Considering the crises that aviation is currently facing, you would think the industry would be more dour. But the energy at the recent Farnborough International Airshow was upbeat. You might even call it buzzing. Part of this could be explained by a defence industry in full swing, selling and developing the combat aircraft and systems of the future. Even considering the latest developments in the Gulf – with oil supply newly under pressure and prices again on the rise – the airlines and aircraft manufacturers looked surprisingly optimistic as well.
Emirates showed up in typical fashion with its newest airplane, an A350-900, showing off some nice new innovations for passengers, including a novel headrest for economy class questionably dubbed “U Dream” that might finally put an end to the neck pain of long journeys.
Embraer displayed its latest E195-E2 regional jet for Porter Airlines, which made the long trip to the UK from its headquarters in São José dos Campos, Brazil, before the plane joins the airline’s rotation. Although the show might not have seen airline orders at the rate of past shows, its 353 firm aircraft orders and 12 options beat the event’s 2024 total. Splashy Saudi start-up Riyadh Air signed up for heaps of new airplanes, while Philippine Airlines committed to even more A350-1000s to fuel its long-haul ambitions. And we saw some more niche orders as well: Uganda put its name down for a handful of Boeings for the first time in its history, while Bermudair made Airbus happy by signing up 10 of its A220-300 aircraft.
The industry is focused on bringing new technology to aircraft. Engine-maker GE Aerospace brought its 747 testbed, which is often seen flying around with experimental engines tacked on to a wing, to talk about some of the next frontiers in propulsion. Of particular interest is the Open Fan concept, which essentially removes the casing around the engine and ends up looking a lot more like a simple propeller. Manufacturers are considering new methods of electrification and the adoption of other clean energy power sources such as hydrogen.
Over on the defence side, talk continues to centre on unmanned aircraft. But this is not simply more of the exploding drones that we’ve seen used increasingly in warfare. Rather, the big players want to create combat systems that use uncrewed aircraft in combination with traditional fighter jets and other aircraft to augment and improve capabilities (and using the latest in AI to bring it all together). Increasingly, the role of the fighter pilot seems to be more a director and decision-maker, while robotic flying assistants crunch complex streams of data and intel to help provide desired outcomes. BAE Systems unveiled one such British-designed Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) at the show, dubbed the Brontanax, which is made to work alongside fighters such as the Eurofighter and F-35.
While the optimism at the show might make aerospace players look like they’re putting their heads in the sand, in the context of the past few decades, it makes more sense. Crises and shocks to aviation come and go with some regularity, from spiking oil prices and travel restrictions to regularly shifting airspace closures. In other words, aviation is rather accustomed to all this. And though current tensions in the Gulf seem as if they could spiral out of control, aviation is a long game – not least because aircraft need to be ordered, suppliers locked in and plans made years in advance. The industry is clearly betting that it will weather this storm. When the clouds clear, it’ll need to be ready.
Gabriel Leigh is a regular Monocle contributor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Here we go, crew. Here’s an easy one. You might have even heard this question posed in the Monocle orbit before. What is the worst thing a GM at a favourite hotel can say to you? As it’s early on a Sunday morning and all, let’s make this multiple choice.
a)
“So good seeing you again. I know you’ve flown in long haul and as your room is not quite ready we’ve made arrangements for you to freshen up in our gym.”
b)
“What a delight to have you back with us. As you’ll see across the lobby, we’ve really been listening to our guests and decided to get rid of the bar to open the whole space up so that people can hang out more and treat this as their living room.”
c)
“Very nice to be welcoming you back. I am thrilled to say that not only is your room ready but you’re going to be the first to stay in one of our newly renovated suites. It’s the exact same room size as you’re used to but we’ve made a range of fresh enhancements and technology upgrades. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.”
While none of these are great welcomes, you can imagine that I’m not a fan of option c. When a hotel renovates, why do they not reserve 10 rooms or a floor for guests who like things just the way they are? Are they not aware that many people don’t need a bathroom with a porthole window into the bedroom to allow in daylight, or a lighting system that has three mood settings that never correspond with how you’re feeling after a conference call at 23.00 with a bunch of muppets, or the absence of a TV because “Everyone travels with their own screens these days.” On a recent trip to HK, I stayed at one of the city’s more famous landmark properties and was offered a new room that was a cross between a franchise branch of Ladurée, an upmarket Geneva dental clinic (famous for fleecing unsuspecting clients from Riyadh) and the opening title sequence of The White Lotus. Thankfully, I could check out without having to exchange niceties with management. But had the staffer on duty asked me about my stay, I would have said: “Until you realise that 97.5 per cent of your guests are not 27-year-old influencers from Shanghai or San Francisco, and redeploy some dark woods and a more mature colour palette, I’ll be staying elsewhere.”
The urge to innovate is a curious thing. In some sectors, it’s essential. Technology, ambitious competitors and a stable yet stale product demand investment to vault forward, stay relevant. But what if your business thrives because it’s simply solid and draws a crowd because it doesn’t surprise but comforts? Is it okay to stick with the lighting fixtures that the founders hung 100 years ago? Should the linen sheets be replaced with polycotton because easy-care bedding will trim €11,000 from the laundry bill?
On Friday, we set off from Zürich for St Moritz. The afternoon was devoted to family dental appointments and a little bit of advance party prep (we hosted our summer soiree at our Alpine shop and café last night). On the way up the mountain, with time on our side, I decided a sunny lunch at a favourite restaurant would be a perfect tone-setter for the weekend. I called the hotel and had them reserve a table. Some 90 minutes later, we pulled up, took the lift down a few levels and walked to the small woody restaurant that we’ve been going to for nearly three decades. Water and champagne were poured, menus distributed and we took in the view. Who on earth thought a bouncy castle, inflated to look like a bloated version of the hotel, was a good idea?
I had already decided I was going to have the steak tartare (medium spice) and a simple salad with French dressing. I didn’t really need the menu at this point but I thought that I’d look anyway. Hmmmm? There must be some pages missing, I thought. I didn’t recognise any of the dishes. Where was mom’s rösti with salmon? Was the potato waffel supposed to be the stand-in? Where were the classics? Had the same five-star consultants who told the Hong Kong management that “cirrus pistachio” was a colour for the future also sold this hotel on beef carpaccio with raspberry as a winning replacement for Swiss beef tartare? We managed to find our way but the manager could tell that it was a struggle to order and there was definitely a degree of embarrassment when chopsticks were lined up alongside the soup.
At this point I surveyed the crowd, there were four to five people around 39 but everyone else was north of 75. This being the land of clinics, the real numbers were likely closer to 90. Were they enjoying seeing classics turned on their heads? From the murmurs at other tables, the innovation in the kitchen is no easy sell. It might well be that they know their current crowd won’t be with them much longer, so why not move with the times and bring in a new crowd? Then again, why have a menu in the high Swiss Alps that could also be found in a nice lobby restaurant in Jakarta or Boston? Is it not better to stick with a taste of place rather than a set of dishes that kill off a once-loved favourite?
Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.
Sitting by the pool at Hotel Esencia, wedged between dense tropical forest and the Caribbean Sea, it’s hard to believe that we’re only a 90-minute drive – past walls shielding all-inclusive mega resorts and water parks – from Cancún Airport, Mexico’s busiest hub for international travel. From there, most visitors make their way straight to the pool bar at their hotel in Cancún or they continue on to Playa del Carmen or Tulum, a bohemian-beach-town-turned-Instagram-trap. But away from the high-rises and hidden in the jungle away from the high-rises is where you’ll find the 12 hectare estate of Hotel Esencia.
Cancún became a spring-break destination in the 1990s, drawing thousands of annual partygoers ever since. Tulum only started attracting real tourist traffic in the early-to-mid 2000s, but has since become overdeveloped, with a coastline fringed with open-air beach clubs and its own international airport. Some three million travellers flood into the area each year. While some view this as a success story, others see it as a calamity – a once-pristine shoreline ravaged by overtourism.
After an hour at Hotel Esencia, listening to birds chirping in the jungle and waves crashing just feet away, the spring-breakers and cookie-cutter hotel towers are a distant memory. “When I first discovered the Tulum area and Playa del Carmen 20 years ago, it was up-and-coming,” says owner Kevin Wendle, who began his search for property in Tulum but was unable to find anything suitable. “I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll go second best.’” In 2014, he came across a home-turned-hotel on an immaculate beachfront which once belonged to an Italian duchess. His lack of luck in Tulum ended up “being a blessing”. “I found a lick of beach that I’ve managed to protect by collaborating with our neighbours,” he says. Over 18 months, he transformed the property into a luxury offering with a handful of casitas overlooking the beach or tucked into the jungle.
The hotel is luxurious but far from flashy. White-washed rooms are decorated with handmade rugs and mid-century chairs, along with pieces by Studio Giancarlo Valle and Ceramic Suro. As development rolled on, Wendle made a few changes here and there – adding a gym, more casitas and new F&B offerings, that also acquired more land. But the feeling of the space largely remained the same. “Where our improvements have come from is me learning as a hotelier,” says Wendle. The evolution has been incremental and intentional. While there have been some bigger additions, such as the spa and a Beefbar restaurant, many changes have been as small as “let’s remove these faucets, sell them and replace them.”
Wendle has seen many hoteliers in the area open a business only to overhaul it a decade later. Thankfully, he doesn’t have investors to answer to, and has his heart set on providing the quality and attention to detail that ensures his hotel stays unchanged and proudly unique. “You return [to a hotel you used to visit] and think: What happened? It was so great 10 years ago,” he says. “That is something that is never going to happen here.”
Many of Hotel Esencia’s guests are returning visitors or people in-the-know. “When I launched Esencia, our clients wanted to go to Tulum because of the buzz around it,” says Wendle. But as the town’s restaurants became overcrowded and condos replaced nature, visitors decided to stay put on the hotel’s premises. “Clients were coming from Europe and I thought: How do I keep them here?” So he upgraded the offerings. When the hotel welcomed a brick pizza oven, it also welcomed a pizzaiolo from Naples. When the kitchen began to offer sushi, he enlisted guidance from the owners of a well-known spot in Miami.
To help with the initial rebranding of the hotel, Wendle tapped the talent of Juan Carlos Gutiérrez. Born in Mexico, Gutiérrez had been working as a graphic designer at Chanel in New York. Having always had a passion for food, he was also tasked with reimagining the restaurant menu (and, at one point, was the executive chef). Today, he is the hotel’s artistic director. “Kevin has a [new] point of view – there’s always change and innovation. I am more old-world; I like things to be the same,” says Gutiérrez. “My goal is to create a place where [guests] feel at home.” Details are what guide this aesthetic. “Everything has to be handmade or custom-made, not picked from a catalogue. It needs to have substance to it.” So many hotels, he adds, “don’t have a story to tell.”
But a large part of Hotel Esencia’s story is about the Riviera Maya before it became a playground for holidaymakers. Knowing how Cancún, Playa del Carmen and Tulum have developed, would Wendle open here again? His answer is unequivocally yes. Beyond the zip lines and mega resorts, pockets of natural beauty remain. There are cenotes and nature reserves within driving distance, and the hotel is a short walk from a secluded lagoon where manatees swim. “We have all this Mayan heritage around us, and that’s not going to change,” says Wendle. Being close to Cancún Airport has its benefits too. With nonstop flights to major cities such as New York and London, it’s incredibly easy to access. “You don’t need a connection, you don’t need a boat. You can just arrive.”
When Monocle unveiled its annual Quality of Life Survey earlier this month, US cities continued a run of gutter balls that now stretches nearly a decade. The most recent – and only – stateside entry to ever feature on our list was Portland, which last nabbed a spot in 2017.
The years since have not always been kind to Oregon’s largest city. In 2020 and 2021 destructive street protests, violent acts of political extremism, escalating homelessness, rising crime and a disastrous statewide drug-decriminalisation scheme all contributed to drastic reductions in quality of life that caused the once fast-growing city to shrink for the first time in decades.
In 2022, however, Portlanders voted for one of the farthest-reaching municipal reforms in recent US history – the professionalisation of the city’s government. And since 2024, city and state leaders have taken corrective action, including standing up much needed shelter beds, ending laissez-faire policies on public drug use and ensuring that protests remain peaceful and do not veer into property damage.
In the wake of these changes, a new wave of shops, restaurants and cultural venues have been opening – many of them in the city centre, which just a few years ago had been written off as a moribund office district that would never bounce back. The influx of new businesses could help the city take off once again.
Here are five addresses you should know for your next visit to Portland.
1.
Chess Club
While there is surely somewhere in Portland to practice the Queen’s Gambit, this Chess Club is a paean to print, or as the owners put it: “A playground assembly of visual cultures.” There are more than 400 magazines and design books for sale, including lush glossies such as contemporary art mag Hi-Fructose and food and fashion mash-up Family Style. Chess Club also aspires to cultivate local print culture – it’s a must-stop location during the Portland Art Book Fair and hosts a recurring workshop, How to Start a Magazine, that might just yield the next great title in the city that birthed Kinfolk and Berm. In September 2026, they will move 15 blocks from Old City to the heart of downtown with the promise of more space for the printed word.
chessclub.art
2.
Rothko Pavilion
3.
Nodoguro
4.
Mono Space
5.
The Downbeat
What are you doing the first week of September? That’s when we’re hosting The Monocle Quality of Life Conference in sunny Lisbon and I would like you to join me and the rest of the crew, of course. It will be the 10th outing for the event and over the past 11 years (Covid punctured a hole in the line-up), we have created something pretty special.
To explain, I’ll steal the words of a guest at last year’s gathering in Barcelona, “This isn’t just a conference, this is an urban retreat where you get to spend three days in the company of amazing people and go home with a new outlook on life.” And, no, she wasn’t my mum – not least because she’s dead.
This comment hits it on the head. We bring readers, speakers, editors together for a gathering that includes incredible conversations on stage and off, fun lunches and dinners – dancing too – and access to a city’s most impressive buildings, ateliers and galleries. This Monocle moment is always a highlight of my year.
Still unsure? Here are a few more things to consider. You will make new friends and you will be surrounded by people who care about making better businesses, cities and lives. You can come on your own – most people do and everyone thrives.
OK, I’ve said my bit – check your diaries for Thursday 3 to Saturday 5 September and click here for more details (we are not revealing everything just yet but we have a few surprises planned).
When Monocle started almost 20 years ago, and I had not a grey hair, we promised ourselves that we would always have fun with print, look at new ideas that merited getting presses to whirr, ink to hit paper. That’s one of the many reasons why I am delighted to announce the arrival this week of our new summer newspaper, Med, Mountains & More.
But, “Ah”, I hear you say, “don’t you always have a summer newspaper?” Well, yes, and thank you for paying attention to our print schedule. But this year it comes with a large-format glossy summer supplement that might just blow your socks off – or your Birkenstocks if you are currently hosiery free in your part of the world.
Why? Well, have a look at our report from Syria’s chic beach clubs, come with us as we discover a different side to Sardinia, check in to the new Mandarin Oriental in Mallorca as the brand sets out to reinvent the resort (wonder who wrote that?) and come to the Alps with us on Austria’s military secret: the handsome donkey.
It’s on sale at all wise newsstands from Thursday and available for pre-order here. But I noticed a nice pile already in our Zürich shop this week – so head to Dufourstrasse 90 to be a print leader of the pack.
For more of Andrew’s columns, click here.
For a place that’s all about image, Los Angeles is surprisingly difficult to capture. The sprawling city comprises a patchwork of cultures and communities, and most visitors from major metropolises such as London, Tokyo and Paris spend their first day here trying to locate the centre before realising there isn’t one. But trying to make sense of it all – its complexities, hidden pockets and nuances – is what makes the place so compelling.
As a Los Angeles native, I have watched it mature into one of the world’s most interesting cultural capitals. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the city lacked a sense of self-belief despite its global influence. New York dominated conversations around art and European cities led on food, fashion and design. Today, that gap has been filled.
Night Gallery has built one of the most impressive programmes in the arts district. Nonaka-Hill and Gallery Castle’s showcase of post-war Japanese artists attracts collectors from across the Pacific. Meanwhile, restaurants such as N/naka and Osteria Mozza have long settled the debate over whether Los Angeles belongs among the world’s most serious culinary cities.
Los Angeles is best experienced through improvisation – but you have to start somewhere and there’s few spots better than Griffith Park, especially before afternoon temperatures arrive. Perk up with a coffee from Go Get Em Tiger on Hillhurst and fill your day with exploration before sitting down to a long dinner in Bestia’s patio.
One of the great joys about spending time in this city is that you can move between multiple worlds – from the Koreatown spas that glow in the night to the Taiwanese bakeries, Chinese seafood restaurants and the Mexican street vendors serving some of Los Angeles’s most definitive meals – in a single day. The ease with which the city’s various faces sit beside each other is a thread that also runs through its art scene, nightlife and creative communities.
The Monocle City Guide to Los Angeles reflects that plurality. The selection of addresses stretches from Highland Park in the northeast to the Santa Monica waterfront – taking in Los Feliz, Larchmont Village, the Arts District and the neighbourhoods in between – each telling a different story about how this city works.
Whether it’s Tam O’Shanter, which has occupied the same darkwood booths in Atwater Village since 1922, or Found Oyster, a natural wine-forward seafood bar, the guide takes visitors to the most cherished, lived-in spots in Los Angeles. Enjoy JF Chen’s cavernous warehouse of museum-quality antiques off Highland Avenue, and fill your suitcase with beautiful stationery at Hightide.
Los Angeles no longer needs qualification or defence. It is sprawling, contradictory and unexpectedly generous to those willing to slip into its slow-moving flow. This guide is simply one way in.
In a playground beneath a Housing & Development Board estate in Singapore, a group of people in their sixties and seventies crawl on all fours across concrete, gripping rails and climbing low walls. The air is already heavy with heat and everyone moves carefully but deliberately. To a passer-by, it might look unusual. To the group, it’s just a regular morning geriatric parkour session.
In a country where more than one in five citizens is now aged 65 or older, the unexpected practice reflects a wider question Singapore has tried to answer for decades: how can people remain active, independent and connected as they age?
For Tan Shie Boon, former parkour athlete, the answer begins with exercise. Shie Boon founded Movement Singapore in 2022 with a philosophy inspired by the Yamakasi collective – the French group often credited with creating parkour. His approach is less about acrobatics and more about spatial awareness: crawling, climbing, balancing and learning to move through an environment with control and confidence. The principle behind Movement Singapore is simple: “If you don’t move your body, you will lose your function.”
Movement Singapore started with one 64-year-old student. Today, Shie Boon teaches 35 people ranging from their late forties to 75, most of them women. In four years, the group has recorded only one significant injury – a wrist fracture – and the student returned.
Sessions start simply: a warm-up, circuits and a sequence of movements across rails, walls and slopes. But Shie Boon leaps beyond fitness. He calls it the “parkour vision”: learning to see the city differently, not as a series of obstacles but as a landscape of possibilities. “You start seeing opportunities everywhere you go,” he says.
Tian Chu joined four years ago after friends encouraged him to try parkour. Already an active scuba diver and skier in his sixties, the movement changed his relationship with the city that he has always lived in, making him notice surfaces, obstacles and possibilities previously ignored. “A lot of the exercises we do mimic real-life examples,” he says. “When you cross a wall, when you run up a slope, it asks you whether you have the ability. And I think this gives you confidence.”
Among the skills that Chu has learned, the lesson that has stayed with him is how to fall safely. Boon teaches students to tuck their chin towards their chest when they fall, a small adjustment that can prevent a much more serious injury. Parkour has found a natural home in Singapore, where ageing has long been considered a question of urban design as much as healthcare. The city-state has spent decades designing neighbourhoods that foster healthy ageing.
Eugene Lau, director at Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority, says that the city-state’s planning philosophy has long been built around independence and connection. “We focus on creating neighbourhoods where people can be active, independent and able to age in place while connected to the community they are familiar with,” he says. In practice, that means barrier-free access, sheltered walkways with no gaps and public spaces conceived as what Lau calls a “community living room” – an extension of the home where residents can gather throughout the day.
By 2030, Singapore aims for every resident to live within a 10-minute walk of a park. When Lau heard about seniors repurposing rails and ramps of public spaces for parkour training, he saw it as another example of how the city’s public areas are changing. “Public space is no longer just about providing seats for the elderly to sit down,” he says. “They are no longer content with that.”
While parkour will not solve the challenges of an ageing population on its own, it could be one piece in the larger puzzle of helping people to age gracefully. In the early morning shadow of a housing block, these elderly urban gymnasts offer a more flexible image of growing older: one that fast-ageing cities elsewhere might do well to jump on.
Joana Moser is a radio researcher with Monocle. Cartwheel into the Quality of Life Survey here. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Hubert Lee is Samsung’s executive vice-president and head of the mobile experience design team, which means that he works on the South Korean giant’s smartphones, tablets, smartwatches and more. This includes the much-anticipated Galaxy Z 8 series of folding phones, including the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and the bigger Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.
Lee sat down for an exclusive interview with Monocle on the eve of the launch.
“Call me Huey,” says Lee, who joined Samsung in 2023. “To have a new interpretation of what the future foldable should be, I wanted to bring a little bit of change into our look and feel,” he adds.
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 introduces a new form factor that’s shorter and wider than most foldables when closed – but it opens out into a tablet with, for virtually the first time in a folding phone, the same 4:3 screen size as regular tablets – it looks like a smaller version of the iPad mini.
How would you define the Samsung smartphone style?
We want our devices to look clean, simple and, ultimately, modern, which also applies to the opening of a folding phone. [He points to the lightly curved edges where the two halves of the fold join.] It’s two positive surfaces. Some brands have much rounder sections but if you go too round, it reminds you of a baby’s butt cheek. We tend to go flatter on the sections.
What are the challenges of designing a foldable phone?
Foldable phones have a design challenge that regular phones don’t: ease of opening the two halves. We asked, ‘What would be easier to open?’; when the gap is bigger, it’s easier to put your fingers in between and open. But at the same time, if the gap is too big, it becomes visually awkward because then you have this huge gap.
What inspired the new format for the Galaxy Z Fold 8?
We looked at familiar objects that we live with. In this case, the passport. Its utility is based on one-handed usage and this is inspiring. We like that proportion. The natural way is so important because if you force something, if it’s unnatural, then people don’t like using it.
It’s strikingly different from other foldable phones. What practical benefits does it enable?
People are consuming more media content. They’re spending more time with their devices because of AI and most of that usage is coming from our mobile phones. This new form factor has come about because of a different way of using our devices or foldables.
Folding phones are still a bit niche. It’ll be awesome if we could get our foldables to become the household’s mainstream device. But, of course, we have to back it up with reliability, durability and the highest quality that we can provide.
What does the future of the smartphone hold?
One size doesn’t fit all. It’s very diverse now. The ways people use the devices are so different. To cater to all of these different needs is going to be a bit of a challenge in the future.
How about phone screens: how will they change?
There’s a lot of talk about the display going away and everything being done by voice. We believe the display will stick around because whether you have glasses, watches or all these new AI wearables, we believe the phone will still be the mainframe.
We’re still going to focus on providing the best experience visually, while at the same time making it easy to use, even when you’re not using the display. As for what the displays will be, whether it’s OLED or even better than OLED, those changes will be implemented for sure.
Smartphones have become slimmer over the years. Will that continue?
There’s going to be a limit of how thin the devices will be. But again, it’s not about becoming the slimmest device in the world. A core value for Samsung Design is about being slim and light. When you’re using our devices, we believe the biggest factor is weight. The lighter it is, the more comfortable it is to use and carry around.
How does the creative tension between designers and engineers resolve itself in developing a new product?
It’s in a designer’s basic nature to design something that is inspiring, something that stands out, something that can make a huge impact. Designers are like artists, they’re visionary people. At the same time, engineers make things work. And it’s always about the solution. If we want to make something happen, we have to make sure that the solution is there.
How prominent should AI be in future smartphones?
A designer’s responsibility is to ensure that AI is seamlessly integrated into our devices. Why would you want to see AI? It should be embedded so that it’s there when you need it. But you don’t really need to be aware of it. In the early stages, a lot of designers contemplated putting an AI button in a phone but, as it becomes more generalised, seamless integration is more important.
Copenhagen consistently ranks highly on Monocle’s annual Quality of Life survey. The listing appears in our out-now July/August issue, in which the Danish capital comes in second place. Key to its success as a liveable city is a thriving design scene that delivers considered public spaces, such as its metro stations and harbour foreshore, and well-furnished buildings. This design culture and ecosystem begins with free education, making creative pursuits independent of affordability, and it’s headlined by institutions such as the Royal Danish Academy. For students at Denmark’s historic institution for architecture, design, conservation and fashion, each project is an experiment. Spend enough time in Copenhagen and you will understand the academy in a wider context. Its brick buildings are more than a campus – they’re the foundation of Copenhagen’s creative innovation.
The country’s consistently strong economy not only encourages graduates to remain in the Danish capital but it also encourages them to stay and find work in their fields of study. Meanwhile, the design industry is steadily expanding its reach at home and abroad. For proof you need look no further than the growing international participation of 3 Days of Design, the city’s annual design fair. Equally important is the community that sustains it. Copenhagen’s scale allows a close-knit network of designers and makers to exchange ideas and foster a culture of experimentation and cross-disciplinary collaboration that extends beyond marketing gimmicks. This vibrancy prevents complacency or a too-heavy reliance on history. Instead, Denmark’s design heritage serves as a springboard: a set of values that gives new generations of designers a framework to build on.
The persistent image of Danish design as monochrome and minimalist conceals a richer story. Alongside the popularised light-wood, pared-back furniture are Verner Panton’s exuberant palette and boundary-pushing creations; Finn Juhl’s sculptural forms shaped by surrealist art; Nanna Ditzel’s bold-patterned furniture. Today’s designers continue that evolution, finding strength not in muted palettes or the rejection of ornament but in something more enduring: a society that, ever since the postwar welfare state recognised design as a public good, continues to stand behind its creative class. It just goes to show that consistent quality of life doesn’t come by accident – it comes by design.
Tourists in Sochi tend to ignore the air-raid sirens after the third time that they hear them. The Russian resort’s beaches are usually more crowded at this time of year. But even as temperatures have risen and thunderstorms cleared, this subtropical corner of the Black Sea has experienced a lacklustre start to the high season. Tour operators complain that intensifying Ukrainian drone attacks and the attendant shutdowns of the city’s airport have reduced domestic demand by as much as 30 per cent year on year. Piles of unused sunloungers are scattered across the city’s stony beaches and the wide, 7km-long seaside promenade is eerily quiet.
“It’s like we’re living in Israel, minus the health care,” says Valeria, a lifestyle journalist who lives in central Sochi with her husband and one-year-old son. When the half-deserted beaches are evacuated, holiday-goers crowd together on the promenade. Those who have made it here won’t let the war ruin their holiday. Inflation isn’t helping Sochi to fill its beaches either, as the Russian economy nears recession and wages stagnate.
A night in a standard sea-view room at the Swissôtel Resort will cost RUB22,300 (€260), though the city is awash with far cheaper and bleaker lodging options. Before the war, it was sometimes cheaper for Russians to go on all-inclusive trips to Antalya or Sharm-el-Sheikh – and it definitely is now. Still, back then, Sochi maintained its status as the country’s premier summer resort, a place for the great and the good to be seen, if just for one weekend in July. Its climate, its mountains and the infrastructure left behind after the 2014 Winter Olympics all contributed to the resort attracting as many as eight million visitors a year. This year, however, only around two and a half million have come, with many wealthier visitors staying away. Non-EU Balkan states and China have become the premier spots for Russians who are not welcome elsewhere.
The war in Ukraine, which is approaching its fifth year, has also hit Sochi’s rival Black Sea destinations Anapa and Tuapse. Before 2022, these were among the more affordable options for domestic travellers; some were drawn to the former’s unique wine treatments, known as oenotherapy. Visitors today will definitely need some self-administered wine therapy to brave the bridge that connects Crimea, another popular pre-2022 holiday destination, to the Russian mainland. Like many Black Sea oil refineries, ports and tankers, the bridge has been struck twice by Ukrainian drones since the full-scale invasion. Because of the dangers that fuel trucks face when using the road, there is now a severe shortage in Crimea. Some hotels have even tried to lure tourists back with the promise of free petrol.
War’s shadow looms over Sochi. But as with elsewhere in Russia, most people have buried their heads firmly in the sand – which is easy to do here, given the beaches and the bars. New cafés and restaurants continue to open in this hilly, chaotic town. Porto-Franco promises a patriotic Russian take on Ukrainian-Jewish cuisine; Brot! crafts sandwiches; Lino Caffetteria offers all-day breakfasts. A museum with a 500 sq m diorama depicting the entirety of human history has just opened on Chernomorskaya Street in one of the city’s oldest districts. As in other cities, Backrooms and Obsession, two much-hyped indie-horror movies, have just hit the local cinemas. Despite sanctions and major Hollywood studios’ boycott of Russia, foreign films are still screened – sometimes as pirated copies with the state’s blessing; at others, because local distributors have managed to buy the rights directly.
In the mountains that surround the city sits Krasnaya Polyana, a chain of high-end Olympic villages and ski resorts. Up here, the sirens are a reassuringly distant wail. Locals sometimes call this stretch the “Moscow ghetto” because of the number of wealthy Muscovites who come here for spa treatments and esoteric pseudo-spiritual practices such as tarot reading. Sveta, a massage therapist who specialises in using leeches, says that she has never seen a quieter season than this one. “Getting here is harder, planes are cancelled and some are afraid,” she says. “But actually everything is quite peaceful.” Still, as soon as Sveta has time off, she hotfoots it to the much cheaper (and safer) Republic of Abkhazia, a Russian-backed breakaway region of Georgia only a few hours’ drive away.
Among the Russians holidaying in Krasnaya Polyana this summer is Alexander, one of thousands of convicted murderers pardoned by Vladimir Putin after fighting in Ukraine. He now recruits mercenaries from around the world to fight in the Russian army. Alexander and his girlfriend, an exotic dancer, spent their weekend eating, hiking and visiting a llama farm. “It was quite soothing,” he says. Even though the Telegram app is now banned in Russia, it remains the main messenger and information hub thanks to VPNs, with local group chats buzzing with mundane enquiries. People are looking for ballet and yoga coaches, tennis buddies and nail artists, and sharing videos of bears wandering into villages. Every so often, someone will ask whether it’s safe to travel to Sochi. Another will point out that many of the country’s top officials own properties in the area, including Putin, so there’s nothing to worry about. But Russia’s president hasn’t been seen in Sochi since 2024. These days, he spends his downtime in a bunker.
