When was the last time you saw a news report about drunk mice living in a sherry distillery? Or about a grandmother taking up paragliding in her eighties? The first is one of the stories gathered by journalist Ryan Herman in his excellent book, And Finally…, a collection of tales from the light-hearted segment that traditionally comes at the end of the news. The second was a piece I saw on a Turkish news channel a decade ago that still makes me chuckle. Funny and heartwarming reports such as these were once a staple of bulletins around the world. They recognise that even on the darkest days people can still laugh. What’s more, they’re the stories that viewers and journalists remember most vividly: when I worked in the newsroom of BBC Midlands Today in the late 2000s, a package about a skateboarding duck called Herbie was still talked about in the office. It was broadcast in 1978.
But recently, the “And finally” seems to have gone missing from our news diet, a sad by-product of continuous news cycles and the atomisation of viewing habits. But the consequences for our national psyches are no laughing matter. In serious and divisive times, these funny segments are among the few things that we can all agree on. They transcend politics and perform a vital public service, even while appearing completely frivolous. Editors should think of ways to bring them back.
Their decline can be traced to the rise of 24-hour news channels. CNN and Sky pioneered the format, while the BBC launched its rolling news service in 1997. That turned news into an open buffet, where previously it had been a tasting menu – the “And finally” was a swift end-of-meal espresso, something to sweeten the palate and aid the digestion of the heavier stuff that had gone before. Viewers tuned in to the bulletins once or twice a day but with 24-hour news we can dip in and out at will or even get sucked into an eternal and rootless doom loop.
But it’s the addictive, algorithmic stream of social media that has really rolled the end credits on the “And finally…” moment. We pick and choose the stories that we watch rather than taking in a properly curated selection – and the finale never comes. What’s more, our brains seem to have been rewired to seek out catastrophe and outrage, rather than the gentle titillation of a lighter story.
However, if they have been rewired once, they can be rewired again. News organisations are agonising over how to pull in younger viewers but perhaps they should focus instead on the tone of the content that they are serving up. Rather than repackaging single news items for the web, how about producing slick, short news packs, which place snippets from serious stories alongside something to make us smile? As Herman’s book shows, the fun stories are still there, even if technology, news cycles and a more pessimistic outlook have pushed them out. When you pick up a good magazine or newspaper you can be confident of finding this balance but our screens tend to tilt us toward the serious or the silly. Signing off on a high note is the perfect antidote to today’s relentless news cycle.
Further reading:
– Why we need to nurture children’s media literacy
– Australia wants tech giants to fund journalism – but is it too little, too late?
– An ode to silly season: regrettably, journalism has lost its high-summer lull
– ProPublica’s new pitch: Finding whistleblowers on the Washington Metro
– How can we defend journalism in an age of declining press freedoms? One Berlin-based firm has the answer
Long before The White Stripes shook the music world with “Seven Nation Army”, Jack White was remaking furniture in Detroit. From the age of 15, the band’s singer and guitarist began honing his upholstery skills and exploring “hardware-store art” – both deeply rooted in the American Motor City’s industrial history and urban decay. Though White went on to travel the world with the Stripes and several other bands, his tools were never far out of reach.
The multidisciplinary artist continued to make furniture, sculptures and interactive works out of his workshops in Detroit and Tennessee for friends and family. Yet, despite decades in the spotlight, White’s prodigious portfolio has never been displayed in a gallery. These Thoughts May Disappear at Damien Hirst’s Newport Street Gallery in London connects craftsmanship, industrial materials and the visual language of the American Midwest while exploring the intersection of art, design and music production.
Monocle joined White at Newport Street Gallery for a tour of the show and to hear more about his process, why mistakes are important and how he wants viewers to have a “visceral engagement” with his work.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Listen to the full conversation on The Big Interview.
Your first trade was upholstery. What do you think the relationship is between your craft and your art?
[Upholstery] is an art form. In upholstery, you’re working with fabrics and padding. You’re working with antiques and refinishing wood. So you have to be a carpenter and a wood finisher. My take [is that upholstery is] half sculpture and half functioning furniture.
Over here [is a piece called] ‘Sonic Temple’. A lot of people might just see a nice bench with some blue mohair. This was actually a bench from a Masonic Temple in the US. I knocked it apart, refinished the wood and reglued it together as a gift for a friend of mine. You can plug into it and play instruments through it, but it does strange things to the sound. Masons, with all their secrets – I hid a Masonic sword under the wood. Most people who walk by would just think it was a bench. That’s the beauty of the trade.
You’re a long-standing advocate for vinyl. Are you using art and sculpture as a move away from digitisation?
Anytime you can get something real in your hands, it takes on another level. There’s a reverential nature to [vinyl]. It’s the same as when you go to a movie theatre, you close the doors and turn off the lights: you’re reverential to the artform. People put their phones away and get involved. The best way to get involved in music is dropping a needle, and you actually see [the record] spinning. It’s magical.
There are imperfections in your art, and you often celebrate imperfections in music. Why is that?
The mistakes are usually the best part. We’re living in an age where everything is computerised and they’re trying to remove every mistake. We have now had decades of CGI, or the idea of music and Pro Tools: where on a computer, they’ve clicked out every mistake and they’ve made [the song] perfectly in tune and perfectly in the tempo, perfect from the beginning to the end. That doesn’t happen in real life.
You’ve been creating work since the 1990s. Why is 2026 the time to put it out to the public?
Nobody encouraged me until Damien [Hirst] did. I showed him a few pictures of my sculptures, and he said, ‘When’s your next show?’ I said, ‘I’ve never done a show.’ Then Damien said, ‘Come to my gallery for a show.’ That was four years ago. I found a lot of these pieces in my attic and in my upholstery shop. I refurbished all the older ones from the 1990s, and then [completed] a lot more new ones in the past couple of years. I’ve created so many [pieces] that it has taken up all six rooms of this gallery.
We’re looking at 30 years between the pieces of art, and yet you can tell they’re by the same artist. Have you kept a unique style throughout the years?
I don’t think too hard about things – if I don’t put too much effort in trying too hard, style comes out. That’s true for most artists, you recognise their style because it’s coming from their gut. If you think too hard about it, then you start losing your style. It becomes more mediocre or more pedestrian. If you just go with your gut and make quick decisions, that’s when your style pops out. You can’t help it.
Let’s talk about found art. When is a piece of found art finished? And when do you know that something you’ve found is a piece of art?
You need to have a visceral engagement with it as soon as you see something. You can make up the most incredible story but if people look at [the piece] and it doesn’t engage them, then it doesn’t work. You’re trying to share something with other people. I may see something interesting but other people might see something different. You never know what people like.
There are so many different pieces in this show: sculpture, art, furniture. You can clearly lead in different fields but is there a medium that you prefer to work in?
When it comes to music, I like playing the drums. That’s my favourite part. When it comes to making sculptures and stuff, I enjoy furniture-based things that are rescued from the rubbish heap, as you say over here. Finding beauty [in something that] was one step away from a landfill is something that I am really attracted to.
Your show is going to be open until September in London. People are going to respond differently to different pieces – what is the best response you could get from someone?
Oh, man. Just that they get something out of it. If it brings a tear to their eye or it makes them angry, or they think it’s bullshit or ridiculous, or it makes them laugh. If I listen to Captain Beefheart, sometimes I’m brought to tears by how beautiful it is. Other times I’m laughing at how ridiculous and absurd [it is]. He gets lots of different reactions.
Final question: what does the title of your exhibition, ‘These Thoughts May Disappear’, mean?
I wrote that in chalk on a piece of fabric that I was using to cover a cushion. The idea being that every time someone sits on that cushion, the chalk is going to be wiped away a little bit, and maybe by the time it’s reupholstered 20 to 30 years from now, the whole message would have disappeared. Everything you say to somebody, they might remember it and they might not.
That’s the danger when you create: you go on stage, or you put something in a book, or you paint something. You’re trying to share with other human beings and you might not succeed at it. You might fall flat on your face, you might disappear. We all die, and they say it only takes two generations for someone to be forgotten. That can be a scary thought, or it could be a thrilling challenge to make the best of yourself.
On the walk from the Metro to Washington’s National Mall, preparations for the US’s 250th independence anniversary are everywhere. Fences plastered with posters promising that the government is “making DC safe & beautiful” obscure historical sights. The Washington Monument peers through the buildings, beneath which its serene reflecting pool is currently being coated in a garish shade of beach-resort blue. Indeed, US president Donald Trump is painting the town red, white and blue.
At Freedom Plaza, workers are busy putting the finishing touches on a statue of founding father (and slave owner) Caesar Rodney, resurrected by the White House after being taken down in Delaware during the racial justice protests of 2020. Trump has a very specific vision of US history that he wants to celebrate this 4 July – one in which founders will be portrayed as saints and any moral complexity will be airbrushed from proceedings.
It makes for a challenging time to be a historian or curator in Washington. Grappling with the ambiguity of historical memory runs up against a president who insists that history’s role is to “remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage… not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history”. But how does one interpret that, when the US’s shared history is like that of all young nations: messy, chaotic and fraught with conflict, division and prejudice? “Our job is to create a space for reflection and to tell the truth about history, to tell the truth about where we’ve been as a country,” says Theodore Gonzalves, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “Within truth telling, there will be some uncomfortable aspects but it’s in the reckoning of it that people find the lessons,” he adds.
About four years ago, Gonzalves and a large team started sifting through the more than 1.7 million objects in the museum’s collection, searching for 250 items that represent key moments in US history. The result is In Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness, an exhibition that opened on 14 May as part of the US’s semiquincentennial celebrations. But about halfway through preparations for the exhibition, Trump came into office and history suddenly became a lot more controversial. In March last year, Trump issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, which laid out his complaints against museums – the Smithsonian in particular – for being too woke and promoting a “distorted narrative” of US history.
In Trump’s view, history should be a celebration of the past rather than an examination of it, contradicting the commonly held belief that we should learn from past mistakes to lessen the risk of repeating them. In December the White House wrote a letter demanding that the Smithsonian, which runs 21 museums, send it the details of every exhibition planned for the 250th anniversary, insisting that they all convey “a positive view of American history”.
However, the curators behind the new exhibition insist that their work has been unaffected. “We have a review process for exhibitions at the Smithsonian. This went through that review process as always and there were no changes,” says the chair of the museum’s 250th co-ordinating committee, Megan Howell Smith.
Gonzalves also insists that his vision was unaltered. “I didn’t feel affected and I don’t believe that our committee was in choosing the objects,” he says. Indeed, browsing the 250 items that Gonzalves and his team selected, there is little sign of Trump’s shadow. They run from the predictable (the portable desk upon which Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence; George Washington’s military uniform) to the whimsical (an electric Coney Island hotdog cooker from 1904; the first frozen-margarita machine).
Political objects appear carefully selected to reflect both sides of the divide – we have a red Maga hat and Nancy Pelosi’s gavel – although Gonzalves denies intentional bipartisanship. But there are plenty of objects that reflect collective struggles against the US’s historical prejudices: a dress worn by pioneering transgender actress Alexandra Billings, a wedding cake topper from a gay marriage and artefacts from the long battle for civil rights and racial justice.
For all Trump’s bluster, so far there have only been a few concrete examples of changes to exhibitions at the behest of the White House. Perhaps the president hoped that his threats would provoke collective self-censorship from the custodians of the nation’s history. But instead, he has unleashed a wave of creative thinking around the nature of reflection – exactly the birthday gift that the US needs.
Charlotte McDonald-Gibson is a Washington-based journalist and regular Monocle contributor. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
I’ve been to my fair share of subterranean gatherings in repurposed industrial spaces. In Berlin, it’s something of a cultural pre-requisite akin to trying Club-Mate. After all, the city’s reputation as a place to spend long hours dancing to electronic music was in part facilitated through structures that were abandoned after the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). But, last weekend, as I headed into the Kraftwerk Berlin building – a giant former power plant on the Spree and home to the long-running techno institution Tresor – dancing, for once, is not the priority.
The Infinite Now is a collaboration between experimental music and arts festivals Berlin Atonal and Unsound. It has been described as a social experiment: a 30-hour-long programme of performances spread over three floors of windowless brutalist architecture. The line-up features unique sets by renowned experimental artists such as Jim O’Rourke and Kali Malone, alongside art installations, living areas, an internet café, a gift shop and a canteen area where you can buy coffee, artisanal pie and mash or the Chinese snack douhua.
So far, it is all par for the course for the urban festivalgoer. But as I head towards the music, I notice beds. Lots of beds. About 500 of them, neatly placed around the factory’s giant turbine hall, where most of the live performances take place. Snoozing isn’t usually what music promoters encourage their audience to do but here it’s all part of what feels like entering the world’s largest and most avant garde sleepover. As the flyers put it, the audience are encouraged to “sleep, rest, eat, listen, watch, withdraw, talk and pay attention”.
The Kraftwerk building is famous for its acoustics – artists know how good they’ll sound here. Much of the programme is beatless, texture-based music, often performed by musicians standing behind banks of electronic and modular equipment. The Infinite Now seems to have solved one of the enduring problems of attending this kind of music event: the lack of physical spectacle. Here, who cares if the performer barely moves and there’s no groove to latch onto? The sound is so immense that you can just lie in a hammock and soak it all in.
That’s not to say the visual spectacle isn’t there. Dry ice and lasers fire around the turbine. The Italian composer Caterina Barbieri delivers a set that reaches operatic heights – appearing with a metal spiky arm and a giant flower attached to her costume (pictured, above right). Elsewhere, the Japanese improvisation quartet Marginal Consort, who have been performing since 1997, arrange themselves around the audience (at one point a member shouts through a giant rolled-up sheet of paper). The sight is a whole planet away from the weekend’s other big music summit: Eurovision.
“Doing something really private in public, such as sleeping, creates interesting dynamics,” says Harry Glass, one of the organisers who, along with Laurens von Oswald, has been running Atonal since 2013. The pair of genial Australians are a little frazzled, as you’d expect, but enthusiastic when I meet them on the Sunday afternoon. Glass explains: “People create their own way of experiencing this thing but somehow cohere in this group dynamic.”
Over the weekend, everyone adapts to their own reality. Not all spectators stay the full 30 hours but out of an audience that peaks at more than 1,000 attendees, almost half sleep over. Apart from the odd crowded toilet cubicle, this felt less like a party and more like a retreat. But was the programme a success? In a climate where attention spans are shrinking into bite-sized viral moments, spaces created for the act of listening feel strangely rebellious. Being here reminded me of how powerful even the most ambient music can be when given the time and space to appreciate it. And the best way to round it off? A sound night’s sleep.
Swiss architect Tilla Theus graduated from ETH Zürich in 1969 and immediately opened her own practice, developing a distinctive style characterised by a sense of warmth and the use of tactile materials. For half a century, she has applied this approach to historic sites and new builds alike. Theus’s work was recently awarded the Prix Meret Oppenheim, which honours established Swiss artists, as well as architects and cultural mediators. Here, Monocle meets her at the Widder Hotel, a grouping of medieval townhouses dating from the 11th to 15th centuries that she transformed into a cosy hospitality outpost, to find out more about her continually evolving practice. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
You’re often described as the ‘pioneer with the pink shoes’ – a charming image but one that also suggests deep determination. You set up your own practice after graduating in 1969. Were you consciously seeking independence or was it the only way that you could pursue your own vision of architecture?
I wanted to stand on my own feet and realise something myself. As a child, I designed clothes, jewellery and many other things. For fashion-illustration training, I would have had to study in Florence after finishing school but my father absolutely refused. In his eyes, architecture was also unserious. He thought that I should become a pharmacist. But I fought for architecture and asserted myself. Once I had my diploma, I changed the sign on my door the next day and opened my office. At the beginning, I supported other architects, while taking part in competitions. When the City of Zürich announced two projects at the same time, I entered both and came in third place in one and second place in the other. At the announcement of the results, all of the participants were present. The fact that a colourfully dressed young woman went up twice caused a certain amount of uneasy throat-clearing among my uniformly black-clad male colleagues. A few months later, we won our first project, which I was able to realise at the age of 28, with a construction volume of eight million.
You often speak about architecture emerging from an engagement with what already exists. Where did that idea become most tangible for you?
Many projects come to mind. On Zürich’s Bahnhofstrasse alone, there are six buildings. Alongside these urban projects, we were also challenged by high Alpine constructions, such as the mountain restaurant on the Aroser Weisshorn, at 2,900 metres above sea level, or the rural three-house Hotel Caspar in Muri. But the most demanding project was probably the Widder Hotel, a highly complex project that encompassed everything that defines my passion for this work: understanding the substance of eight medieval townhouses and transforming them into a five-star hotel without imitating the luxury language of their time through arches, balusters and brocade. Even today, 30 years after its completion, the Widder Hotel holds its place at the top. Here in the Widder Bar, where we’re meeting, there is a large beam carrying the load of the upper floors. It was so massive that I knew that, inside the space, it would not work.
So how did you make it work?
I ‘enriched’ it, as I say, with rams’ horns. The difficulty came during execution. The form was so fine that when the concrete was poured, air bubbles kept forming. I could not accept that. Then, one day, I was sitting in a dentist’s chair and I suddenly had the idea: could these areas be treated in the same meticulous way that a dentist works on a cavity? I asked him and he said yes. Luckily, he had a battery-operated drill – which was very rare at the time – because he also served as an army dentist. He came to the construction site with his equipment and we were able to solve the problem.
In your work, expression often seems to emerge directly from structural or technical requirements.
Yes. For me, design emerges from function. Take load-bearing elements or seismic reinforcements. They are structurally defined and absolutely necessary. If you engage with them closely, something can emerge that is perceived as art. But it is not decoration; it is the consequence of the task. Decorative architecture is a different approach. It might have its place but, for me, it has nothing to do with long-term, sustainable architecture. A building has a soul. The task is to understand it – and to make it visible through a precise and sustained engagement. Old buildings, in particular, have a soul. It must be understood and translated into the present. At the same time, buildings should not be unnecessarily demolished – something that was instilled in me early on as part of the postwar generation. Pure preservation, however, leads to museum-like spaces that are no longer functional and rarely inspiring. The art lies in understanding the historical structure and developing it further so that we can feel comfortable in it today – not as passive observers but as active inhabitants.
You design down to the smallest detail – even door handles. How does this understanding of craft fit into an increasingly modular way of building?
Craft remains essential. We simply have to think about it differently. There is also design in modular construction. The key lies in how modules are developed and how they are joined. That is where architecture emerges. My aim has always been to achieve the best possible result. The role of architecture has changed, however. Where once company leaders understood it as an expression of identity and were closely involved, today decisions are often made by rather anonymous committees and cost reduction and efficiency tend to outweigh the building’s impact on people. What has remained is my conviction that architecture is not about self-expression but about creating spaces for clients, users and even passers-by – spaces where people feel at ease. That requires listening, analysing, designing, discarding and fighting for the best solution. The prerequisites are a strong sense of quality, creativity, endurance and determination. Good architecture also depends on a close dialogue between client and architect. My best projects emerged from an intensive exchange with committed patrons who understood the importance of architecture for culture and identity. Delegating decisions to subordinate committees often leads either to mediocrity or to architects imposing themselves. Neither is desirable.
You once said that you ‘think through drawing’. How does this hold up in a time when projects are digitally perfected before construction even begins?
That is a major problem. These renderings often show situations that will never exist. In my office, I insist that we work with models. I build models into which I can put my head, to really understand the proportions of the spaces. Of course, we also work with 3D – it has its value. But we work consciously in both worlds. The tactile remains essential to me.
Looking ahead, what do you think the architecture industry’s priorities should be?
The task today is to create buildings that not only meet current needs but can also accommodate future uses. A residential building should remain usable without major intervention when children move out or if one partner becomes less mobile. A modern hospital must be modular so that it can adapt to new processes and technologies. The same applies to offices, industrial buildings, hospitality and, of course, housing. Anticipating this adaptability is, for me, the essence of sustainability.
Going back to where it all started: you established yourself at a time when women were barely present in architecture. How has this shaped you?
We were a very small minority. There weren’t even women’s toilets in the auditoriums. The closest were on the fourth floor. If you needed to go, even during an exam, you had to run up the stairs and back down again. The lift was reserved for professors. So we took matters into our own hands. We repainted the sign, replicating the original lettering so ‘Men’ became ‘Women’. For months, no one noticed.
So, a bit of a rebellion then?
We did not rebel – we simply acted.
Further reading:
– All 25 winners of the 2026 Monocle Design Awards
– Inside The Monocle Townhouse at Zürich’s Widder Hotel
We owe the very term “vox pop” to a misapprehension of its etymology. It is an abbreviation of the tag “Vox populi, vox dei”: the voice of the people is the voice of God.
However, that phrase is cribbed out of context from a warning issued by the eighth-century scholar and courtier Alcuin of York. He was trying to alert Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne to the perils of being distracted and disconcerted by public opinion. What Alcuin actually counselled was, “Those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God because the tumult of the crowd is always close to madness.”
Alcuin’s astute admonition was endorsed – sort of – this week in a study by Cardiff University of television news coverage of campaigning in the UK’s recent local elections. The report noted a number of failings but Cardiff’s boffins pointed especially insistently at over-reliance by broadcasters on vox pops – that is, sticking cameras in the faces of random members of the public to canvas their perspectives on the issues of the day. Viewers in Wales saw far more of bewildered folk out doing their shopping than they did of candidates actually running for office – and that “on this scale, [vox pops] took up valuable airtime at the expense of policy coverage, scrutiny of political claims and explanation of the workings of the Welsh political system”.
This is, of course, correct. Vox pops are mostly useless to the reporter: they are a ritual penance undertaken to deflect criticism that journalists are insufferable elitists who think that we know better than the riffraff. They are rarely illuminating to the audience: by definition, vox pops are dominated by the kind of people who will say yes when a news crew stops them in the street, who are (also by definition) among the last people who anyone should listen to.
Furthermore, vox pops can be edited to fit any narrative. If you interview 100 people, you will find at least a few who will endorse any proposition, however bizarre or idiotic: it would be an afternoon’s work at most to assemble a plausible package of citizens willing to agree that Britain should bomb Belgium. And whatever the subject at hand, the broadcasting of vox pops does not acknowledge that many people, if not most, might know or care little or nothing about it.
But if we must have vox pops, they can be fixed. Any reporter soliciting the sentiments of the general public about whatever the thing is should be compelled to first make some preparatory enquiries to establish baseline expertise. These answers would also have to be broadcast. So in the situation considered by Cardiff University, before getting to any interviewee’s stance on a local election, could be set rangefinders such as, “Can you list three statutory responsibilities of your local council or regional assembly?”; “Do you know who your local councillor is?”; or – in extremis – “What shape is Earth?” An equivalent American test in these times might include “What were the key terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action?” and “Are you able to point to Iran on this globe?”
A decade ago, British television news was awash with vox pops in the run-up to the Brexit referendum. It would be fascinating to know how firm in their views the vox popped would have dared to be, or how seriously their opinions would have been taken, if they had first been asked to briefly explain the difference between the European Commission and the European Council, list the last three countries to join the EU or name the capital of Denmark.
Andrew Mueller is Monocle’s contributing editor and the host of ‘The Foreign Desk’. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
I walked up to The Standard hotel in New York’s Meatpacking District at about 21.00 on a Friday. Here, at the start of the city’s design week, there was a line stretching around the block. The hotel’s rooftop club, Boom, frequently hosts Met Gala afterparties and other celeb-studded bacchanals. This time, however, the people queuing were dressed-up design geeks there to look at lamps – specifically, the biannual Head Hi Lamp Show (pictured below). Upstairs, guests sipped margaritas while inspecting one-of-a-kind lighting creations that held their own against the Manhattan skyline.
As far as design-world events go, it was astonishingly glamorous. All the more impressive was that there was no big sponsor or marketing operation behind it. The showcase is organised by Alexandra Hodkowski and Alvaro Alcocer, the owners of a Brooklyn bookshop who select their favourite lights, which are sent in from around the world via open call. The event began as a lark but has grown organically, based on a simple love for the fun that can be had with lamp-making.
Compared with its counterparts in Milan and Copenhagen, design week in New York is a slightly more amorphous affair. Almost anybody can participate by setting up an exhibition and it overlaps with larger art-world events including Tefaf, Frieze and the Independent Art Fair. Add in the fact that New York is the world capital of collecting and this week made it clear that design is acquiring a more serious role in the upper echelons of that market.
Tefaf at the historic Park Avenue Armory is a good bellwether for this shift. The Maastricht-born fair also includes antiquities and applied arts – and this year the exhibitors had gotten the memo that design was worth the effort. Gracing the hallways were supersized ducks, rabbits and sheep by Francois-Xavier and Claude Lalanne – not because the fair had a farmhouse theme but because a Lalanne hippopotamus bar fetched $31.4m (€27.1m) at Sotheby’s in December. Amid many play-it-safe Prouvés were also some beguiling examples of contemporary design, such as Frida Escobedo’s glittering Creek bench, which Friedman Benda gallery sold on the preview day.
Across the board, American exhibitors know how to sell. Contemporary design gallery The Future Perfect continued the lamp theme with a show of nightlights ranging from the scandalous (a shrine to Luigi Mangione) to the sublime (a bulb preserved in amber-hued rubber) and started from $10 (€8.60). Downtown gallery Tiwa Select, in collaboration with architecture magazine Pin-Up, sparked material desire with Souvenir, a show of exquisite vases by Nifemi Ogunro, Minjae Kim, Dana Arbib and more.
To protect my finances, I headed to the Van Alen Institute in Gowanus to learn about Herman Jessor, the prolific yet forgotten New York architect who designed more than 40,000 working- and middle-class co-op units. His projects have been put back in the spotlight by Zara Pfeifer, Brad Isnard and Daniel Jonas Roche, who argue that Jessor’s unshowy, cookie-cutter housing is exactly what the city needs more of. The talk floated big ideas – empowering the public sector, redeveloping parts of Queens, merging New York’s transit authorities – that served as a welcome reset. It’s easy to forget sometimes but design is as much about ideas as objects – and New York City Design Week celebrated both.
Stella Roos is Monocle’s New York-based design correspondent.
Thailand has a formidable reputation as a regional leader for graphic, product and furniture design, as well as for fashion. Exploring this scene is not just an opportunity to take home something special but also a window into the country’s cultural soul and modern spirit. At one end of the spectrum are the vast shopping centres selling goods ranging from luxury brands to fresh produce. On the other is a new generation of designers and makers using local materials and time-honoured techniques.
In Thailand: The Monocle Handbook, we explore the studios, workshops, independent boutiques and shopping malls that are making the nation’s retail offerings an irresistible magnet for so many. Below, we spot some of the makers and venues profiled in the book, including spots where you can refresh your wardrobe, browse ceramics and pick up some first-class skincare products.
1.
The Decorum
Bangkok
At the centre of Bangkok’s growing community of style-savvy residents sits The Decorum. The retailer, founded by Sirapol “Guy” Ridhiprasart and Warong “Ball” Phattharachaikul, caters to all aspects of a modern wardrobe, with a stock that includes made-to-measure formalwear hand-sewn by tailors in South Korea, shoes from UK labels Baudoin & Lange and Crockett & Jones, Echizenya trousers and socks by Bresciani. The considered mix has won over businessmen and high-fashion obsessives alike.
thedecorumbkk.com
2.
JBB
Bangkok
Before Jirawat “Bote” Benchakarn debuted his menswear label in 2007, shopping for clothing in Bangkok was often limited to looking through drab, ill-fitting business attire sold in department stores. “There was a big gap in the market,” says Bote, who started the brand by designing the kind of well-cut shirts that he wanted to wear. At JBB, you can slip into comfortable linen tailoring and breathable Oxford button-downs. There are informal pieces too, such as safari jackets inspired by Yves Saint Laurent.
jbbmenswear.com
3.
Pañpuri
Bangkok
Vorravit Siripark was inspired to launch Bangkok-based fragrance and skincare company Pañpuri after noticing that Thai spas almost exclusively used foreign products despite the country’s unique wellness culture. The label combines organic ingredients, such as Moroccan rose and Madagascan vanilla along with indigenous plants, including Thai jasmine and lemongrass, in its range of hand creams, facial cleansers and perfume oils. Equal care is paid to its packaging, with the company using only unbleached paper and environmentally friendly soy ink.
panpuri.com
4.
Sprout
Koh Phangan
Satika Ozsanay made her name by cooking traditional dishes and spreading regional culinary knowledge while working as a private chef. She has since set up Sprout, a lifestyle shop that allows visitors to dial into the rhythms, flavours, scents and textures of her home island, Koh Phangan. Baby clothes sewn by her mother can be found in the shop alongside hand-poured coconut-wax candles, plant-based skincare products and homemade chilli paste.
sproutthailand.com
5.
Earth & Fire Ceramics
Lampang
Earth & Fire Ceramics is the maker of the kind of crockery that you only see in tasteful uptown restaurants. An eclectic range of elegant and colourful ceramics – plates, mugs and bowls among them – all line the shelves in the space, which is hidden away in a small compound set back from the bustle of central Lampang. The property is home to the workshop, factory and studio, as well as a relaxing café, an art gallery and a shop.
371 Lampang Luang
6.
Siam Paragon
Bangkok
Located in central Bangkok, Siam Paragon is a hub of luxury retail. The plaza contains shops belonging to more than 70 coveted fashion houses, jewellery maisons and watchmakers. Fringed with palm trees and framed by thick windows that filter in the tropical sunshine, it’s a fine place in which to wander. Thailand’s supermarkets are also best in class, so it’s worth heading to Gourmet Market on the ground floor, where the first customers of the day are greeted with a cheerful sawasdee.
siamparagon.co.th
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In her 24-year career as the head of Design Studio S, Fumie Shibata has applied her unfailing touch to everything from thermometers and suitcases to lighting and plastic umbrellas. Coming from a family of weavers in the textile town of Fujiyoshida, she studied design at Musashino Art University in Tokyo and was a problem solver from the outset. Her first interest – unusually for a budding designer – was in medical equipment. “I wanted to contribute to society,” she says. “Even a slight change of design or a softer shape can make the patient feel better and lead to a more positive outcome.”
It’s this mindset of care and consideration that has been applied to her work with Flexform. She felt an affinity with the Italian manufacturer, a family business founded by the Galimberti brothers in Brianza in 1959 that is now in its third generation. “I went to the factory to see what kind of things they make and what their priorities are,” she says. “I listened to their stories.” She knew that she had found a good match. “I was impressed by the soft materials, such as leather and down, that we don’t really use in Japanese furniture.”
The partnership has spawned Eri, an armchair first unveiled in 2024 that has now gone into production; this year, it’s a mirror called Soreto. “I see furniture not as isolated objects but as an expanding landscape of daily life,” explains Shibata. “If Eri – inspired by a soft, enveloping collar – acts as an intimate point in space, then Soreto functions as an architectural line that organises the surroundings and introduces a quiet sense of order.”
The work, Shibata says, bridges the gap between industrial production and the traditional monozukuri craftsmanship with which she grew up. She sees no reason for the two to be mutually exclusive. “Human beings exist as physical entities, and how a body interacts with everyday objects deeply affects the mind,” says Shibata. “Therefore, regardless of the industrial methods used, the things we live with must possess a fundamental affinity with us,” she adds, explaining that industrial production and human-led craftsmanship don’t need to be in conflict. “By refining each form to imbue the design with a tactile presence, I hope to bring a sense of richness and tranquillity to daily life.”
It’s a cross-cultural – and cross-continental – outlook that’s producing covetable products for the home. Shibata has won multiple awards and, as a university professor, is teaching a new generation. She still craves fresh experiences but has no plans to expand beyond her team of six. “The studio is the size that I want it to be,” she says. “Small enough for me to still have my hands on everything.”
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It’s one of those exceptionally glorious Saturday mornings along the shores of Lake Zürich that fills you with happy thoughts, optimism and plenty of ideas that require short- to midterm action. You likely have your own version of snow-capped Alpine peaks framed by an endless sunny sky, gardens of coral peonies, joggers and octogenarians who all say good morning (actually “Morge mitenand”), happy mallards doing duck stuff and the fresh smells of the lake, cut grass and jasmine. On days like this there are various morning circuits that mix meadow, forest, shoreline and the village. There might be a coffee stop, perhaps a meeting, a spin around the grocery store and, in today’s case, a very long lunch at the Badi (local bathing club) and some towel time on the lawn with the weekend papers.
As we set to work on our July/August quality-of-life issue, I find myself asking what it takes to create a functioning community where small businesses thrive, people smile and the mood is bubbly and buoyant? On my way back from the village centre, I walk past people cleaning their cars, trimming back ivy, pushing prams or hustling to the train station, and I am left wondering if any institutions have come up with a formula that accounts for scent and public safety, perfect pavements and polite salutations?
For nearly two decades, we’ve been working on metrics that measure some of these essential elements of a pleasant life, which in big global cities become diluted as the focus shifts to airport connectivity, bigger security issues and the quality of medical care. Do you ever ponder what gives you an added spring in your step when you walk, cycle or drive to the shops? When you venture out for your evening run? Or do you have a shortlist of what could elevate your mood or what living in another neighbourhood might feel like? If you do, I’m most keen to hear as we’re setting to work on a little idea for the forthcoming issue. As ever, you can drop me a note at tb@monocle.com. In the meantime, here are a few life improvement starters from a morning stride around my patch.
1.
It really does take a village. Whether it’s 1,500 people in a stand-alone stretch of wilderness or an urban village of 25,000 in an Asian megacity, you need a collection of shops, services, sole operators and F&B purveyors to allow people to gather from early till late. And no, it doesn’t need to be all cobble lanes and stripy awnings, a well-managed and designed community mall can also do the trick.
2.
A thrice-weekly market creates a sense of occasion and a reason for people to break with routines while bringing in some different produce and points of interaction.
3.
A kiosk with good print is more necessary than ever. If there can be a jolt of coffee on the side, then yes please. Sadly our daily printed newspaper habits are evaporating but there’s still room for bountiful weekend reads – we just need places to buy such titles.
4.
Flowers, branches and neatly trimmed trees in abundance. Every village must have a seven-day-a-week flower shop for greenery and blossoms for all occasions.
5.
Recognition is important. Knowing your wine merchant is helpful not only when planning a dinner party but it also helps if you need to leave your keys for a visiting relative to pick up. It also means that they’ll know where to go when they need to leave that “thank you bottle” for their stay.
6.
A place to stretch out, plunge and do very little. Be it a pool, some grass beside a bathing pond or a rocky beach beside the marina, life is better when you can be surrounded by well-mannered locals (visitors too) who know the codes and want little more than sun, a cold beer or rosé from a small bar and a few seats for lingering into the evening.
7.
An attentive mayor and team with their eyes on the details. For example, some arseholes sprayed nonsense tags in the passage under the rail tracks and I was happy to see that within a few days it had been removed and all looked as good as new.
8.
Good pavements that leave space for walkers, bikes and also cars. Villages don’t need to be for pedestrians only. I am a firm believer that passing traffic, wheeled and otherwise, keeps a community interesting.
9.
Warm, golden, dimmed street lamps. Cold LEDs are a mood killer for all – insects and birds included.
10.
Finally, a good bookshop for readings, signings, stimulation and gift-buying. Independent is great but a good chain can often be just as good. Be content to embrace anyone prepared to sell fine print.
Enjoying life in ‘The Faster Lane’? Click here to browse all of Tyler’s past columns.
