tabacs opened, the vote for the RN decreased – the answer to beating Bardella next spring might just lie in betting big on the bar. 

Anna Richards is a Lyon-based writer. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
 
Further reading:
– What Macron’s Dior habit says about the politics of presentation and the smell of success

– In Italy the real dolce vita experience is at the village ‘sagra’

– The villages of Spain’s fast-emptying rural heartlands have plenty to teach us

Being vice-president is one of the trickiest jobs in the business. It requires a deft hand at appeasing the big boss while not looking too hungry for their job. But for JD Vance, the juggling act reached new heights in June as he faced his toughest task so far – negotiating peace with Iran while subtly trying to distance himself from a president with nosediving approval ratings.

The Apprentice parallels are plentiful, as Donald Trump promises (jokingly, Vance claims) that his vice-president will take the fall should the Iran deal fail. Trump is even said to be quizzing his closest allies about whether they think Vance has what it takes for the top job – and dropping hints that he might prefer secretary of state Marco Rubio as his successor. But the 41-year-old deputy appears unfazed as he starts positioning himself, ever so slightly, apart from the man who supercharged his political career. 

On 16 June, Vance released a new memoir that The New York Times called “a running start on defining his political philosophy just as the 2028 presidential race… begins to take shape”. The book, Communion, is ostensibly about his journey away from the nondenominational Christianity of his chaotic childhood in rural Ohio and his conversion to Catholicism. That childhood was the subject of Vance’s hugely successful debut book, Hillbilly Elegy, which detailed his mother’s struggles with drug addiction and his upbringing by his larger-than-life grandmother. It became the must-read tome of 2016 among conservatives and liberals alike, as people sought to understand the grievances that had sent voters from the rural working class into the arms of Trump.

Communion doesn’t quite pull off the same feat. In the intervening years, Vance has gone from feted author to Maga darling, taking his working class, up-by-the-bootstraps political brand and hitching it to the Trump bandwagon. No one thinks of him as a representative of the rural poor anymore. 

While the book details his adoption of Catholicism, his other conversion from never-Trumper who called the president “America’s Hitler” to attack-dog-in-chief for the president is perhaps more interesting. If the account in Communion is to be believed, it was not naked ambition that prompted this U-turn but a conscious decision to prioritise policy over his disapproval of Trump’s combative style. 

Policy aside, Trump gave Vance’s political career a major boost, supporting his successful 2022 bid for Ohio’s US Senate seat and then naming him as a presidential running mate two years later. On the page, Vance repays that loyalty. Trump is mentioned 40 times (The New York Times counted), all in fawning tones. After all, those hoping for a promotion would be loath to denigrate their boss.

But Vance positions himself as a different political beast from the president, as well as someone guided by deeply held moral and religious convictions. Counter to Trump’s wealthy New Yorker persona, Vance presents himself as a regular guy, with regular work-life balance concerns such as finding the time to brush his daughter’s hair before they go to church on Sunday. In the book, he seems to be striving for some middle ground, advocating for putting Christianity at the heart of government while also saying that a person does not have to be a Christian to be a good American (which his wife Usha, a practicing Hindu, will be pleased to hear). 

The promotional tour for the book looked very much like a practice run for the campaign trail. On a variety of media outlets he attempted to present the warm and fuzzy side of a man who can come across as both awkward and aggressive. There was contrition for the “childless cat ladies” comments of 2021, which alienated huge swaths of women and cat lovers – he concedes it was a “boneheaded” statement. 

All the work to sell himself as a likeable candidate for America’s next president could be undone, however, if he fails to secure a lasting deal with the Iranian regime. As the US and Iran continue to trade strikes in the Strait of Hormuz, Vance has been in Switzerland hammering out the details of the end of the war, which has been deeply unpopular in the US. Yet even though most Americans support its end, less than half of the Maga faithful think that the US-Iran agreement is in the country’s best interest. 

Anything less than a perfect deal that favours the US could be “career ending” for Vance, says Thomas Whalen, associate professor at Boston University and an expert on vice-presidential dynamics. “That has always been a traditional role of vice-presidents,” he adds. “The president doesn’t want to receive the criticism, so [he’ll] get the vice-president to take the flak for him.”

But even if Vance does weather the current storm, Whalen believes that he is in an impossible position. The greatest hurdle to a JD Vance presidency could be Trump himself, whose capricious behaviour has proven that he can turn on his allies in a second. “It’s like Trump is the whale,” says Whalen, “and [Vance] is the little insignificant pilot fish in his wake, waiting to get crushed.”

As heatwaves stretch longer, affecting more people and cities across the world, many centres of human life are becoming increasingly unliveable. More greenery, shade and water would help but these alone aren’t enough. We also need cool spaces where the temperature, noise and light levels allow our bodies to rest. Fortunately, bringing urban temperatures down is a challenge that humanity has faced for millennia and there’s a lot that we can learn from ancestral technologies. For example, ancient Persian structures such as the yakhtchal or badguir offer effective but low-technology design solutions.

A yakhtchal is a vast communal fridge built from porous materials (eggshells, ground plants and even goat hair), designed to hold ice harvested in winter and keep food cool during summer. A badguir is a wind tower that catches hot air, channels it towards cold underground water, then circulates the cooled air back into living spaces: passive air conditioning making use of climate knowledge, materials and physics.

As a designer and artist, I have tried to reinterpret some of this thinking for today. With architect Imma Sierra, I designed a piece called “Pavillon de l’air”, a covered bench in a semicircle with a slanted fabric roof providing shading throughout the day. The roof is coated in beeswax, which allows rainwater to flow down ventilated terracotta walls below, where it’s stored. When heat warms the hollow bricks through which air can flow, the water is released, cooling the structure through evapotranspiration. The properties of the pavilion’s materials bring temperatures down without electricity.

We also need to make more use of underground spaces. Beneath the streets of Paris (topping Monocle’s 2025 liveable cities index), for instance, there are old railway tunnels, underground chambers and more. These places – La Petite Ceinture, the quarries and catacombs – are naturally cool and quiet. We explored these subterranean locations for a project called “14C”, another collaboration with architect Imma Sierra, which we are showing at this year’s Venice Biennale. Though often inaccessible or neglected, such spaces have enormous potential as sanctuaries from extreme heat. By incorporating elements such as natural light, reflective surfaces, plants and art, we could turn them into inviting underground piazzas where people can gather, cool down and reset.

I collaborate a lot with scientists to ensure that my projects are grounded in data. This was how the “14C” project discovered that the temperature beneath Paris stabilises at a depth of 10.84 metres, a fact that could inform the creation of effective and sustainable cooling solutions in the future.

Though I like low-technology solutions, I’m not against innovation (“14C” wouldn’t have been possible without thermal-imaging cameras). Electric cars reduce noise pollution. Ancestral technologies and new ones don’t need to contradict each other. We must combine ancient and cutting-edge design, with a little more attention given to simpler solutions.

We hear a lot about smart cities but those conversations shouldn’t just be about sensors and data. A yakhtchal, a shaded piazza, a quiet underground tunnel that’s open to the public – all of these are smart. Climate resilience can come from new technology but also from making the most of what already exists: the sun, the wind, the materials at hand.

Read next:
Monocle’s 2026 Quality of Life Survey: The world’s 10 most liveable cities

Air-con has become the latest front in a culture war – but more hot air is the last thing our overheating cities need

As the US celebrates its 250th birthday, an architectural playbook is being deployed in Washington. It’s one that we’ve seen before. A few months after the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Adolf Hitler and architect Albert Speer revealed a masterplan to reconceive Berlin, even renaming it “Germania”. The plan was political and spatial, to represent the new metropole of a vast global empire. Its cornerstone investments? An enormous gathering hall, named The Volkshalle, linked by a grand boulevard via a 100-metre-tall Triumphal Arch, the largest ever to be proposed.

Denizens of Washington might find this historical account eerily familiar. US president Donald Trump proposed erecting a 76-metre triumphal arch that straddles the capital’s Potomac River last year. But there’s more: a new ballroom in the East Wing of the White House, the Mar-a-Lagoifying of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and even the renaming of the Kennedy Center. All appear to be visible acts of the president rebranding the US capital as an imperial power centre. It is a battle enacted through narrative, the built environment and its architectural spaces. To understand Trump’s agenda, we must understand this architectural playbook. 

The first play is disparagement and erasure. The Trump administration posits its work as a necessary act of renewing degraded places and infrastructure. This is a classic exercise that uses deprecating characterisations to justify reconstruction: the East Wing, for example, has always been seen by Trump as decrepit, while downtowns are garbage, Palestine could be a new riviera and other countries are “shitholes”. This language of sanitising cities is a common refrain among burgeoning dictators.

The second play is the construction of monuments. The spectre of the Trumpian arch will certainly not be the last effort aimed at feeding the ego of the US’s most vainglorious commander-in-chief. That it must be the largest ever, or 250ft (76 metres) tall to commemorate the 250th anniversary, only reveals the conceptual vacuity of monuments writ large. But this one feels particularly empty. 

The danger of Trump’s arch is that once built, it will be almost impossible to remove – hence its real purpose. The monument can turn insecurity into permanence, frailty into symbolism. This is architecture’s gravest flirtation – the idea of generational immortality. And so the monument works as a weapon, not a commemoration; it disguises its historical raison d’être. The dependence on historical forms and styles to allude to permanence is no accident. Its effect is to fade into the background, as if it has always been there. Taken together, the intent is to profess a false historical record and entomb an image of immutability.

The final tactic is to construct in a historically inaccurate architectural style. Much has been written about Trump’s gaudy, gold-wrapped monuments and policies; the so-called “traditional” classicism. But we should inquire as to why it is in this style. Architects such as Speer used classical architecture as means through which to channel the ideology of autocracy. With Trump, the agenda tends to be anti-modern and anti-design. 

If left unchallenged, the destruction, renaming and rebuilding of public architecture around one man’s image and tastes could reshape the national narrative. Imagine the violence, ICE detentions and occupations of this era being recast as monuments of strength and success. To resist, we must recover a democratic understanding of architecture: as a shared structure through which the public can recognise itself.

As the US celebrates its 250th anniversary, we must consider not what the nation should build but what its buildings should ask of us. Perhaps we should look less to arches or gilded rooms and more to the infrastructure of common life: the places of worship, labour halls, train stations, libraries, schools, parks and, yes, memorials where all Americans can find common ground. Such monuments have nothing to do with praising power and everything to do with enacting citizenship.

Michael Murphy is an architect, lead designer of The National Memorial for Peace & Justice and the author of ‘Our World in Ten Buildings’.

On hot summer afternoons, Mediterranean cities go quiet. The streets are emptied by heat so intense that even the shadows seem to move slowly. The climate has inspired regional traditions such as the Spanish siesta, which is as much about respite from oppressive temperatures as it is about resting.

The same logic once informed architecture too, giving buildings cooling physical features including shutters that allow in light while keeping the heat out. Today, in our glass-sealed, climate-controlled structures, it’s easy to forget that both our daily rhythms and our architecture used to work with the weather, not against it. As the effects of climate change intensify, we need to reconsider more humble forms of temperature control. Here are five shutter designs that are well worth revisiting.

---

1.
‘Persiane alla genovese’, Italy
In the busy alleys of Genoa, the persiane alla genovese protect from the heat while also enhancing privacy. These shutters consist of louvred panels divided into two parts, which are opened in sequence: the bottom at dawn and the rest near dusk. The lower part is called gelosia (“jealousy” in Italian), a nod to the idea of protecting what’s inside from the gaze of the street. The shutters are painted green, making the streetscape look balanced and uniform. From inside, you can look out when either the top or bottom is open, while passersby on the exterior side see only a coherent landscape of green windows.

2.
‘Jalousies’, France
The French had a similar idea and came up with jalousie shutters. The name also comes from the word for “jealousy” but, unlike the Italian persiane, these shutters are more voyeuristic and have a greater focus on looking out without being seen. Those inside are able to peer through the gaps, with the slats deflecting any gaze from the street.

Jalousies first appeared in Marseille, where they were often painted white or in a sun-faded sage. Both were practical selections, with the white reflecting the sunlight and green hues hiding dust from the eye. By the 19th century, they appeared across Parisian façades too – more for atmosphere than climate control, but the soft light they create has become a symbol of romantic French interiors. 

3.
Bahama shutters, Caribbean
Bahama shutters, also known as Bermuda shutters, developed in response to hurricanes in tropical climates. Designed to open and close vertically as opposed to horizontally, they are hinged from the top of the window and function more like fixed canopies, casting deep shadows while allowing the aperture to remain open through downpours, their angled slats deflecting rain and helping to control light and airflow. Once made from lightweight materials such as bamboo and palm fronds, today they come in more robust materials such as aluminium or wood. 

4.
‘Muxrabija’, Malta
A timber box latticed with geometric patterns, the muxrabija was introduced to Malta during Arab rule in the ninth century. These structures, which protrude from buildings, were originally used as ventilation screens and tools to create a sense of privacy. Their dense geometric pattern reflects Islamic aesthetics and clever design, filtering sunlight and allowing those inside to observe the street without being seen. The muxrabija is typically carved from pine or cedar, while dark-green and brown colours help to blend with the shadows inside. This shutter doesn’t open or close but, in essence, forms a breathing façade that is fully integrated into the skin of the building. 

5.
Stone screen, Greece
Before louvres and hinges, there were stones. In ancient Greece, from about 800 BCE to the Hellenistic period, there were either no windows or aperures were sealed with semi transluscent materials, such as thinly cut marble. The marble wasn’t adjustable but would let in light while blocking wind, dust or rain. 

Today, we have replaced many traditional shutters with plastic shells and loud motors – but could we learn something from the simplicity of this ancient design? Perhaps there is an opportunity to revive the idea of slow, seasonal architecture with shutters that are put up as the climate demands and are made from materials that speak to the locale in which they are found.

Tucked away in a vast pine forest in southwestern Finland, Paimio Sanatorium stands as a masterpiece of modernism and the career-defining work of Alvar and Aino Aalto. Completed in 1933, the building was designed as a tuberculosis sanatorium but it soon became a project that propelled Finnish architecture onto the global stage. Over the subsequent decades, the complex transitioned into a general hospital before eventually being left vacant in the mid-2010s to face an uncertain future as nothing more than a decaying architectural relic.

To secure a sustainable future for the estate, the Paimio Sanatorium Foundation commissioned Norwegian architecture practice Snøhetta to develop a visionary masterplan. The concept, unveiled last week, transforms the massive property into a multi-faceted resort blending premium hospitality, wellness and culture. To ensure long-term financial self-sufficiency, the plan relies on three distinct operational pillars. The former patients’ rooms will be converted into a high-end hotel, while the grounds and communal areas will remain open to day visitors, students and local residents. Finally, the plan leverages the site’s isolated, highly secure environment to position itself as a host of soft diplomacy summits for global leaders.

The modesty of Snøhetta’s architectural approach has earned widespread praise from conservationists, who applaud the fact that the studio resisted the urge to leave a loud, contemporary stamp on the protected landmark. “A building of this magnitude required us to put Snøhetta second and Aalto first,” says Snøhetta’s co-founder Kjetil Trædal Thorsen. “It was about distilling Aalto’s spirit and using it to keep the building relevant in today’s world.”

The physical interventions required to support this repurposing are being handled with immense care alongside local studios ALA Architects and Mustonen Architects. In the surgery wing, a later addition, the non-original interiors will be removed to make way for an exhibition hall and auditorium capable of hosting up to 700 people. Inside the patient wing, characterized by its slim lines and curved balconies, the original rooms will be turned into retreat spaces built for rest. Ten of these rooms will be restored to their exact 1933 state, complete with custom Aalto-designed ceramic wash basins and historical details, while the remaining rooms will either be combined into larger suites or fitted with modern, wooden bathroom pods. Externally, the heavy glass enclosures that were added during the building’s hospital era will be stripped away to reopen the sun balconies, celebrating the indoor-outdoor threshold spaces that characterised the Aaltos’ design.

Beneath these wings, a lower-level spa equipped with hot tubs, cold plunges and traditional Finnish saunas will offer guests direct access to the surrounding forest. “You have to approach a building like this with utmost care and precision, as there are stringent protection stipulations,” says Tommi Lindh, director of the Alvar Aalto Foundation. “That said, changes are inevitable as the building’s original purpose [to house and treat patients with tuberculosis] has become unnecessary. The Aaltos always knew this and I am sure they would love to see their work find a new life that reflects the needs of today’s society.”

With the first phase of the masterplan now public, the foundation is moving into commercial development and feasibility testing, shares. “We will start meeting with premium hotel operators and investors to secure the necessary funding to bring the resort to life,” says Mirkku Kullberg, Paimio Sanatorium Foundation’s chair of the board. The ambitious revitalisation requires an estimated €30m in private investment on top of a €10m grant provided by the Finnish government. Momentum is expected to build quickly as the sanatorium awaits the decision, due at the end of July, that could potentially inscribe it to the Unesco World Heritage List as part of the broader Aalto Works series.

The project is expected to act as a powerful economic catalyst, triggering an influx of visitors and development to the region. But its effect goes beyond that. “Aalto was a cosmopolitan in the truest sense of the word, and we want this place to reflect that spirit and his internationalist ideals,” says Kullberg. Hence why the successful execution of this masterplan represents a massive opportunity for brand Finland and the country’s international standing. By blending cultural heritage with premium wellness tourism, Paimio is poised to become a landmark within the growing Nordic hospitality market. “People shouldn’t underestimate just how attractive a destination the Nordics are from a tourism perspective,” adds Thorsen. “With most of Europe struggling with 40C heatwaves, our summers are pleasant, the air is pure and nature is everywhere.”

Yet the stakes extend beyond regional economics as the upcoming Unesco designation is directly tied to the building finding an active, protected use. Because Paimio stands as a central component of a 13-site serial nomination, the success of this financial and architectural model is vital – a failure at Paimio could put Finland’s entire Unesco series in jeopardy. But that is unlikely considering Snøhetta’s track record. This is, after all, the Architects of the Year from the 2023 Monocle Design Awards that we’re talking about. 

When you think about the best birthday parties that you have been to, their success inevitably comes down to a gracious host who effortlessly brings together disparate social circles, while making everyone feel welcome. Such a host tends not to plan events that alienate large swaths of the attendees, nor kick off the festivities by insulting half the guests.
 
But this is no normal birthday party: it’s Donald Trump’s United States on the brink of its 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776. That means a guest list of more than 340 million Americans, many of whom feel conflicted by a deep love for their country and a serious concern about the direction in which it’s moving.

Polling by Pew Research last month found that 59 per cent of respondents felt that the country’s best years were behind it, with only 29 per cent saying that they were satisfied by the way things are going in the US today. More than half of adults said that they think the economy will be weaker, the US less important in the world and the country more politically divided by 2050.

The lofty founding goals of liberty, equality and the pursuit of happiness seem far from people’s minds, especially as many struggle to put food on the table or gas in their cars after Trump’s tariff regime and the Iran conflict pushed up the cost of living. So how has Trump addressed these concerns and promoted birthday celebrations that bring together all Americans and encourage a wave of positivity about the future?

Well, there was going to be a concert series on the National Mall but when many of the acts pulled out fearing that it was going to be overly partisan, Trump huffily cancelled the whole thing and organised a political rally on the site for 4 July instead. On 24 June, Trump launched the Great American State Fair, which has hidden huge parts of the National Mall behind tall fencing so that people willing to bear the heat can ride an underwhelming Ferris wheel and visit booths set up by the states that didn’t boycott it. 

Trump’s transport secretary, Sean Duffy, kicked off proceedings by calling the musicians who pulled out “libtards”. Though Trump himself wasn’t quite so derogative, he failed to address any concerns, instead insisting that “we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world”. 

Despite the Declaration of Independence being adopted in Philadelphia, Trump is avoiding the Democrat-run city. Tomorrow, he will travel to Mount Rushmore in Republican-run South Dakota, where he will give a speech in front of four great presidents carved into the rock face (created against the wishes of the landowning Lakota Sioux and by a man with ties to the Ku Klux Klan). He will return to the capital for his 4 July rally, followed by an extravaganza of fireworks on the Mall – which is just about the only thing that Washingtonians agree might be quite jolly. For the most part though, Trump is eschewing all the rules of good hosting. A birthday celebration is one of the few times when families and friends across generations can come together, putting aside differences for a common cause.

After the waves of political violence and deep polarisation that have unsettled the country, a common cause of celebration is exactly what the US needs right now. Most Americans are united on the values they hold dear: a recent NBC poll showed that family and freedom were most important to citizens, regardless of their political leanings. Focusing on what unites Americans rather than divides them would have cemented feelings of inclusion across a political and geographical landscape that should be celebrated for its diversity rather than harangued for it. 

But rest assured that joyful, patriotic events will take place across the US: people will crowd under bunting for small town parades, neighbours will gather at street parties. Excellent food – another staple of a great party – will be thrown on grills in backyards throughout the nation. The country will hold its own party, leaving Trump to celebrate himself in Dakota and DC. 

Charlotte McDonald-Gibson is a Washington-based journalist. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

Further reading:

– What can be gleaned from Washington’s Reflecting Pool on the week of the US’s 250th birthday?

– TMZ goes to Washington: Can the Hill survive the Hollywood treatment?

– Want to make a restaurant succeed in Washington? Invite the Maga crowd

After years of setbacks, redesigns and supply-chain headaches, Australia’s flag carrier has unveiled the route and aircraft that is set to connect the country’s biggest cities to Europe. At Airbus’s facility in Toulouse, Qantas presented its first ultra-long-range Airbus A350-1000ULR, which will traverse the 22-hour non-stop flight path between Sydney and London from October 2027.

It’s a small niche in the global aviation market but the launch solves one of the industry’s persistent challenges: how to directly link Australia’s east coast with Europe. The specially modified Airbus A350s – the first of which is due to be delivered in April next year – is a feat of engineering, with an additional fuel tank that allows it to stay in the air for an extended period. 

According to the airline, fuel consumption is broadly comparable to a one-stop journey between Sydney and London. “The challenge is not speed, it’s range,” said Patrick du Ché, Airbus’s head of flight and integration tests, when Monocle visited the company’s facility last week. “To fly longer distances, we need to have much more fuel.” Traditionally, that would mean carrying fewer passengers. Thanks to extensive weight-saving measures throughout the cabin and airframe, however, the Project Sunrise aircraft is about 40 tonnes lighter than a standard A350. Some of the fuel savings also come from eliminating an intermediate landing and takeoff.

The economics depend heavily on premium travellers. Of the aircraft’s 238 seats, 98 are in first, business or premium economy. That means 41 per cent of the cabin is dedicated to higher-yield passengers, a significantly larger proportion than on most long-haul aircraft. “The premium share is much higher than usual,” says Qantas Group chief executive officer and managing director Vanessa Hudson. The cabin layout leaves little doubt about where Qantas sees demand coming from, with the aircraft itself designed around a simple problem: how to keep passengers comfortable for almost a full day in the air.

For that, Qantas turned to Australian designer David Caon and researchers from the University of Sydney. Their work produced what the airline calls a Wellbeing Zone, a dedicated area where passengers can stretch, move around and hydrate during the flight. Research suggested that movement mattered just as much as comfort. “Passengers wanted more space,” said Caon. “Not just a better seat but somewhere else to go.” The designer has also removed overhead bins from parts of the premium cabin, creating a more spacious interior. Weight reduction drove countless design decisions. According to Caon, discussions often came down to a matter of grams.

Comfort extends beyond the furniture. Peter Cistulli, professor of sleep medicine at the University of Sydney, has spent years studying how passengers cope with ultra-long-haul travel. “The traditional model is to feed people and get them to sleep,” he said. “That doesn’t work on a 22-hour flight.” Instead, Project Sunrise uses lighting, meal timing and nutrition to help shift passengers’ body clocks towards their destination time zone. Spicier food and caffeine promote alertness while lighter, protein-based meals are served before rest periods.

As airspace closures, geopolitical tensions and operational disruptions become more common, range is becoming increasingly more important. It means that there’s value in the programme beyond passenger comfort, with the technologies developed for Project Sunrise likely to find their way into future aircraft programmes. “It keeps us innovating,” says Benoît de Saint-Exupéry, Airbus’s executive vice-president of sales for commercial aircraft. “We can use the same technologies elsewhere, including in freighters and future A350 developments.” After decades of speculation about non-stop services linking Australia’s east coast and Europe, the technology to do so has finally arrived – and will surely keep evolving.