A generational transition is taking place across the Asian art market. While seasoned Gen X collectors continue to be top spenders – acquiring high-value, blue-chip pieces to build their private collections – a wave of young, wealthy buyers is painting a new picture. 

At the centre of this phenomenon is Frieze Seoul. As the fair ushers in the autumn art season, Minju Kweon, its head of VIP and business development for Asia, shares what this budding cohort is after and how they are changing the culture around collecting.  

What are young collectors in Asia looking for today? 
They aren’t just looking for art. While they often start their collections with art, [most begin looking] for ways to appreciate the pieces in their living space. So they want to [combine a range of practices including] design and craft to create a total artistic space. To address this, we have introduced a new section called Material Practice this year, [exploring where design converges with art and craft]. 

How do their collecting habits compare to older collectors?
The older generation followed market trends more closely. These days, young collectors in Asia don’t buy something just because it’s trendy. They really dig to find [something] they like personally. Collecting is much more personal for them. 

Where do they go to discover new art?
Young collectors are not just following fairs. Biennales, for example, are great platforms to learn and to discover what’s new. And this year, [South Korea] has two major events – the Gwangju Biennale and the Busan Biennale – happening in the same week. It really helps that everything is happening at the same time.

Are they changing the collecting culture? 
Historically, in Asia, collectors have been more discreet. The new generation is much more open to sharing. They post on Instagram and they don’t mind doing press interviews to promote what they like. They also form their own communities.

What are you doing to engage this younger cohort? 
Frieze Seoul is a fair, of course, but we try to make it a citywide festival. We engage with other institutions in the city – not only the established ones but also the alternative spaces so that people can find new things. For example, we host [an event called] Euljiro night. Euljiro is a place where emerging artists run smaller alternative spaces. We have many established museums in Seoul, so we wanted people to experience the other side of the city’s creative scene as well. We launched Euljiro night last year but we have a bigger programme for it this year because art lovers appreciate it. And it’s not only art: we also host Frieze Film and Frieze Music Night to introduce [other cultural] elements, such as performance art, film and music. It creates a space where the younger generation – and really our audience as a whole – can experience art in a broader way.

South Tyrol is known for its tasteful, understated hotels that feature plenty of natural wood and muted colours. There seems to be an agreed-to aesthetic that plays up the surrounding mountain scenery and plays down taking too many design risks. The Aurora on Merano’s Passer Promenade has torn up the memo with a round of refurbishment work that wouldn’t be out of place in London, Los Angeles or Paris.

Owned by the same family for more than 60 years, the Northern Italian hotel was best known for its music nights and the occasional techno party in the basement bar thrown by the owners’ children. Today those grown-up children – siblings Melanie and Philipp Aukenthaler – oversee the day-to-day running of the hotel. But instead of resting on their laurels, they decided to go for a radical rehaul. “It’s important to have something inspiring,” says Melanie. “We needed to have something that reflects our times.”

The siblings set about hiring the talent for the transformation and brought on Milan-based architect and designer Hannes Peer – who is also from South Tyrol – to reimagine the hotel. Peer had a bold design foundation to build upon: the dining room already features local Laas marble and a geometric sculpture from Herbert Kinkelin commissioned by the family. Rather than remove these layers, Peer decided to work with them. He also decided to keep the original wooden ceilings in the common areas and replicate them in the bedrooms. “The family wanted something that didn’t erase the authenticity,” says Peer, whose previous projects include The Manner Hotel in Manhattan and Signor Lievito bakery in Milan. “It’s not just black and grey like other new South Tyrol places.”

Using colour and mirrors, the communal space conveys Peer’s influences from Brazil and California. There’s a tropical modernism feel to the newly redone entrance, which is lined with exotic plants and features 2,000 handmade coloured tiles from Milan’s Officine Saffi. The reception features a beautiful new curved wooden desk inspired by Milan’s Teatro Manzoni, as well as a brutalist sculpture from Peer’s artist mother, Ursula Huber. A chandelier that occupies much of the ceiling is made up of hundreds of pieces of yellow glass, part of Peer’s “Paysage” collaboration with 6:AM Glassworks, whose lights feature throughout the hotel. Indeed, while the aesthetics might be far removed from the prevailing mountain mood, Melani argues that it makes sense. “This was never an ‘Alpine’ hotel,” she says. “Merano isn’t an Alpine village. This is a Mitteleuropäisch city.” 

Elsewhere, the Artè restaurant has been reconceived with a new name and menu. A corner nook has been covered in thick cream carpet (we worry about the first red wine spill) and decked out with high-grade speakers, turning the establishment into Merano’s first listening bar. 

The renovation work extends well beyond the interiors. The hotel used to be two separate buildings at different heights before they were joined together. Thanks to Austria’s Feld72 architecture firm, one building’s roof has been removed and brought up to the same level as its counterpart – adding rooms in the process – with a contemporary external shell covering the façade.  

It’s all part of an ambitious masterplan from The Aurora team that is yet to run its course. So far, only 18 of the hotel’s 59 rooms have been redesigned by Hannes, with a second phase to come. There are plans for a rooftop swimming pool and jazz bar, as well as regular cultural programming designed to bring Merano together. 

What do the old-timers make of all the changes? Philipp remembers a group that recently visited from Köln. “They were very happy,” he says. “They were playing cards in the listening room, with hip-hop playing in the background.”
hotel-aurora-meran.com

Leaving home to live and work abroad is as much about meeting new people as it is about getting to know a place. For those in industries with an office or classroom to report to, colleagues are often the first port of call. For others, shared hobbies, home countries, life stages and levels of homesickness bring fresh arrivals together, steering them towards five-a-side football teams, cold plunge clubs, conscious dance evenings and Whatsapp groups. Expat-friendly bubbles are a way to make friends in a new city, to let off steam and reinvent yourself in the absence of family nearby. They exist in most major international cities but the presence of these tribes is exaggerated in expat hubs such as Hong Kong. There can be no other city in the world where pilots and cabin crew are such a visible part of the social fabric. Thinking about taking a job in Asia? Here are just a few of the networks that have shaped my time in Hong Kong and Bangkok over the past decade: 

General managers
Hotel head honchos must be one of the most popular subjects on the pages of Monocle and for good reason. There are few other positions that involve keeping an eye and an ear on the business world, travel trends and the latest hospitality openings all at once. Pre-Monocle, I knew zero general managers. Now, I know plenty all over Asia and I find that they are a bit like ambassadors or journalists – but more fun, gossipy and better dressed. The word from the hotel lobby is that the modern general manager’s job has evolved from greeting guests and walking the floor to crunching numbers and running a significant operation in the back office – they know even more than they let on. 

The French (and Germans)
Some nationalities tend to live in clusters overseas – perhaps none more so than the French, who arrived in Hong Kong in large numbers during the François Hollande presidency and visibly transformed entire neighbourhoods into a bubble within a bubble with cheese, wine and bread. Germans, by contrast, tend to be virtually invisible, preferring to avoid each other when abroad. A Munich entrepreneur now residing in Hong Kong, for instance, shared a revealing supermarket-queue experience from last Christmas with me as I researched this trend. Overhearing the couple in front speaking German, she shared some yuletide cheer. Nein! They shot her a death stare and left without saying a word. So if you’re in need of some European familiarity, conversation or bread, head to the unofficial French quarter.  

English teachers 
Posting London-based bankers to Hong Kong is on the up again but not every expat works in finance. Asia is a popular destination for English teachers and they are among my closest friends, both on and off the football pitch. They come to teach in international schools for higher wages, fewer hours and better-behaved classrooms – it is this attractive wage-to-work ratio that is why I keep telling my sister to leave her teaching job in the UK. Plenty are Brits but not all, with people from countries such as South Africa and the US also making up the ranks. Hong Kong’s private schools have had a tough decade but business in Thailand is booming. Highgate International, Wycombe Abbey and Dulwich College are among the British outposts opening this year. Note: teachers have a canny ability to gauge the mood of local communities, much like those financiers have with markets. 

UN families 
Bangkok is an Asian hub for charities and other third-sector organisations. The UN’s regional headquarters is the sun in this not-for-profit solar system. My own enclave in the Thai capital is a popular home for UN families from all over the world. Chitchat at parties and kids’ football practice has provided a crash course in UN acronyms (UNDP, ADB, FAO, IOM) and a glimpse into the organisation’s bureaucracy – all very inside baseball and off-putting. It has been a brutal year for this community with Donald Trump’s cuts to aid budgets costing countless jobs and departures. But Australia gets the plaudits for stepping in to cover some of the shortfall.  

Foreign correspondents
Then, of course, there are us creased and crumpled bureau chiefs, stringers and overseas reporters propping up the bar at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. Jaded, know-it-all news junkies. The worst! Hong Kong’s troubles this decade have seen a fair few of us swap a perch at the main bar on Ice House Street for a spot at a penthouse in Chit Lom, Bangkok – but there’s still plenty of lively conversation to be had on a bustling Friday evening. Join me. 

James Chambers is Monocle’s Bangkok-based Asia editor. For more from James, click here.

When we think of any group of countries as a supranational entity, our frames of reference tend to be geographical. We think of Europe, Asia, Africa or Latin America and make (often erroneous) cultural or strategic assumptions based on nothing more than proximity. In an interconnected world, however, it isn’t always that simple: countries can have overlapping interests without sharing a particular landmass.

Hence the 21st-century fad for acronyms that encourage us to consider particular groups of countries as coherent blocs. One of which we will likely hear more of is Crink: representing China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Granted that there are neighbourly relationships among these sovereign states – two of them are so immense that this can scarcely be avoided – the coalition includes four very different political constructs: an authoritarian superpower, a chaotic revanchist, an Islamist imperialist and a cult compound.

The Crink acronym is intended to identify the menace that these four autocracies pose to the West and warn of their accelerating co-operation. Though not a formal alliance as such, the included countries are most certainly working together. Ukraine – and therefore Europe – is presently beset not only by Russia’s military but by North Korean missiles, Iranian drones and Chinese satellites. If a popularisation of Crink reminds Europe’s people of the threat, it will be a valuable addition to the lexicon.

The acronym appears to have been coined by Canadian foreign-policy boffin Peter Van Praagh in 2023, when he identified the four states as partners in an endeavour to dismantle the global order (the same alliance has been described as the “Axis of Upheaval”). Crink is therefore also a useful mnemonic for reminding Western policy-makers who and what they’re up against – and if you add fellow intransigent troublemakers Libya and Yemen, Crinkly is right there for the taking.

It is unlikely, however, that the abbreviation will be embraced by the quartet that it describes. There will be no Crink headquarters, no website, no summits, no souvenir tote bags. This is usually why such acronyms lapse: they are imposed from without rather than gestated from within and the countries involved are often annoyed or baffled by them. 

During the Eurozone crisis a decade ago, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain did not appreciate being bracketed as Pigs (also sometimes rendered as Piigs to include Ireland). Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa must have been bemused at being arrayed as Civets.

Attempts have also been made to float Mint, Mist, Vista and Mikta – all being varying combinations of Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Korea, South Africa, Turkey and Australia. Some of these have proved more viable than others. The foreign ministers of Mikta have met annually since 2013; their most recent gathering – a meeting between senior officials – was in Canberra in July. Mikta might even be thought of as a precursor to Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s notion of so-called middle powers, combining their diplomatic weight to organise without the interference of superpowers.

But the only acronym that has gained any real popular traction is Brics. Devised in 2001 by Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs, the acronym bundles Brazil, Russia, India and China (the uppercase “S” for South Africa was added in 2010.). Though the four countries are geographically disparate, they have certain factors in common, including physical heft, large populations, untapped potential and a certain caginess about being seen to consort with the West. 

Crucially, the term Brics has been happily adopted by the countries involved. The coalition holds an annual summit – next scheduled for September in New Delhi – and yes, souvenir tote bags have been reliably reported at previous such conclaves. Brics has also enlarged its membership, adding Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran and the UAE as formal members. The acronym, however, has not been expanded accordingly, most likely because there are now just too many vowels (luckless Scrabble players will understand the difficulties). 

This frantic acronymising by pundits and analysts is understandable. It is a big and complicated world, and breaking down the geopolitical landscape into blocs can be a way to usefully simplify concepts for a general audience. The kudos of being the person who names such a coalition is doubtless considerable. But it must be done sparingly. An unceasing blizzard of such terms will cause more confusion than clarity. And if, as in the case of Crink, we array our enemies under one flag, it might give them ideas.

When the Eurozone debt crisis was spiralling out of control in 2012, it took one man, Mario Draghi, to bring markets back into line. The European Central Bank chief’s speech promising to do “whatever it takes” to keep the euro together helped to calm investors’ jitters. This week, the world finds itself hurtling towards a similar moment and public reassurance is needed. But can anyone play Draghi’s role this time around?

Financial crises are never just about finance; they’re inevitably political. The global crisis of 2008 was largely driven by private banks and credit institutions, helping to usher in the European collapse of 2012. Yet both events needed the intervention of policymakers – and global displays of unity – to be brought back under control. In 2008 and 2009, globally co-ordinated stimuli, bailouts and central bank currency swaps kept the financial world afloat. In 2012, European bailouts and a united front behind Draghi were essential to keep the euro intact.

This week, market forces from Japan and the UK to Germany and the US are once again testing administrations’ resolve, driving the price of public debt to levels not seen in decades. This is a course correction rather than a full-blown financial meltdown: markets are warning governments that debt levels and interest rates are rising. They’re likely to give policymakers time to respond to the new normal and pledge fiscal responsibility. But amid the more fractured, nationalist and populist brand of politics that we see today, will governments listen? 

So far, the answer is no. A meeting of G20 finance ministers in Asheville, North Carolina, this week descended into vicious internal squabbling: the US engaged in a petty war of words with Canada, Europe complained about the US’s invitation of Russia’s finance minister and China withheld its approval from any final joint statement. Governments disagree on the way forward. The US treasury secretary Scott Bessent – who says that growth is the only path out of debt, even as US borrowing last month surpassed the $40trn (€35trn) mark – sought to put pressure on Japan to continue raising interest rates. Asheville marked an opportunity for governments to reassure investors but they failed the test, as borrowing costs have only risen further this week. 

Markets have a habit of bringing even the most resistant populists into line on both sides of the political spectrum – think former Greek prime minister Aléxis Tsípras or Liz Truss in the UK. In 2008, for instance, the US Congress rejected a bailout before markets forced them to reverse course. Even at a time when multilateralism is hardly in vogue, conflicts are abounding and leaders such as Draghi are few and far between, markets have the ability to send a much fiercer message to policymakers. Do we really need another full-blown financial meltdown for governments to take the hint?

Chris Cermak is Monocle’s senior news editor. For more news and views, tune in to monocle.com.

Banal buildings are bad for us. They are the design world’s equivalent of ultra-processed food. Such edifices fail to provide emotional nourishment, not only to the people who live or work in them but also to an often-ignored constituency: the people who have to walk past their dull façades every day.

This is the view of designer Thomas Heatherwick, whose global projects span the wave-roofed Azabudai Hills retail scheme in Tokyo to the just-opened Olympia redevelopment in west London. For the latter, Heatherwick has created a dramatic elevated street that runs across the roof of the revitalised entertainment and exhibition site.

Now, Heatherwick is out to get us all thinking big and off the “fast-food design diet”. He aims to do this by providing developers and architects with data that shows the risks posed by bad architectural design – and the opportunities that come with improving it – via a new not-for-profit research organisation called Humanise.

“It has been looking at how buildings affect our health,” says Heatherwick, when he visits Monocle to record an episode of our podcast, The Urbanist. “It’s so obvious that the buildings around us will have an impact on our health but our industry has not been measuring the impact on society or on passers-by of what we build. We’re in an industry where, if the public doesn’t like what we do, we say that they’re stupid.”

Of course, there are also risks if you always go for the experimental and the daring. Costs can balloon and delivery timelines can stretch. Plus, some people don’t like architecture that looks novel. Heatherwick has, in the past, been hit with all these criticisms but he has weathered them and mostly come out on top with public opinion swaying in favour of his work.

“Where is there cultural confidence to dare to make places that are generous and give back to society?” he says. “When [you lack] that confidence, you get this sort of inward spiralling [and think] ‘Oh, we’d better be safe!’ Then you end up with places that no one cares about and – surprise, surprise – they’re not commercially successful and end up being demolished in 20 years.”

Heatherwick makes an important point. Buildings that are hard to love quickly find themselves ignored by potential tenants and are eventually regarded as unwanted stock on a landlord’s inventory. We cannot, however, keep swinging the wrecking ball at jilted real estate because the carbon costs involved are unsustainable. It’s vital that we create architecture that people are drawn to and cherish.

This is the reason why the English designer was delighted to breathe new life into the buildings at Olympia that were coming to the end of their lives. “The Victorians who built them weren’t timid; they believed that you needed to do brave things,” he says, adding that their work inspired him to be audacious today too.

Yet audacity can be a hard emotion to hold onto, especially when faced with the need to trim costs. Or when a project simply runs for years and years. The solution, says Heatherwick, is to start with a manifesto.

At Olympia, the focus was about making public space truly available for everyone. “The best projects [happen] when you have a clear manifesto,” he says. “If you’ve got the true values down, you can stay true to those even if you need to clip here and there. [This way] you know what you’re all there to do and also what an honour it is to create a space that millions of people will use,” he adds, with the tone of a man who has often been confronted with these situations.

In the end, it’s about making places that people care about. As Heatherwick says, “It’s so obvious.”

Homo Faber is open and it’s mighty impressive. The biennial dedicated to the world of contemporary craft, which takes place on Venice’s San Giorgio Maggiore island and runs until 30 September, has benefitted from some stardust this year in the form of Es Devlin. The British designer is overseeing the artistic direction of the showcase, which features the work of more than 500 artisans from some 70 countries. Devlin, channeling her extensive experience in stage design, has created a mesmerising, immersive event that features poetic voiceovers, mood-setting music and a series of installations. Highlights include a moonlike structure rising out of a swimming pool and a kinetic disc – “A Great Turning” – that reflects light around San Giorgio’s Palladian cloister.

While Devlin’s footprint is all over Homo Faber’s fourth edition, An Island of Light, the exhibition also features about 700 artisan pieces, from vases to ornamental animals. The first room of the show, “A Language of Hands”, is a dramatic recreation of atelier workstations, with sketches on the walls and a creative mess spread across the tables. In other spaces, artisans sit at their desks showing off their crafts, from metal hammering to reed weaving. None of this should come as a surprise: forecasting agencies unilaterally predict strong growth for the arts and crafts market over the next few years. Homo Faber certainly feels in a good spot, rising in stature at a time when the design and fashion worlds both seem obsessed with the word “craft”.

And yet, lurking behind the handmade objects on show is an underlying fear of our march towards automation. At Casa Sanlorenzo, another Homo Faber venue, an exhibition from Luxembourg curated by De Mains de Maîtres called Fiat Lux is accompanied by a sombre message: “In the face of automation and seemingly limitless reproducibility, the pieces assert themselves through their singularity, their irregularities, and the slowness with which they were conceived and crafted.” It’s an important message in an age when the challenge of making a career in craft is evermore economically unviable, with craftspeople competing with everything from AI to makers creating cheap copies that undercut original works.

Thankfully, it seems unlikely that AI could ever undermine the deep connection between mind and body required to produce the kinds of pieces displayed at Homo Faber, though it might end up writing the catalogue notes. It’s clear that part of the reason that craft is having a moment is because the result is tangible and tactile, with a real story – and a real person – behind it rather than a bot. Homo Faber is a global smorgasbord of human creativity and talent, from Japan and Lebanon to South Africa and Denmark, that needs time and patience to be completed. “The world is running at 500 kilometres an hour,” says Alessandro Boscolo, a glassblower who is showing a murano glass triptych at Homo Faber this year. “People are tired of this frenetic life.” In a world grasping for machines to answer all its questions, An Island of Light is a reminder of what it means to be human.

Ed Stocker is Monocle’s Milan-based Europe editor. The 2026 edition of Homo Faber, ‘An Island of Light’, runs until the end of September. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

It sounds like the battle sequence from a science fiction film. An enemy is detected by sensors that transmit the information to a command centre where software using artificial intelligence calculates an attack plan. A human approves the plan, then deploys an automated drone to destroy the enemy. The sensor confirms the kill.

Four-and-a-half-years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this system, known as a kill web, is a reality. It combines live intelligence with tactics, planning processes and real-time logistics data to enhance precision and speed in war. While militaries around the world have been developing kill webs for decades, Ukraine is the first nation to use them at scale. That has shifted the war onto the internet and into space.  

Ukraine’s kill web is made possible by an online connection between front-line units, command centres and hidden launch sites. But combat units can’t drag fibre-optic cables around behind them, so broadband-beaming satellites have become as important as missiles and drones. Access and use of those satellites is a battlefield in itself.

For much of the war, Ukraine has depended on Starlink, the SpaceX-owned, Elon Musk-run satellite internet network. Though sanctions prevented Russia from accessing the network directly, Russian troops used Starlink through terminals – the portable antennae that connect to the satellites – bought from resellers in the Middle East. That was until February of this year, when Ukraine’s then-defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov lobbied Musk to enforce stricter verification systems on the terminals, blocking Russia from accessing the network.

Russian forces suddenly found themselves without communications and Ukraine’s military took advantage of the ensuing chaos to recapture territory in the south. That loss of access and the ensuing operational impact drove Russia to speed up the deployment of Rassvet, its sovereign answer to Starlink, launching the first 16 satellites earlier this year. If everything goes according to plan, Rassvet will have 292 satellites in orbit by next year and nearly a thousand by 2035.

The introduction of Russian satellites will undoubtedly shift the war. By building its own network, Moscow will be able to deliver more precise attacks on Ukrainian troops, cities and infrastructure – something that Kyiv can’t do inside Russia. This is because SpaceX implemented geofencing, meaning that Starlink can only be used inside Ukrainian territory. 

The network has made Ukraine vulnerable in other ways. During 2025 negotiations between the US and Ukraine, the Trump administration threatened to cut off Ukraine’s Starlink access if Volodymyr Zelensky refused to sign a deal. So, Ukraine has been exploring alternatives, such as Europe’s Eutelsat OneWeb.

Rassvet is a problem for Ukraine’s allies, too. Russia has already used drones for sabotage, reconnaissance and disruption operations in the UK, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany, the Baltics, Romania and more. 

Russian forces are slowly capturing tiny pieces of Ukrainian territory at an enormous cost to Ukrainian lives but Rassvet would shift the momentum in their favour. For now, the network is too small to provide the continuous internet coverage that Moscow needs to gain a battlefield advantage. Ukraine is furiously hitting the factories that make Soyuz-2 rockets (which launch Rassvet satellites) to stop the network from being completed. 

The war in Ukraine has led to the fastest innovation cycle of any war in history. Both sides are constantly developing new capabilities, which each tries to counter and match. It began with tank battles, helicopters and large numbers of troops. Next, it was a race for artillery shells, then a contest of drone tactics and production. Now the battle has moved into space but the prize is still very much on Earth: the precious land of Ukraine.

The late, great British architect Richard Rogers once said that “Architecture is always political.” Few buildings embody that idea more than the UN’s new visitor centre, the Portail des Nations (Portal of Nations) in Geneva. The building, which opened to the public in June, has been designed to welcome some 200,000 visitors each year into a microcosmic utopia of the UN’s own design: a threshold between Geneva and the world of international diplomacy.

Designed by Swiss firm Charles Pictet et Baptiste Broillet Architectes Associés, the Portail is located just beyond the Allée des Drapeaux (Alley of Flags), leading to the Palais des Nations, the UN’s main building. Visitors enter the Portail through a central courtyard Agora – a reference to the Grecian origins of democracy – that connects three pavilions housing immersive installations dedicated to the international organisation’s work. The installations invite visitors to imagine working collaboratively towards the greater good. It’s an idealistic yet somewhat ironic proposition given that international co-operation is in increasingly short supply. 

Its idealism puts the Portail at risk of becoming something akin to a Disneyland for diplomats – not because it trivialises diplomacy but because it transforms sprawling geopolitical problems into a carefully choreographed experience that visitors can navigate in under an hour. Like Disneyland, the visitor centre relies on immersive storytelling, controlled movement through space and emotional participation to render a complex world more understandable. 

The Palais des Nations is visible throughout the Portail’s pavilions and the contrast between the two structures is revealing. While the stripped classical grandeur of the Palais des Nations is, unsurprisingly, palatial and awe-inspiring, the Portail is subdued. It’s a single-storey complex with wooden colonnades that support terracotta and timber roofs – an effect that creates an air of humility, groundedness and accessibility. The modest scale reinforces equality of experience rather than institutional authority.

Ultimately, the Portail des Nations had the opportunity to challenge our collective understanding of diplomatic design but it doesn’t quite hit the mark. With a clear aversion to causing offence of any kind, its architectural language resembles a checklist in Diplomatic Design 101: large windows for transparency, neutral tones for tranquillity, a single-storey floorplan for universality. Check, check and check. If minimalism has become the visual language of institutional reassurance, then the Portail des Nations speaks it fluently.

Diplomatic architecture need not be sanitised within an inch of its life. Geneva’s own Hôtel de Ville has stood in the heart of the city’s political life for more than 500 years. Its monumental ramp remains one of Europe’s great civic spaces and it was here that the first Geneva Convention was signed in 1864. Architecture can embody diplomacy without retreating into neutrality. 

The Portail is curiously devoid of the UN’s character. Were it transplanted elsewhere, stripped of its exhibitions and signage, there would be little to distinguish it as a building belonging to the world’s foremost international organisation. 

By contrast, Kieran Timberlake’s US embassy in London consciously embeds national symbolism into its architecture, notably through its star-spangled façade. The Portail, by comparison, functions as a competent venue for diplomacy rather than an architectural expression of it. 

Lead architects Charles Pictet and Baptiste Broillet have clearly delivered – without contest – the project that they were commissioned to realise. Yet you cannot help but wonder what forms and styles could have been proposed by firms from other parts of the world had the visitor centre been the subject of an open architectural competition. Might the fluidity of neo-futurism, the environmental intelligence of contemporary tropical modernism or the material experimentation of emerging practices have offered a more compelling expression of an organisation that continues to evolve? Therein lies the missed opportunity.

If all architecture is political, then each brick is a vote. Here, the votes are stacked not into a monument to power but into one devoted to participation. The Portail des Nations might not become Geneva’s next architectural icon but it could just become one of its more important civic spaces. In that sense, its social ambition may prove more thrilling than its form.

Dubai’s location between Europe, Asia and Africa has made it a popular hub for international air traffic. This year, however, the very geography that fuelled its rise became its Achilles heel.

In March 2026, missile and drone strikes rattled the UAE, grounding flights, prompting government warnings and sending foreign airlines scrambling for safer skies. Dubai International Airport saw passenger numbers plunge to 31.5 million in the first half of 2026 – a steep 31.3 per cent drop from the previous year. Yet hope is now returning, with traffic growing from 3.5 million in April to 5 million by June.

But will travellers who found new routes through Seoul, Singapore or Istanbul continue to come back? Asian hubs have benefitted from a pause in Dubai air traffic and for a city whose airport powers its economy, permanently breaking the habit of transit is a far greater threat than a temporary dip in numbers.

Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports – the operator managing both Dubai International Airport (DXB) and Al Maktoum International (DWC) – remains optimistic. When Monocle sat down with him, he spoke about ballistic alerts, emergency drills and refuelling solutions, arguing that Dubai’s aviation engine was already roaring back to life.

This conversation can be listened to on The Globalist from Monocle Radio.

Was this the most difficult period you have faced running Dubai Airports?
How many CEOs have you interviewed who have been subjected to direct ballistic attacks on their infrastructure? There was nothing in my studies that said, “In the case of a ballistic missile attack, this is how you deal with it.” It was extraordinary. Fortunately, the impact on our infrastructure was slight but it tested the resilience and professionalism of our people.

Where were you when the conflict began?
I was sitting in my garden having coffee with friends. The British ambassador was with me and suddenly his phone started going off; so did mine. He went into one room to take calls from the prime minister and foreign secretary, and I went into another to find out what was happening. I then got to the airport operations control centre.

The temptation as a leader is to rush in and take charge. But the better thing [to do] was to support [the people] making the real-time decisions.

Can you actually prepare an airport for missile attacks?
We had something like 111 alerts for ballistic activity. The liaison among the military, regulators and the government was incredibly quick. We would receive an alert, take the appropriate action to make sure that everyone was safe and then, minutes later, go back to normal.

Even when we couldn’t fuel aircraft, we developed a “splash and dash” contingency whereby aircraft took off from DXB, landed at DWC, refuelled and then continued their journeys. A contingency plan emerged from each incident, allowing us to keep the operation running.

Figures from the first half of 2026 show just how significant the disruption was. How quickly can you recover?
We started the year with our busiest-ever month, with 8.7 million people. During March and April we still moved six million passengers on 32,000 flights.

Traffic is now back to about 80 per cent of where we were last year, and that is increasing month to month. Emirates and Flydubai are back in the 90 per cent range compared to 2025. I’m confident that we should be back to 100 per cent of our operation by about the end of the year.

Passengers who used to connect through Dubai have spent months travelling through Asia instead. How do you win them back?
If you look at the services that have resumed, their load factors are incredibly high. People really missed their routines.

We have about 56 airlines serving 236 airports in 100 countries. People have very short memories. If you’ve dealt with a crisis professionally and given nobody reason to doubt the integrity or quality of your operation, people will return for more.

Some European airlines still haven’t returned. Does that frustrate you?
During the crisis, many governments advised against travel to the UAE and in some cases that advice has not yet been corrected. That affects passengers getting travel insurance and it can affect airlines getting cover too.

But if I were running one of those airlines ahead of the summer [in the northern hemisphere], I might have taken aircraft out of the Gulf and redeployed them to Spain, Greece and Italy, where I knew I could sell the seats with certainty. That was quite a wise thing to have done.

Air France has recommenced services and its load factors have been strong immediately. When the summer ends, I’m sure we’ll see more of that capacity return to the Gulf.

You hoped that DXB would pass 100 million passengers this year. Is 2027 now the target?
If we continue on the trajectory [of recovery] that we’re on, it’s just a question of time. When that moment comes, it will be a very sweet one.

Has any of this changed your long-term plans for Dubai World Central?
Absolutely not. One of the biggest mistakes people make is confusing long-term strategic objectives with short-term hiccups.

I asked my chairman whether the conflict created any concern about where we were heading. It was the shortest conversation: the answer was an absolute ‘no’. We’ve put 17,000 concrete piles into the ground and moved 45 million cubic metres of earth. The 2032 timeline for building the world’s largest airport remains.

Hear more from Paul Griffiths on The Globalist from Monocle Radio.

Further reading:
– As regional conflict takes its toll, Dubai’s hoteliers are responding strategically

– Summer in Dubai isn’t for everyone – but that’s the beauty of it