Design Hotels re-entered mainland China last year after having exited during the coronavirus pandemic. The Berlin-based travel company signed four member hotels in 2025, starting with The Arcadia Place, Lugu Lake (pictured below) – an idyllic mountain property in Sichuan province. Managing director Stijn Oyen has played an instrumental role in putting China back on Design Hotels’ map. The Belgian hospitality chief is a former hotel operator and a 25-year veteran of Starwood Hotels & Resorts and Marriott International, owners of Design Hotels since 2011. Monocle spoke to Oyen about “an extremely healthy pipeline of stunning projects” in China, demand for unique travel experiences and the next untapped tourist destination in Asia Pacific.

First of all, how’s business?
We’re keeping a close eye on the very unfortunate developments [in the Middle East] in the past few weeks but we are coming off a really strong 2025. It was our best year yet and close to 30 per cent of our growth came from the Asia Pacific region. 

How does your business model work?
We operate on what I would call a ‘pay‑for‑play’ structure. The fixed cost [for member hotels] to be part of Design Hotels is kept deliberately low. Beyond that it’s like sitting down with a chef in a good restaurant and choosing from a very long à la carte menu: content creation, branding, creative direction, digital, distribution support. Together with each hotel we build a plan for the year based on what makes sense for its location, its story and its ambitions.

How do you find new hotels?
About 80 per cent of new properties that join us come through our network – recommendations from existing [establishments] or people in their extended circles. It’s not a top‑down, brand‑rollout driven by a map of target cities. A good example is a new project in Bali that came via long‑standing Italian members; they were school friends with the Bali owner. We also receive a huge amount of applications each year. We go through them all and accept a small percentage.

No one minds being a part of the Marriott group?
It did take time for both sides to find the sweet spot. Many members joined Design Hotels precisely because we were an independent movement, so there was understandable concern, but we’re now in a very good place. Our headquarters is in Berlin, and our culture and curation remain our own. Marriott understands and respects that uniqueness. At the same time, our members benefit from having Marriott behind them. Our latest member survey in 2025 was the most positive [that] we’ve ever had.

Where have you made your mark?
Re‑establishing ourselves in mainland China is a big one. We’ve also extended our in‑house creative agency, which now develops everything from campaigns to websites for member hotels. And we’ve relaunched two key print pillars: the book, Designed to Stay, and our magazine, Directions, which is now a twice‑yearly newspaper. In an ever more digital world, these tactile projects have actually become more precious.

Let’s talk about China: why was it important to check back in?
When I arrived [at Design Hotels] and saw that we had no presence there, it felt completely illogical. I went out there with the team, we visited properties and I was blown away by the quality and the vision. Independent hotel projects are really blossoming in mainland China and there’s so much creativity. It became obvious that we had to return but carefully. We didn’t say, ‘We need X hotels by Y date.’ 

How much domestic travel is there inside China versus inbound international visitors?
It’s a healthy mix and depends on the location. In places such as Lugu Lake, we see both international guests and Chinese travellers leaving the big coastal cities in search of something more authentic. The shift in visa rules for a number of European countries has clearly helped inbound interest but it’s difficult for us to quantify and compare because we only came in last year. 

What’s the ambition for mainland China over the next few years?
I’m convinced that we’ll reach – and probably surpass – our pre-coronavirus pandemic footprint. But again that won’t be because we’ve set a target of 15 hotels by 2027. It will be because the right hotels find their way into the community. The early feedback from our existing members in China has been excellent. That success naturally sparks new conversations and we have an extremely healthy pipeline of stunning projects coming our way.

What other Asian destinations do you have your eye on?
India is an obvious one. We recently signed a winery hotel near Pune and it’s a destination where we’re having an increased number of conversations. We will develop Japan a lot more and we are very excited about Vietnam. There are a lot of amazing visionaries out there and that gives us a lot of opportunity.

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“I can always train,” says Allard, a well-preserved 70-year-old retiree between the slow, rhythmic movements of his dawn t’ai chi practice. “By myself or with friends, whatever the weather,” he says, exhaling after a pause. “I love exercising on the promenade.”

Along the Hong Kong Island waterfront, the busy city breathes a little more freely. Joggers trace the skyline, students buzz around a picnic table and a child’s laughter pierces the air as a nanny gives chase. This is the rhythm of the promenade – a seamless 13km ribbon of public life connecting Kennedy Town in the west to Shau Kei Wan in the east. The project was completed in late December 2025.

This uninterrupted stretch, which is the result of a 16-year, hk$6.5bn (€720m) enhancement programme, has helped to redefine the maritime island’s relationship with its shoreline. To walk its length is to see the city from dawn to dusk: starting with early-morning t’ai chi sessions facing the sunrise to office workers nattering on lawns at lunchtime, right through to a glowing Hong Kong take on the evening passeggiata.

Designed to be both utilitarian and whimsical, the promenade integrates playful, interactive features: criss-crossing metal tubes double as a sound installation for curious visitors and a stretch rack for runners; slides; cloud-shaped inflatables; pet-friendly zones; a glass floor that is already regularly thronged with tourists; and exhibition areas that animate the space, their colours reflected in the harbour’s restless moving waters.

The setting seems fitting for a metropolis that is proudly ranked among the world’s most walkable, where residents are champion pedestrians, logging a world-leading average of 10,663 steps daily, according to the latest data from US technology firm Garmin. However, that’s far from the only kind of movement that you will find in a city that rarely stands still.

For the old and young, this seaside artery is a lifeline to community and health that offers options given the size of many apartments in the densely populated Hong Kong – which are small by most standards. Something is working too. It has one of the world’s longest life expectancies, at more than 85 years on average. Seniors are projected to make up 36 per cent of the population by 2046, so the newly finished promenade’s role as public infrastructure will only deepen as it connects them to peers and the wider community.

“I come here to study,” Rui Zhao, a 24-year-old musicology student at the University of Hong Kong, tells Monocle. “It’s free, I don’t have to go to campus and the view is unbeatable,” she adds as she settles down with her computer at a newly installed harbourfront table.

“We come here so that the children can truly run around,” says one parent, pausing as her children gamely ascend an impressively multicoloured climbing hill. “They have space to be kids here,” she says, watching a little cautiously. “And I have a moment to breathe.”

Many of the world’s great restaurants have transformed dining from an act of consumption to something that leans closer to the artistic. El Bulli created translucent pastas and fruit-flavoured papers, Alinea served a pillow filled with nutmeg-scented air and Denmark’s Noma, the establishment of spurned chef René Redzepi, plucked produce from the woods to bring the Nordic landscape to the plate. Given all the foam, flavour and fragrance at play, should avant-garde cooking be considered art?

That is the question that Denmark’s Ministry of Culture is trying to answer through an initiative, introduced earlier this year, which aims to explore whether it should officially recognise gastronomy as an art form. If successful, the proposal will formally place cooking, specifically the work of high-end restaurants, in the same bracket as ballet and sculpture. It would be a world first for the industry and ultimately open the doors to state and private funding for research and development.

But whether rarefied techniques used in cooking should be framed as art has historically divided opinion. Many notable chefs, including the late Anthony Bourdain, have argued that cooking is a craft not an art. Chef Jeremy Chan, whose London restaurant, Ikoyi, is known for its ultra-modern, spice-heavy dishes, also says that deciding what in the culinary world qualifies as art will be extremely specific and biased. “Will it just be restaurants whose dishes use very intricate tuiles and dots? Is that artistic food?” Chan asks. “For me, it isn’t.”

Those in the arts are also not so open to the idea. “For now I would regard cooking as an advanced craft with artistic qualities rather than an independent artform in its own right,” says Helene Nyborg Bay, the director of Copenhagen’s Kunsthal Charlottenborg gallery.

Then there’s the issue of how challenging it can be to define art. “Why do we need to classify something that’s wonderful in its own right as something else?” asks Poul Erik Tøjner, the director of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark. “I smell an old-fashioned snobbishness here, not least when most people agree that it is really hard to explain what art – and especially what good art – actually is.”

While what constitutes “good art” remains contentious, the parallels between ambitious cooking and traditional artforms are difficult to deny. Elaborate, you’ll-eat-what-we-serve-you meals can convey a message. They’re not just a form of sustenance but a painstakingly composed medium that pushes a story forward, elicits an emotional reaction or reflects a sense of place – in the same way that a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir can instantly plug you into the rhythms of 19th-century Paris. “Cooking is a craft in its origin – but good cuisine, like good art, can create memories and evoke feelings,” says Elena Arzak, the chef of Arzak, a three-Michelin star restaurant in San Sebastián.

At Pujol in Mexico City, chef Enrique Olvera’s mole madre, which consists of two concentric circles of mole – one fresh, one aged for more than 3,500 days – is an abstract paean to the deep history of Mexican cuisine. Tokyo’s Narisawa often uses scatterings of cherry blossoms and Yamaguchi tilefish to celebrate the beauty of the villages in Japan’s rural foothills. Avant garde meals can also strike a chord at the provocative end of the spectrum, as many who have visited Mugaritz, a Basque restaurant known for its extremely unsettling textures, might tell you. 

Cutting-edge cooking, just like fine and contemporary art, has also proven fertile ground for envelope-pushing techniques. El Bulli played with the possibilities of what food could be as it devised frozen savoury courses and produced dishes made entirely of foam. The Fat Duck made its name with nitro-poached aperitifs and edible dioramas of the seaside. Alchemist, a wildly unorthodox Copenhagen restaurant where meals can stretch seven hours and take place largely under a planetarium-style dome, somehow created its omelette using ultrasound. “To say all gastronomy is art is something I do not believe,” says Alchemist’s chef, Rasmus Munk. “But I think there are places that have an intention and philosophy behind the cooking; there are artistic compromises; there is research.”

As with classical music, stage productions and the creations of modern masters, what has helped make a lot of top-end culinary work so compelling is the problematic yet irresistible idea of the solo genius. At least since the 2000s, genre-bending chefs from destination restaurants such as The French Laundry and, yes, Noma, have been framed as visionaries answering a creative calling. Whether it’s okay to still indulge in this narrative remains divisive. After all, it encourages diners to overlook the gruelling, process-intensive work carried out by rank-and-file line cooks and sous chefs – or else risk shattering the auteur’s illusion. 

While it’s difficult to define what art is, the hallmarks of it are also evident in fine and experimental dining. And if a chef presents a menu with a certain intention, executes it with skill and wants to deem it art, then let’s consider it so. If Marcel Duchamp’s porcelain urinal is worthy of gallery space and Maurizio Cattelan’s banana fetched $6.2m (€5.4m) at auction, then why can’t a dish be seen in a similar light? 

If the Danish initiative goes through, a specific category of cooking will be considered art but it’s unclear how restaurants or chefs will be chosen. What is known is that the designation will make public-arts funding available to chefs who want to push the boundaries of fine dining, and allow top-tier restaurants to step away from daily service and invest in research. But what the initiative has already shown is that the topic of high-end gastronomy provokes debate. If anything, is that not just another sign of art at play?

Further reading:
– Late-night tables: Seven after-hours dining hotspots

– Course correction: How restaurants are rebelling against performative dining 

– The hospitality playbook: 15 expert tips to build a hotel or restaurant that lasts

The week started with a quick dash to the UAE for a few meetings and briefings, a bit of scouting for some projects and 48 hours of intense observation and analysis of life on the ground. Before departing, more than a few friends and associates asked, “How are you getting there? Isn’t everything still closed?” I quickly informed them that airline timetables were ticking upwards both in and out of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and that for the return leg to Lisbon I was even waitlisted. 

On Sunday evening I boarded an Etihad Boeing 787-9 out of Zürich and before the doors closed I did a tour down the aisles and determined that the plane was operating with a load factor of about 80 per cent. Not bad considering that you can fly direct to a broad range of Asian destinations from Zürich (and needn’t fly via the Gulf). But this was a little reminder of the power of strong brands and relentless marketing as many travellers in Europe, Asia and Australia feel that a stop in Doha, Dubai or Abu Dhabi is somehow a logistical necessity.

Flight EY144 started its descent towards UAE airspace about five hours after departure and as I tracked our progress on Flightradar a curious, rather alarming thing happened – our 787-9 entered into a series of stomach-churning spins. Thankfully this was only on screen, onboard all was stable with our aircraft as it made a few graceful turns on its approach to AUH. Back in the app, UAE airspace was clearly being digitally manipulated as groups of commercial aircraft were clustered near Al Ain, flightpaths were zig-zagging across Saudi Arabia and aircraft (including my own) would disappear and then reappear as they approached Abu Dhabi. The atmosphere inside the airport felt the same as it did a few weeks back, just before Iran started sending cruise missiles and drones across the Gulf. Plenty of passengers were connecting to points in Thailand and Indonesia, and there was a steady stream of labourers from Pakistan and defence contractor types from the US and Europe lined up at immigration. 

For the past three decades this journalism gig has seen me dip in and out of war zones (Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone), spend considerable time around weapon systems and heavily armed commandos, interview PR-savvy rebels and buttoned-up public affairs officers, crawl through blown-up buildings and charred tanks, and have ugly entry and exit wounds in my left and right arms from an ambush in Kabul. I know how zones of conflict look, smell, sound and, most importantly, feel. Quite often it’s remarkable how normal it all is. As I pulled off the highway onto the perfectly groomed Saadiyat Island and arrived at the hotel, I was immersed in a hyper version of normal. I met my London and Zürich colleagues for a little pre-meeting catch-up in the lobby before heading off in our NPO – Nissan Patrol Office, remember? 

While schools are on a remote-learning footing (much to the annoyance of many locals) and hotels are running at around 20 per cent occupancy, the roads are busy, offices are full and the same goes for malls. Indeed one luxury goods retailer had a record day at its Dubai flagship last week and construction cranes working on the Grove Saadiyat retail development swing late into the night. The terraces at restaurants below were full and buzzy on a Monday eve. That same evening, the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National reported “UAE intercepts 11 missiles and 27 drones”. We hadn’t heard one boom or had a single phone alert all day. 

Since Russia invaded Ukraine much has been written about the future of war. How drones have reshaped not only the battlefield but also air-defence requirements and the types of recruits required to man them. In the skies over the UAE and in control rooms at various ministries, another chapter is being written about how to effectively intercept Shahed drones (Apache helicopters are most effective I was told), manage (control) information flow and keep the public informed, connected and calm. “We have day and night settings for our message alerts now and they’re geo-targeted,” one minister told me. “You only receive an alert if there is an intercept in your area. The day alert is urgent and cuts through all the other noise [that] you have going on around you but at night it is more gentle to not cause undue stress. We’re working to improve the messaging further.”

Shortly after I left the meeting with the minister the day alarm sounded while I was browsing and buying at Fount, a select shop devoted to the best in local and international design. It advised to seek shelter and remain in place until all was clear. About seven minutes later another message popped up (no alarm) thanking me for my co-operation and informing me that all was clear. Upon meeting up with my colleagues a few hours later, I asked what they’d done during the alert. They hadn’t received it. Even though we were all in Abu Dhabi, the overall system proved to be pinpoint in both its targeting and narrowcasting.

When I landed in Lisbon on Wednesday I read a story on the “live” feed of an international broadcaster about a woman in Dubai who hadn’t been able to visit friends for a month because she can’t leave the house on account of all the booms and intercepts. Perhaps she lives by a missile battery, perhaps she suffers from other health issues, the report didn’t say but it did paint a rather distorted image of what daily life looks like. I went out to get a read from the street and I can assure you that the UAE is very much up and open for business. 

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

Just as no two Italian regions (or nonnas) share a recipe, each of London’s restaurants have their own charm. Here are three new openings that are putting the Bel Paese on a plate. 

Burro, Covent Garden
“Italy and Ireland have plenty in common,” chef, restaurateur and Belfast native, Conor Gadd, tells Monocle. “They share a real care for hospitality.” After earning his red, white and green stripes over 16 years as head chef and owner of Trullo, the fan-favourite Italian spot in Highbury, Gadd’s Italianate inclination has now manifested itself into a new trattoria, Burro.

The slick, new 95-cover tenant in Covent Garden sees the Northern Irishman slip from kitchen clogs and into founder’s shoes. “I won’t pretend [that] I’m half Italian – but I’ve travelled around the country and am profoundly in love with the nation’s relationship to food,” he says. His admiration is evident: tables laid with drum-tight linen cloths sit under warm lighting from round lamps while the walls are festooned with Irish and Italian art.

Following the traditional antipasti, primi, secondi and dolci framework, the dishes – best shared – fight for attention. Think focaccia, anchovies laid in long stripes under crispy, wafer-like crostini or lightly fried artichokes. Rich primi follow but the duck and porcini ragù quickly wins favour. “Trullo is known for pappardelle beef shin ragù,” says Gadd. “I loved the idea of adding minced duck instead.” Porcini mushrooms were added as an afterthought. “It was the missing depth that it needed,” says Gadd.
trattoriaburro.com

Monocle recommends: The braised beef shin with polenta and wilted ‘cicoria’ with a glass of 2019 Conterno Fantino, an elegant red hailing from Piedmont.

Osteria Vibrato, Soho
It was the buzz of Greek Street that drew Australian restaurateur Charlie Mellor to Soho when looking to house his Italian-inspired restaurant, Osteria Vibrato. “Soho came first,” he says. “I wanted to create a comforting oasis in the middle of a hectic part of town.” But why Vibrato? “I studied music and had a short career as a professional opera singer working in the United States, Australia and, of course, Italy. It felt right to echo that connection.” 

The old-school osteria format adopts culinary traditions from Liguria, Valle d’Aosta and Abruzzo, blending staples such as the white risotto with parmigiano reggiano and lesser-known delicacies such as cotechino, a slow-cooked sausage from the Emilia-Romagna region. “The food is best described as respectful rather than authentic,” says Mellor. “Every recipe has been lovingly assembled with ingredients that have been carefully sourced from across every region in Italy.” 

But the real stamp of approval has come from winning over the Italians themselves. “One of the most touching experiences has been the number of Italians who are falling in love with this restaurant because they recognise the respect that we have for their country,” says Mellor. “It makes me very happy indeed.” 
osteriavibrato.co.uk

Monocle recommends: A slab of aged ricotta finished with a lick of Sardinian olive oil – simplicity at its best.

Cece’s, Notting Hill
For a hospitality group that has built a foolproof formula for rebooting the great British pub, Public House Group’s seductive, New York-style Italian restaurant in Notting Hill is a reminder of the group’s ability to continually surprise.

Located next to a dry cleaner and a corner shop, Cece’s nameless façade feels deliciously incongruous. Inside there’s nothing modest about the hall of mirrors, tasselled lampshades and outré decor – the palm leaves and stag heads stop just short of kitsch. “We left much of the decor intact from what was here before,” co-founder James Gummer tells Monocle, motioning to the copper panelling and velvet banquettes on the upstairs level which conjure the atmosphere of a moody cocktail lounge more than a sit-down affair. “We wanted Cece’s to feel like a surrealist slice of 1920s Hollywood glamour in Notting Hill.”

But as we’ve come to expect from Public House Group, Cece’s takes food seriously. Polpette made the old way – with a mixture of beef, pork and veal – arrive before pinched agnolotti in a silky butter sauce followed by the pink beef fillet served alongside reliable side dishes (or contorni): polenta fritti, cavalo nero and olive-oil-crusted potatoes. And while the restaurant’s musky incense and recurrent reflective surfaces offer more than a hint of the American speakeasy, one thing is for sure – Cece’s certainly isn’t smoke and mirrors. 
ceceslondon.com

Monocle recommends: The dinky bomboloni – the Italian take on an American donut – lined with ‘crema pasticciera’ and spiked with rhubarb compote. Bravo.

I lose things. A lot. But I am delighted to say that these misplaced items usually find their way back to me. A wallet dropped in the park, a jacket left hanging in a hotel wardrobe, a suitcase forgotten on a train – all have been returned to my possession. I have also been reunited with several laptops left to fend for themselves in the seat-back pockets of aeroplanes. This is such a trait of mine that when my colleague Tom recently made the same error on a flight to Zürich, he rather ungraciously shouted out, “Oh no, I’ve done an Andrew!” I’ve never liked the man.

So while a little panic-inducing, it wasn’t a huge surprise on Sunday evening when I could not find my wedding ring anywhere in the house, just as we were about to head out for dinner. Some people boast of never having removed theirs since the day that it was popped on their finger; I remove mine at night and before I go to the gym. And I don’t like typing with a ring or watch on. This all means that the little band of metal has numerous opportunities to go astray – and it does.

I once dropped it in Geneva Airport – someone kindly handed it in to the lost and found. On another occasion, when I was playing with it in a restaurant and left it on the table, the waiter called an hour later to see if perhaps I was missing an important finger accessory. I have assured the other half that this is not a sign – well, of my forgetfulness, maybe.
 
As we got home, a few glasses of champagne down (toasting the dog’s departure has seen an uptick in alcohol consumption), the other half reminded me of the search-and-rescue mission that we would need to undertake in the morning and – at that exact moment – I looked down and saw, in the middle of the street, glistening brightly in the lamp light, my ring.
 
Our road is a popular route for pedestrians. Did 100 people step over the ring without even seeing it? And how did it even fall off my finger and land there?
 
Luck is a funny concept, hard to explain with reason or statistics but it should not be discounted. And I am not talking about family privilege masquerading as luck but rather those coincidences, fleeting encounters, that can reorientate not just your day but your life.

When you hear people’s stories of success or of missions accomplished, we tend to focus on the quantifiable – on how hard they must have worked, on the time they invested in training. We like to believe that it’s hard work, ambition and intelligence that deliver results. And while these are key, luck can play a blinder. In some moments fate simply intervenes.
 
I see this in my career. I did everything I could to get into journalism but it has all been stitched together with pure luck – from a publisher who took time to speak to an over-keen intern to a Canadian journalist who came in for a meeting and got stuck talking to me.

Of course this is not really career or personal advice that you can hand out without sounding like the sort of person who has their cards read (tarot, not credit). But to get where you want to be, or just to keep hold of what you have, you are going to need luck to show up every now and then. Oh and notice when it does, glinting there at your feet.

To read more columns by Andrew Tuck, click here.

For decades, airline schedules and route plans have been built around predictable demand, including global sporting events, holidays and high-traffic business routes. But in 2026, Asian air carriers in particular are being forced to redraw both schedules and flight paths in response to K-pop touring cycles – mostly those of supergroup BTS – that are creating demand spikes powerful enough to rival peak seasons. 

K-pop isn’t new but its global popularity is accelerating. Bernie Cho, president of Seoul-based creative agency DFSB Kollective, told Monocle that most K-pop fans aren’t from South Korea. “When we look at the latest streaming statistics from [platforms] such as Spotify, South Korean listeners are only responsible for about 15 per cent of the total streams worldwide,” he says. “Mexico is now the fifth-largest market in the world and, over the past five years, there has been a 500 per cent increase in streaming volume for it.”

Is this international fanbase fundamentally reshaping aviation economics? It’s now common for single groups and artists to tour in Asia, Europe, the Americas and Latin America all within the same year, creating a predictable surge model that airlines can plan to. By monitoring tour announcements, venue capacities and pre-sale trends, air carriers have been successfully forecasting passenger volumes weeks or months in advance, turning fanbases into forecastable yield outside of traditional holiday seasons.

The impact is not limited to BTS, though they remain the clearest case study. Global tours by artists including Harry Styles, Taylor Swift and Coldplay have triggered similar demand spikes worldwide but K-pop’s highly mobilised audience makes the effect more demonstrable.

Germany, Japan, China, Hong Kong, the UK, the Philippines and Taiwan have emerged as the top markets driving this travel surge to South Korea. Searches for flights to the country have increased by more than 200 per cent, driven directly by the BTS tourism wave. The larger and more flexible fleet that came from the merger of Korean Air and Asiana Airlines is well positioned to capitalise on demand surges tied to major tours. It has been regularly adding temporary flights to Seoul from Tokyo, Manila and Los Angeles according to tour dates. Pricing dynamically and partnering with fan travel agencies has created a scalable model.

“Major concerts are a big hit with airlines as they attract many more travellers into a destination for a short period of time,” says Paul Charles, CEO of travel consultancy The PC Agency. “The likes of Taylor Swift and BTS enable companies to add more flights at higher prices as the commercial teams know that people will be wanting to travel on specific dates around a concert performance. Savvy carriers will also theme certain flights, perhaps playing the band’s hits over the public address system or even playing music videos on the in-flight entertainment screens.”

The implications extend beyond aviation into the wider hospitality economy. Sudden surges in travel drive revenue across airports, hotels and local amenities, while also exposing capacity constraints. Can flights and accommodation scale quickly enough to absorb these spikes without the kind of price distortion that makes the trip unappealing?

Thanks to K-pop’s heavily industrialised model, airlines can rely on these groups to produce albums and tour year after year. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are the latest to adjust their schedules because of “Hallyu”, the Korean cultural wave. In an industry where consistency is currency, K-pop might just be the most reliable hit in the schedule.

The UAE is projecting calm under fire but its military leadership is leaving little doubt that restraint has its limits. Five weeks into sustained Iranian attacks, the country’s official position remains defensive. Yet in a detailed interview with Monocle, Major General Abdul Nasser al-Humaidi of the country’s Ministry of Defence offered a more layered message: one of preparedness, endurance and conditional escalation. “Since the inception of this tragic aggression from the Iranian side, the armed forces continuously monitor, detect threats and counter them,” he says, pointing to what he described as a “very high success rate” in intercepting more than 2,500 missiles and drones.

Those interception rates – above 99 per cent for missiles and more than 95 per cent for drones – have allowed the country to maintain an image of stability. “People are living normally. They function. Trade is flowing. The economy is thriving,” says al-Humaidi. Yet that sense of normality sits alongside a far more disruptive reality. Iranian strikes have targeted civilian infrastructure across the country – including airports, ports, oil facilities and even luxury hotels – with debris and direct impacts causing fires and damage in urban areas. At least 12 people have been killed and many more injured since the conflict began, underscoring the human cost beneath the headline interception rates.

The scale of the assault is striking. By the UAE’s own account, it has been targeted more heavily than any other Gulf state during this conflict, a sustained campaign that has tested both its air-defence systems and its strategic patience. The response has been disciplined so far. “We’re not part of this conflict,” Al Humaidi insists. “So we will continue that posture in defending our territory.”
 
That line repeats consistently across Emirati messaging and underscores a deliberate positioning – the UAE as a reactive, not proactive, military actor. Yet there might be a subtle but important shift. Pressed on whether joining offensive operations alongside allies is entirely off the table, al-Humaidi was keeping options open. “The UAE preserves its right to self-defence upon any aggression that aims at the UAE and that’s the primary role of the military,” he answers. It is a carefully calibrated response, one that stops short of signalling imminent escalation but clearly avoids ruling it out.
 
There are also firm red lines. The Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has justified their aggression by claiming that US strikes are being launched from bases inside the UAE. Al-Humaidi was categorical in his denial of this. “UAE territory will not be used for any attacks against Iran” he says. “So from a military standpoint, that’s not correct and it’s not happening.” The message is twofold: the UAE is not a staging ground for offensive operations but it will defend itself if drawn further in.
 
This ambiguity reflects a broader recalibration taking place across the Gulf. While early rhetoric in some quarters focused on regime change in Iran, officials now appear to be converging around a more immediate priority: securing the Strait of Hormuz and restoring maritime stability. The UAE has aligned itself publicly with that objective, stressing the importance of keeping the waterway, a critical artery for global trade, open and secure. Behind the scenes, however, there are indications that contingency planning is under way should international efforts require a more active contribution.
 
That dual track of public restraint and private preparedness is consistent with the tone of al-Humaidi’s remarks. “The armed forces retains its readiness and preparedness for any type of aggression,” he says. “We have the capacity, we have the capability and we will continue to do that.” At the same time he repeatedly returned to the UAE’s broader identity as a “peace-seeking nation”, positioning military action as a last resort. But balancing deterrence and diplomacy is becoming an increasingly difficult task. 
 
Inzamam Rashid is Monocle’s Gulf correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today. 

Heartbeat isn’t your typical music magazine. Open its pages and you’ll be invited into the homes of prolific record collectors in São Paulo, taken through the history of hearing aids and guided across Mexico City for a sonic day-in-the-life. The magazine is “time agnostic”, meaning that it focuses on enduring stories overlooked by conventional music magazines rather than chasing the hype of the moment. 

The debut issue unearths ephemera from the 2000s punk scene in the US state of Michigan, revisits Suzanne Ciani’s pioneering work with the Buchla synthesiser in the 1970s and goes behind the scenes with Additional Dialogue Recording (ADR) artists. Printed alongside each article are carefully curated playlists that give you something to tap your feet to as you read. The result is a highly intentional exploration of the experience of sound, with something for everyone.

The magazine is the latest venture from indie company Broccoli Publishers, which already has a devoted following for their niche, collectable titles: Catnip for cat lovers; Mildew for devotees of second-hand fashion; and, of course, Broccoli for cannabis enthusiasts. With the release of Heartbeat, they turn their focus to music and sound.

Stephanie Madewell has been an editor at Broccoli for almost a decade. She spoke with Monocle Radio’s Annelise Maynard about the team’s decision to create a magazine specialising on sound, their focus on foregrounding underrepresented histories and voices in music, and why chasing the moment is futile when magazines are made of paper. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the full interview on The Stack from Monocle Radio. 

How did you arrive at the title Heartbeat, and why music and sound as the focus of your latest magazine?
Heartbeat came to be in the way that many of our productions do. As an editorial team – Anya Charbonneau [founder and editor in chief], Ellen Freeman [deputy editor] and myself  – we often just start thinking of ideas and stories, and they tend to coalesce around a core. In this case, Pitchfork had announced that it was changing hands. It was quite a force in music writing and people were having all sorts of emotions about it. We were really fascinated because what they all seemed to evoke was that people wanted more stories – and they wanted stories that they weren’t getting. So we started thinking about what it could look like if we were to make a music magazine. Very quickly, the focus broadened from music to sound because it felt so emotionally resonant. The name Heartbeat came about because the one sound that every human shares is a heartbeat. There is this incredible point of connection at the base that pulls everything together, which then allows us to open up this broad lens about the way sounds make us feel.

Was the distinction between sound and music important for you? Or did you like how they combined?
The distinction comes down to intentionality. Music has a degree of intervention and intentionality, even if it’s a field recording that somebody has taken of a [certain] environment and placed it in another context. We quickly realised that this is a magazine about how music and sounds make us feel. By giving that as the brief, we were able to attract all sorts of stories from different corners of the world with different angles that felt exciting, stories that weren’t finding other ways to get out and into the world.

The editorial team has called Heartbeat a ‘curated mixtape of sonic tales’; many of the articles feature accompanying playlists in the margins and interjections from writers reflecting on their motivations for the story. What drew you to these moments of dialogue between the reader and writer?
We’re living in this time of unprecedented richness and people are able to access sounds and music in ways that they never have before. In many traditional music publications, there is a sense that the editors are an arbiter of taste, of boundaries and of what is worth listening to. We wanted to flip that on its head and create a space where many different people could tell us what was worth listening to. Many writers and artists create in another format while listening to music. We were curious to know what songs they were listening to. One of the things we keep telling people is that no matter how much music you listen to, if you flip through Heartbeat, you will find something that you haven’t heard. We’re hoping that it acts as a tool for people – that the intentional experience of going through the magazine encourages listening.

What unifies all of the articles is a focus on unrepresented histories. How important was it to foreground these stories as opposed to the biggest stars of the moment? 
One of the things we think about intentionally is the fact that magazines are made of paper. Magazines last and we create them to be worth reading for a long time. They act in two dimensions. They’re a bottle for a particular moment and set of ideas but that bottle then floats out on the tides and we hope that whatever is in it is still evocative to whoever picks it up, whenever they pick it up. If you chase the moment too hard, you end up with something that feels ephemeral. When you look through history, there are so many fascinating folks who have never had their moment in the spotlight, or who have something about their story that is resonant now in a way you wouldn’t expect. All of our publications are time-agnostic. We hope that gives the reader a way to step out of the hectic narrowness of a screen-mediated existence, into something that is richer, stranger and maybe takes them to places that they didn’t know they wanted to go.

There is also such a range in where these stories take place. Was it important that Heartbeat was representative of experiences from across the globe?
It really was. One of the unique things about Broccoli as a team is that none of us grew up in a major media market. We all come from places where our stories aren’t seen as the stories worth telling. I know the place that I’m from is rich and layered, which means there are many other places in the world that fall beyond the major media and news focus. We wanted [the magazine] to feel capacious and for there to be space for stories from all sorts of places that people wouldn’t think of for a major feature.

Listen to the full episode on The Stack, Monocle’s podcast about print media:

More than a decade into developing hotels with Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, and Kerry Properties, Jason Kuok felt that it was time to build something of his own. An intrepid adventurer at heart, he had long dreamt of a unique hospitality property connected to the outdoors. Years spent learning from the best in the business had shaped his own perspective and House of Koa would embody his personal tastes and values. 

That vision eventually grew into Koa Niseko, a collection of turn-key luxury villas and townhouses in Upper Higashiyama, an upscale ski area in Japan with scene-stealing alpine views. Given the destination, it might come as a surprise that Kuok wasn’t interested in winter sports at the time. “I never was into skiing or the mountains. My dad was into diving, so I did that instead,” he says. “It was my brother-in-law who asked me to check out Hokkaido.”

Kuok took his advice and set off to Japan’s northernmost main island in 2017 and was profoundly moved by the mountains. Beyond Niseko’s natural beauty, he discovered that land in Higashiyama was primarily freehold and soon spotted a market opportunity. “What was being put out creatively was decent but it wasn’t on par with what I had seen in Bali, Australia, Tokyo or even Karuizawa,” he says. Within months he purchased a plot, putting his hand to the plough.

The decision, however, was met with skepticism. “People said to me, ‘Why are you buying there? You’ve got to buy in Hirafu, the main area. Your spot is a bit far away.’” But thankfully, he found unwavering support from his primary-school classmates – Justin Potter, Jason Cheung and Joseph Luk – who came on as shareholders in the business, and helped to handle the branding, marketing and finance (areas in which Kuok lacked expertise). “We all happened to have different but complementary skillsets, and our friendship has become richer through this journey of building something together,” says Kuok.

Taking on the role of full-lifecycle developers, the team is involved in every part of the project, from early feasibility studies down to the selected fragrance. They collaborated with Craig Takahata, creative director of Zoo Design Group, and Ryoichi Niwata, interior design director of Bond Design Studio, to craft homes that fused traditional Japanese farmhouse architecture with modern Scandinavian sensibilities. Natural materials, lofted ceilings, bespoke Stellar Works furniture and a Jøtul cast-iron gas fireplaces make for a warm and intimate abode. 

“Koa is a curated, immersive experience that makes you feel at ease,” says Kuok. It’s a space that only grows in value when temperatures dip and time slows in the wintry mountains. This “experience” also extends into products – beanies, candles, drip coffee and more – reinforcing the brand’s thoughtful approach in tactile ways.

And the years of effort have paid off. Nearly all 10 villas and townhouses have been snapped up. Last year, Kuok introduced four Koa Super Villas – larger five-bedroom properties with a Japanese onsen-style bath and sauna – and the first home sold right away. “That was real validation,” says Kuok. Buyers – many from Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines – were drawn to the homes’ supreme comfort and timeless style. “Even the children loved it, without us needing to add Disney-like elements.” The response has been so good that Kuok has a line-up of interested partners who are keen for House of Koa to build hospitality ventures and even personal homes. 

As Niseko’s popularity continues to rise, so too has the demand for residences and the influx of developers looking to make a quick buck. “They will hire an architect and just furnish it based on their price point,” says Kuok. House of Koa, however, takes a longer view. “Our homes are designed from the inside out, where everything is custom-made. Not many people will go to the lengths that we do,” he says. “You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone else fussing over the tableware, artwork or the print labels on the soap.” 

House of Koa breaks all the trappings of a traditional real-estate company. It has artfully harmonised elements from different domains – fashion, food, music – to create a considered lifestyle, one that many now aspire to call their own.