Are you a man under 150cm in height, who’s never molested a child and can wiggle your bottom in time to the music? If so, things are looking up for you today (well, at this height, perhaps looking up is always a given). On Thursday in Madrid, I sat next to a man – we’ll call him Nicholas – who told me about some marketing work that he had once done in Florida that involved hiring people to slip themselves into mascot costumes and parade around trade fairs. 

Locating potential human innards proved quite the task. While the costumes were often petite, they were also heavy; and if there were going to be children in the room, the person being, say, a rabbit or giant tortilla, needed a special licence to prove that they had been police vetted. Plus, this was Florida, where demand was high because of the likes of Walt Disney World being in the state and offering premium gigs to potential Goofys and Plutos.

Oh, and then there are all the organisations that take care of mascot-worker rights, such as the National Mascot Association (NAM), which I have now looked up and see that it has the motto: Fuzzier Together, Safer Together. Can you imagine how much fun the annual general meeting must be? “I’ll take one final question from Pauline the Pineapple but then over to you Mr Chunk-o-Cheese.”

Anyway, it meant, explained Nicholas, that many of the mascots were raking it in. The minimum fee is apparently $100 an hour and let’s just say that some of these small, sturdy, bottom-wiggling performers insist on being paid in cash. It begs the question: how would a tax official ever track down any miscreant? You could hardly put out an alert to all your agents for anyone that they happened to see dressed as a hot dog or bottle of tequila.

I was in Madrid because we were hosting a cocktail party at the Mandarin Oriental Ritz for Fitur, the international tourism fair (where there were apparently lots of Spanish mascots running amok – I even saw a giant gorilla on Gran Vía). The party was a lot of fun and various attendees told me about why I should visit Angola, Guatemala’s push to attract visitors beyond the Spanish-speaking world and why I need to spend more time in Menorca (all ears). But I was also brought up to speed on Boro.

Sunday’s high-speed train crash in southern Spain saw 45 people lose their lives and even though the investigation into what happened is ongoing, it has already become a political blame game. Rightly, there’s intense anger. Amid all of this, one small story had, it seemed, gained an incredible following throughout the week: the story of a woman on the train, Ana García, who had escaped bruised and battered from the wreckage but minus one important thing: her dog, Boro. García’s plea to help find her hound took off in the media and as people anxiously awaited news, animal rescue organisations stepped in and the police promised to assist. Then, on Thursday, Boro was found and, judging from video clips shown of him reuniting with his owner, was rather surprised at all the fuss. 

Also at dinner on Thursday was our Adelaide-born Madrid correspondent Liam Aldous, who revealed that, in his youth, he had a successful stint in marketing, including dressing up as a detective as part of a shop promotion. It didn’t go well – people thought that he was accusing them of shoplifting. He also told us about a job that involved dressing up as a huge, to use his term, “satisfier”. He insisted that this was a stimulating gig taken by “a friend”. Whoever it was, I hope they get invited to NAM’s AGM. “Whoever’s making that buzzing sound, can they stop now please.”

It’s been some week, some month, in which our leaders have sported all sorts of guises – strongman, diplomat, Canadian – as they try to navigate a wobbling world order. But I don’t know many who have triumphed on the satisfier front. The smiles, as they often are in times of great upheaval and grief, have been left for the small stories of triumph – tiny moments when good things come to pass – such as when Boro came home.

And me? I’m thinking that life inside a mascot suit might be a comforting place to be. So, when Tyler asks for volunteers to don Monocle’s Monochan outfit at the next Christmas Market, I might just accept (as long as he agrees to my Mascot Union’s demands).

“The bistros and cafés of France are the guardians of time,” said Emmanuel Macron earlier this month when he threw his weight behind a national campaign to add bistros to Unesco’s intangible cultural heritage list. The plea is telling. The institution appears to be in steady decline: where a century ago France boasted about 500,000 bistros, now only some 40,000 remain. 

Leisurely lunches are giving way to delivery apps, produce costs are soaring and gallic gastronomy seems increasingly at odds with modern-day dining. And yet, in Paris at least, a new generation of restaurateurs is quietly proving that the bistro’s greatest strength lies precisely in its predictability. 

“We think of the bistro as a living space for the neighbourhood,” says Colombian entrepreneur and restaurateur Carina Soto Velásquez, who took over bistro-café A La Renaissance with American business partner Josh Fontaine in September 2025. The duo also runs the popular Mexican taquería Candelaria in Le Marais.

“Domestic spaces in Paris are small, so residents tend not to host at home,” says Soto Velásquez. “The bistros that sit below their apartments become an extension of their homes.” That’s why the revived establishment in the 11th arrondissement is open from 08.00 until 01.00, seven days a week, carrying its patrons through their morning espresso to their evening digestif. Crucially, prices are modest: the set lunch menu comes in at €23.

But it’s not just the unwavering dependability of the bistro that, in Macron’s eyes, deems it worthy of Unesco’s lofty ranks. The recognisable zinc counters, upholstered banquettes and bentwood chairs that make these establishments a comforting proposition. Predictable, yes, but this is arguably the key to its staying power. “A La Renaissance has been a bistro since 1919,” says Soto Velásquez. “We see the same locals here two to three times a week.”

In Montmartre young restaurateurs Benjamin Moréel and Christopher Prêchez are committed to preservation over innovation. The pair took over Paris’s oldest bistro, Le Bon Bock, in June 2025. Established in 1879, the traditional decor stops just short of cliché: there is antique woodwork, stained-glass windows and red curtains at the entrance for discretion. “The drawers only close halfway and the shelves are wonky,” says the restaurant’s 27-year-old manager, Adrien Chiche. “We decided to leave them be.” The same rustic spirit extends to the menu. “We stick to accessible recipes,” says Chiche. “You’ll find œufs mimosa, pâté, tarte tatin – dishes that our parents made for us growing up.”

A relic of belle époque Paris, it is said that the likes of Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso and Van Gogh frequented this eccentric watering hole for a glass of absinthe. “Patrons would pay in the form of a painting,” he says, motioning to the walls laden with the bistro’s healthy profits. It’s this laid-back approach that makes Le Bon Bock a leveller. “During service, I look around the room and see young people on dates, families, elderly people, tourists and, of course, lots of Parisians,” says Chiche, the latter being an important barometer for the bistro. “We want to retain this mixité; the bistro doesn’t discriminate.” It’s a credo established by the previous owner of 15 years, who would invite the city’s homeless into the building on Christmas Day for a hot meal.

In the 20th century, as the artistic elite moved from Montmartre to Montparnasse, Rosebud cocktail bar became a new bohemian hangout. “It’s a slice of old Paris,” says co-founder Lionel Guy-Bremond, who took over the Rosebud in January 2025 with six creatives. Established in 1962, Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre and Marguerite Duras would frequent this speakeasy-style, art deco watering hole, which stayed in the same family for six generations. There is even a portrait of Duras on the wall as if to validate its literary heritage. “We did a lot of renovations but you can’t tell,” says Guy-Bremond. “We have clients who have been coming for 60 years, who say they that can’t tell the difference – that’s the highest praise.”

Inside the modestly lit, mysterious interiors, the lighting, chairs and tables remain identical to the original Rosebud. The retro Citizen Kane cocktail (a nod to the film in which the last word is “rosebud”) contains champagne, gin, crème de rose and lemon juice, while bar snacks include popular classics such as œufs mayonnaise and foie gras. “We’re not into mixology or natural wines,” says Guy-Bremond. “We’re an old-fashioned cocktail bar.”

Unesco’s intangible cultural heritage status is a coveted accolade that was awarded to Italian gastronomy in December. Whether Macron’s plea for the same constitutes an admission of his own malaise or a genuine coincidence is unclear. But one thing is for sure: Unesco’s blessing would be a balm for France’s fragile political ego. “In turbulent times, the bistro is a tonic,” says Soto Velásquez. Maybe Macron has a point.
87 Rue de la Roquette, 75011; 2 Rue Dancourt, 75018; 11 Bis Rue Delambre, 75014

With its short days and sense of post-holiday letdown, January might not be your favourite month – but it’s the perfect time to plan your cultural itinerary for the rest of the year. From Alexander Calder’s mesmerising mobiles to a nostalgic celebration of the 1990s, we round up seven of the most essential museum shows to catch over the next 12 months.

1.
Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First
The Royal Academy, London 
At the age of 91, UK painter Rose Wylie is at the height of her career. Her biggest exhibition to date will show some of her older work alongside her latest canvases. For a behind-the-scenes look at her working methods, see our profile of the artist here.
‘Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First’ runs from 28 February to 19 April 2026

2.
The Antwerp Six 
Momu Fashion Museum, Antwerp
The Antwerp Six were an influential group of Belgian designers who burst onto the international fashion scene in 1986, firmly putting their country on the industry’s map. Though the group counted luminaries such as Dries van Noten and Ann Demeulemeester among its members, this is the first major show dedicated to it and brings together original garments, sketches and photographs. 
‘The Antwerp Six’ runs from 28 March 2026 to 17 January 2027

3.
Raphael: Sublime Poetry
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
More than 500 years after the death of Raffaello di Giovanni Santi (aged 37), the largest exhibition of his work to be staged in the US is due to arrive at the Met’s Fifth Avenue location. Carmen Bambach, who curated the institution’s landmark Michelangelo show in 2017, has secured more than 200 pieces, from tapestries and sketches to the Louvre’s captivating “Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione”.
‘Raphael: Sublime Poetry’ runs from 29 March to 28 June 2026

4.
Calder. Rêver en Equilibre
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris 
The work of US sculptor Alexander Calder, who died in 1976, is having something of a renaissance. In September, Calder Gardens opened in his birthplace, Philadelphia, while an exhibition dedicated to one of his most iconic pieces is currently running at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Meanwhile, in April, almost 300 of his works will arrive at Paris’s Fondation Louis Vuitton for Rêver en Equilibre, a retrospective that explores all facets of his oeuvre. 
‘Calder. Rêver en Equilibre’ runs from 15 April to 16 August 2026 

5.
Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy 
Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice 
At the age of 79, Marina Abramović shows no sign of dulling her work’s transgressive edge. Her showcase this spring will coincide with the art crowd’s arrival in the floating city for the 61st Venice Biennale. It will create a dialogue between Abramović’s performance art and the Renaissance masterpieces that are so intrinsic to the city. 
‘Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy’ runs from 6 May to 19 October 2026 

6.
The 90s
Tate Britain, London
Stylist and magazine editor Edward Enninful curates this nostalgic examination of a decade that feels both increasingly distant and relevant. A sense of optimism and a wilful disregard of hierarchies defined 1990s music, fashion, photography and art – changing the course of British culture.
‘The 90s’ runs from 8 October 2026 to 14 February 2027

7.
Mariko Mori
Mori Art Museum, Tokyo
A homecoming of sorts: Tokyo-born Mariko Mori presents her first Japanese exhibition in 24 years at Mori Art Museum, the Roppongi Hills institution founded by her uncle. Family ties aside, it will be fascinating to see her increasingly spiritual sculptures and installations in the context of the 53rd-floor gallery space. 
‘Mariko Mori’ runs from 31 October 2026 to 28 March 2027

I hosted a small gathering at my apartment in Paris last week and, naturally, the conversation turned to the thing Parisians hate more than almost anything else. I am talking about calcium build-up. Do not laugh. The struggle is real.

Let me explain. There is so much calcaire (calcium carbonate) in Parisian water that it is like coronary artery disease for appliances. It kills water heaters, washing machines, coffee-makers and dishwashers. It makes wine glasses and shower doors look as though they have been splashed with watered-down white paint. And worst of all, it can leave your hair dull and flat. 

When I first moved to the city, I would stand blurry-eyed in front of the array of anti-calcaire products at the grocer’s. Sprays, tablets and complicated descaling kits for a range of appliances. Even irons needed to be protected from the dreaded calcaire, a substance so pernicious it requires a large defensive arsenal and constant vigilance. What an odd French obsession, I thought. I bought nothing.

Not long after, I lost my young water heater to calcium at the tender age of four. The repairman took a look, shook his head and said one word: “calcaire.” Everything that Parisians do is for a reason, whether it’s the order in which they eat cheeses, when to close the windows in a heat wave or which cleaning products they need. I will never doubt them again.

I was unable to save my coffee-maker, which I learned was supposed to have had a biannual calcium-oscopy with vinegar to keep it from seizing up. So, when I had to buy a new washing machine and the salesperson asked whether I wanted to purchase a magic magnetic anti-calcaire device for 29 euros, I said, “Yes, please!”

There was, however, the ordeal of getting the washer and the device installed. When the French installation technician arrived, he informed me that the bathroom doorway was a maddening half centimetre too narrow. If it didn’t fit, I would need to pay to send the appliance back to the shop, triggering god knows how many levels of bureaucratic hell.

There would be no point in getting all New Yorky and telling him that I had measured it and that he was wrong. That attitude does not work here, not to mention it is also possible that I actually measured wrong. The best option was to dissolve into helplessness and offer copious flattery. Dignified? No. Sexist? Maybe.

I managed not to laugh when he asked for dishwashing liquid to slather on the bathroom doorway, using the same urgent tone that a TV doctor might use when asking for a pen to perform an emergency tracheotomy.

Me: I don’t know what I will do if I have to return it! 
Installation technician: Madame, I would never leave a woman in such a state. We will make it work.
Me: Thank you, thank you! You are a true chevalier!
Installation technician: The only thing we can do is to take the door off. We are not usually allowed to dismantle the machines but I will do this for you.
Me: Thank you.

20 minutes of dismantling and re-mantling later

Me: Here is something for you and your colleague. I promise not to tell anyone that you took the door off.
Installation technician: Thank you. I am the chief of deliveries for this area. You may call on me anytime.
Me: I hope I won’t need any more new appliances for a while. I have the anti-calcaire device now.
Installation technician: Ha ha. Could you please use this QR code to leave me a Google review?

I told some of my guests that my new washer was protected by this cool calcium-fighting gadget. Not surprisingly, they wanted to see it. So we crowded into the bathroom. The small metal attachment is supposed to magnetise the calcaire right out of the water before it gums up the washing machine’s innards.

Does it work? Who knows. The anti-calcaire product market is half faith, half science. This launched a discussion of other calcium-fighting tactics: shower-head filters, special shampoos and an R2-D2-sized water filter that someone’s husband bought to trap all suspect minerals.

I thought that I finally had the battle against calcium under control until I went to my French doctor. She wanted to prescribe medication for me but before she could, she said, “You need to have a CT scan to be sure the arteries of your heart don’t have calcium deposits.”

My first extremely paranoid thought was: even human pipes get clogged with calcium in Paris? I’ve only lived here 18 months but I do drink a tonne of tap water. No one told me not to. Famous last words.

But no, it was just calcium PTSD. I Googled “score calcique” and it is a routine test, done all over the world. My score was zero, my heart is calcaire-free and theoretically, so is my washer. 

Susanna Schrobsdorff is a former New Yorker who has relocated to Paris. She writes the It’s Not Just You newsletter on Substack. She was previously an executive editor at ‘Time Magazine’.

Tate Britain’s big winter show, Turner & Constable: Rivals & Originals, brings together the work of the two artists – and it’s the richest, most satisfying thing that I’ve seen hung on London’s walls in a while. If you’re in town for a weekend, make sure you stop by. If you’re around for longer, see it twice. And if you’re a Londoner, go there on foot, since this is a celebration of slowing down and experiencing things at a human scale. Maybe visit it in different conditions to find out if the weather outside makes a difference. A cold day in January might have you hankering to explore the drama of the Alpine sublime as Turner captured it; when spring starts to bud, however, your eye might long for Constable’s English pastoral. After all, both were masters of landscape and weather – and the truths contained within them, great and small. 

Though the exhibition’s title frames the two painters rather pugilistically, the curators stop short of casting them as boxers in the manner of the famous poster for Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s 1985 show at New York’s Tony Shafrazi Gallery. Instead, we get deep scholarship (bish!), amazing loans from landscape-loving US collections (bash!) and superb pacing and exhibition design (bosh!). 

The only below-the-belt blow is the acknowledgement of the time when Turner, on seeing his seascape “Helvoetsluys” hung next to Constable’s “The Opening of Waterloo Bridge” at the Royal Academy in 1832, decided on the spot to add a blob of red paint to his picture – a buoy or an attempt to upstage his rival? In response, Constable said, “He has been here and fired a gun.” Tate Britain tells this story with a well-chosen clip from Mike Leigh’s 2014 film Mr Turner, in which Timothy Spall plays the painter as a tireless, gruff, creative bulldog (woof!).

Turner and Constable were born a year apart (1775 and 1776, respectively) in an era when England was expanding its empire, fighting Napoleon and the Industrial Revolution was rapidly putting chimneys and smokestacks where spires and sails had been. The landscape was becoming political and showing the truth of it put a poet or a painter on a side. 

Turner was born in London. He was a teenage prodigy in the world’s biggest city, where he met noise with some of the same. Constable was a self-taught late starter from Suffolk and his works suggest that he thought there was perfection in that landscape of meadows, willows and quiet country. Both artists saw and painted the outside world while offering glimpses of internal, emotional terrain and presaging the future. Constable’s grief at his wife’s sickness made some of his landscapes seem almost expressionist. Turner’s later run – great washes of cloud, fire, mist and colour – nod to impressionism.

Turner’s work sometimes gives you the feeling of looking at a bright sunrise or remembering a feeling through colour. That’s his version of the truth: it’s in the way you see things. Constable’s details, cloudscapes and cathedrals, on the other hand – you can still find much of these in Salisbury. So the truth is in what’s there. You could do worse than test this maddening, existential question by looking at Turner’s sunsets and Constable’s clouds. There’s no winner here at the Tate Britain but there’s truth in spades.

Hans Egede was a Norwegian missionary who founded Nuuk, now Greenland’s capital, in 1728. While his legacy is a complicated one, there is no question that he was a tough cookie. Some of the people that Monocle has met in Nuuk this week would also fit this description, one of them being Greenland’s prime minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen, who we saw on Thursday. The 34-year-old is nearly 10 months into a term that came as a surprise to many in the country, not least the man himself. While it is the highest office in the land, it is not usually one that involves much international scrutiny. 

On Wednesday, Monocle attended a press conference with two government ministers at Inatsisartut, Greenland’s parliament. There were 20 chairs for the 80 to 90 journalists in attendance. At about 11.00 on Thursday morning, we received an email from Nielsen’s press secretary, explaining that that day’s press conference had been moved to Nuuk’s Katuaq Cultural Centre, from where we have been broadcasting The Monocle Daily live all week. The prime minister shuffled in at 14.00. Power can superannuate even the freshest face but Nielsen still looks like a man in his early 30s, if not one who has had a rather heavy few weeks.

There had been a lot of noise over the past few days from President Trump and now it was Nielsen’s time to talk. “I will say it again just to be clear: Greenland chooses the Greenland we know today as part of the Kingdom of Denmark,” he said. The right to self-determination was once considered a core tenet of the US-led world but now it is the nations that feel threatened by the superpower who must repeatedly assert it. “We feel the massive pressure on our country as well as on our partners and friends in the EU. Support from the Nordic countries, Denmark and our EU allies is absolutely crucial in the current situation,” added Nielsen. “We are strongly aware that this requires a lot from our friends and allies. We deeply appreciate it.” When gratefulness is extracted under duress, as it so often is by the US president these days, it gains a hollow quality. But to see it demonstrated with sincerity by Nielsen should have given Europe’s leaders some relief after a fraught fortnight. 

Nielsen was here to announce the launch of a high-level working group to begin negotiations on the principles of the 1951 US-Denmark agreement, which governs the American military presence on the world’s largest island. A willingness to reopen the document was apparently communicated to Donald Trump by the Nato secretary general Mark Rutte before the president’s speech at Davos on Wednesday. Greenland’s PM would not be drawn on what exactly the negotiations would reconsider, and indeed seemed not to know the exact details of Rutte and Trump’s conversation. On the supposed US desire to extract rare earth minerals, he said: “If you want to exploit [our resources], you have to respect our legislation and high environmental standards, because that’s a part of our culture.” He was unequivocal about Greenlandic sovereignty. “Our integrity, our borders and international law is a definite red line that we don’t want anyone to cross.” 

The events of the past year, and especially the past few weeks, have offended Greenlandic sensibility, both ancient and modern. This is a people for whom nature and the land is a deity, but also one whose modern history has been steered by international law and multilateral institutions. “Try to imagine how it is as Greenlanders, a peaceful people, to hear and see in the media every day that somebody wants to take your freedom,” said Nielsen. The Greenlandic and Danish governments’ decision to negotiate with the US is a compromise of sorts. To take Trump at his word, even if it is enshrined in a legal document, requires a leap of faith. But Nielsen and Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, feel that they have no other choice but to make the jump. Hans Egede’s first colonising mission was a bruising one, many of the families he had departed for Greenland with returned to Norway after a gruelling few months in the Arctic. Egede persevered and, today, a bronze statue of him stands overlooking the harbour of the town he founded. Nielsen will need similarly metallic properties for the year ahead.

Alexis Self is Monocle’s foreign editor. For more on-the-ground coverage on Greenland, tune in to ‘The Monocle Daily’ on Monocle Radio.

Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider are architects and educators who believe that their trade is broken. They argue that too many architects are building too many fancy homes, failing to challenge the system and making themselves complicit in the climate crisis. They want to see a revolution in everything from training to what gets built. Oh, and architectural prizes? They are the worst – and the UK’s most prestigious award is no exception.

“Taking a recent example, there were two private houses with excess square meterage on the Stirling Prize shortlist,” says Till. “Their sustainability credentials are almost certainly not published. And yet, on the longlist was a community housing trust with a proper sustainable agenda. It was all there but the architects at the top of the award system decided to privilege a certain set of values, which mainly results in prioritising well-designed private houses over a more social agenda.”

This has all come to a head now that Till and Schneider’s architectural research collective, Mould, has published a new book titled Architecture is Climate, positing a wholesale rethink for the field of architecture by acknowledging that the practice is entangled with climate, politics, history and social justice. Till and Schneider are two of its co-authors and are out to take a stand. (They strongly believe that architects should be activists.)

“The book is both provocative and necessary because architecture is locked into certain ways of doing and certain value systems that mainly consider aesthetics and refinement. Architects have bypassed their relationship to climate breakdown,” says Till. “They attempt to deal with it at arm’s length through so-called sustainable buildings, which we see just as Band-Aids – temporary plasters over a much deeper wound. They don’t acknowledge architecture’s complicity within climate breakdown.”

Another concern is that architects focus too much on building things. Schneider says that this limits practitioners. “Architecture tends to be understood as a building, as an object. But we need to look at it as so much more,” she says. “Imagine the practice as a mushroom or an iceberg: the building is what we see on the surface and everything else is underneath. Architects, together with other disciplines, must see architecture as a wider project of spatial production and bring others on board.” And those other partners, she suggests, could include fewer developers and more co-operatives, such as you see in Switzerland, for example.”

Can architecture really change while we all have grand expectations?

For the vision that Architecture is Climate presents to succeed, the public – meaning ordinary folk rather than those commissioning grand design mansions – must make what could be seen as sacrifices. People would need to adjust to smaller units, worry less about aesthetics and perhaps live in existing buildings ripe for retrofit, away from their desired neighbourhood; they might have to give up the dream of owning their own home entirely. “The idea that we can only be happy if we own our own house, which [in the UK] is something that Thatcher particularly promulgated, is a kind of myth,” says Till. “There is no real evidence of that in many European countries where there are more people renting than owning and I don’t see that they’re unhappy because of that.” Perhaps not but in the UK, where much of the rental stock is low-grade and poorly maintained, that feels like a big ask.

Similarly, Schneider’s take on the market is a hard sell for many. “Governments are making up the numbers of units that ‘society needs’. Where do these figures come from? When we look at built space, we see that we have enough to house everyone adequately. But sometimes the space might be in a not-so-adequate location. And when we talk about people living on a lot of square metres, we should also think about how we could live on fewer.” Perhaps, but families across the developed world don’t dream of moving into a co-op with shared living spaces. Why should they?

Taking architectural thinking beyond buildings

This is a theme that Till doubles down on when it comes to the UK, where the current government has promised to build 1.5 million homes during its term in office. It’s a target that seems likely to be missed. “They are tearing up planning regulations to allow developers to march over nature. They are tearing up ways of procuring housing through different economic systems, such as community land trusts or community housing, to try and make the point that the only way that we can achieve this goal is through a market-led approach.” It is a “dumb” plan, says Till, and an irresponsible one too.

Yet Architecture is Climate, while a deep critique of the architecture trade, is as much about putting the spotlight on interesting projects and professionals successfully working outside the usual developer-architect relationship. “The book shows that a lot of people are already doing interesting work around the globe. They’re doing so in education, in practice and in multi-disciplinary organisations,” says Schneider. Till points to the work of Atelier Bow-Wow in Tokyo and how they helped revive a series of villages. Schneider references the Grand Parc social housing project in Bordeaux.

While both have concerns about architecture as a trade, as a discipline and as a way of interpreting the world, they also see many strengths in the practice as well – even if you never build a single thing. “How do you use an education in architecture to address systemic issues? It offers a unique set of capabilities. It looks at the past as experience in the present. It projects into the future and it’s always relational,” says Till. “So what we argue is to use these ways of thinking in a much broader field than just within the design of a building. Though the book might start as a strident critique of the current system, it ends with [a sense of] possibility, potential and hope.”

‘Architecture is Climate’ is published by dpr-barcelona. The Mould collective also includes Sarah Bovelett, Anthony Powis, Tatjana Schneider, Christina Serifi, Jeremy Till and Becca Voelcker. The book is available for free download. To hear more from Schneider and Till, listen to their episode of ‘The Urbanist’. New episodes are released every Thursday. 

Film’s gilded night is drawing ever closer and today The Academy will shortlist the titles up for winning an Oscar come March. Brazilians, who have already been in party mode celebrating the double Golden Globe success of O Agente Secreto (The Secret Agent), are steadying themselves for further merriment. Set during Brazil’s late-1970s military dictatorship, it scooped Best Motion Picture in the non-English category, while the star, Wagner Moura, won Best Performance by a Male Actor in a drama. While the news sparked an outpouring of pride in Brazilian culture, there was also dissonance. Moura’s performance, delivered in Portuguese, was singled out above the English-speaking shortlist, while the movie itself was relegated to the “foreign language” category. The acting could travel but the film still needed a passport.

Industry awards – the Oscars in particular – have come under increasing criticism for keeping English as the default measure of universality, especially given the ever more international shortlist of films. Since South Korea’s Parasite won Best Picture at the Oscars in 2020, there has been at least one non-English movie in the line-up and, for the first time ever, two shortlisted in 2025: Brazil’s mother-courage story Ainda Estou Aqui (I’m Still Here) and Spanish-language French musical crime film Emilia Pérez.

Moura recently poked fun at the Anglocentric awards circuit. While announcing the winner of Best Picture on stage at the Critics’ Choice Awards, he quipped, “or as we call it in Brazil, best foreign picture”. 

The joke is on the awards for being so out of step with a globalised industry. Streamers have opened access to non-English titles, offering much larger volumes of international content, and viewing habits have fundamentally changed as a result. Subtitles are no longer a barrier to the success of films such as Norwegian monster movie Troll or French shark thriller Under Paris (the top two non-English pictures on Netflix, each racking up more than 100 million views to date). Foreign films and series are now mainstream viewing in English-speaking markets and living rooms, especially among younger audiences; two thirds of people aged 18 to 34 regularly watch foreign-language content. So, are VPNs the new library card? One click and viewers have access to a world of titles, circumventing the quirks of territory licensing or offering up something new when they’ve exhausted their country’s streaming roster. 
 
Cinema is, after all, a universal language – it’s just spoken in many dialects. We can all understand the human experience of TV characters, regardless of the vernacular. We follow the plot, understand the emotions and connect to the art. But the unique cultural context and norms of each filmmaker is what sets them apart – and that difference makes the viewing experience all the richer.  
 
Films such as O Agente Secreto and Ainda Estou Aqui aren’t compelling because they are “foreign” – they are compelling because they are written, made and performed well. The persistence of language-based award categories feels increasingly misplaced. While viewers flick easily between languages, institutions continue to draw borders that the screen itself has already dissolved.  

Catherine Balston is a journalist based in São Paulo and London. Keep your eyes peeled for an interview with the director of ‘O Agente Secreto’, coming up soon in Monocle.

Further reading? See ‘The death of the end credits: What streaming subtly gained by taking them away’.

Mary L Trump is a psychologist and writer. She is also the niece of the US president and one of his most outspoken critics. Her first book was published in 2020. Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, recounted – in unflinching detail – her difficult family dynamics and asked how these helped to create the man currently occupying the Oval Office. That book sold more than 1.35 million copies in its first week. It was met with praise, derision and legal scrutiny. 

Mary’s latest memoir, Who Could Ever Love You, turns her focus inward. Quieter and more intimate than her first memoir, the book centres on her father and explores how her family has shaped her – long before the Trump dynasty entered the White House. 

Mary joined Monocle’s Georgina Godwin at Midori House in London to discuss the decision to tell a story of her complex childhood, her clashes with the president and the journey to become the woman that she is today.

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

You grew up in a family where power and silence were very closely linked. How would you describe the emotional atmosphere of your childhood?
My grandparents’ house, which we referred to as ‘The House’, was the centre of everything. We were expected to go there every Saturday and Sunday, every Thanksgiving and every Christmas. The kids kept to themselves. Despite the fact that my grandmother and both of my aunts and uncles were frequently there as well, it’s not like we had real relationships with them. It was very self-contained and silent in the sense that there were never any deep conversations. Feeling was something to be avoided at all costs. The best word I can think of to describe the house and the people in it is cold.

What was your early relationship with Donald Trump like?
It wasn’t until I was quite a bit older, in my early twenties, that Donald and I started spending time together. He weirdly asked me to ghostwrite his second book. He gave me a desk in the back office of Trump Tower and I had to try to put together some kind of narrative by talking to other people. It ended up not working out. I was there for a few months and we chatted every day but what I recognised was that he didn’t seem to do any work – ever. He sat behind his desk going through newspaper clippings that mentioned him, and he would write pithy comments to the reporter – complimentary or insulting – and ask what I thought of them. That seemed to be the only thing the man did all day long.

Did you feel compelled to write your first book, ‘Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man’, as an act of public responsibility?
It didn’t start with me thinking about writing a book at all. In 2017, Suzanne Craig, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, mentioned that she and her team were working on a long-form piece about my family’s financial history and she believed that I had information that could make a difference. I essentially slammed the door in her face because my thought was, ‘Where were you a year ago?’ And then I started unravelling. I went away, got some treatment and was trying to get things back on course – and then I broke my foot. Suzanne reached out again and, within a week, I had 40,000 pages of documents that I handed over to The New York Times. They wrote this extraordinary piece of investigative journalism and it had no impact. I felt that I hadn’t done enough. Suzanne said, ‘You’ve got a story there but if you do write it, you need to leave everything on the table.’ So that’s what I decided to do.

Your most recent book, ‘Who Could Ever Love You’, is more of a family memoir. Why did you want to write it?
The fact that Donald remained not just a force in the Republican Party but was also ascendant was a sort of re-traumatisation. I wanted to explore who I was and my own family, which wasn’t my grandparents, aunts and uncles; it was my dad, mum and brother. I wanted to explain how I came to have this unexpected, unasked-for role in what’s happening in my country. Again, as I said in 2020, it has been utterly demoralising that tens of millions of people – not that they were doing this consciously, of course – decided to turn the US into a macro-version of my family. That was the impetus behind writing the book.

The Australian Dream, to own one’s own quarter-acre block complete with picturebook home, verdant garden and Hills Hoist rotary clothesline, has shifted in recent years. But the desire to own one’s own residence, their “Castle” to paraphrase the hit 1997 Australian cult film of the same name, remains a national ambition. In the country’s most populous state, New South Wales, its legislators have drawn from a 16th-century tradition to make it a possibility. It has launched its own pattern book – an architectural guide containing standardised designs, details and floor plans. The idea has its roots in the Renaissance, when the likes of Andrea Palladio produced sets of standardised classical design principles for easy construction. It’s an approach to building that has remained relevant, even in mid-20th-century Australia, when firms such as Pettitt+ Sevitt provided a collection of designs for homes.

Now, the New South Wales government is using it to fast-track housing developments to buy and rent in one of the world’s most expensive cities – Sydney. Simply called the NSW Housing Pattern Book, it’s a collection of award-winning home designs for low and mid-rise residences that can be approved within 10 days. Launched in 2025, following a competition for Australian and New Zealand entrants, it endorses eight terrace, townhouse and manor-house designs that potential homebuyers can purchase for AU$1,000 (€574) each – with a special AU$1 price until the end of this month. Typically, architectural home designs are estimated to be at least AU$20,000 (€11,515). In late 2025, a further nine patterns were added, providing plans for apartments of three to six storeys across small and large lots.

The government hopes that the move will make quality architecture accessible to more people. “The pattern book offers practical and sustainable designs that can be adapted to suit many neighbourhoods, positively contributing to the character of a street,” says NSW government architect Abbie Galvin. “We are making it quicker and easier to build new low-rise homes that offer housing diversity for the whole community.” The project includes designs by Andrew Burges, Collins and Turner, Neeson Murcutt Neille, Spacecraft Architects and Nguluway Design Inc.

Sceptics, including some architects, are wary of the true cost of materials and whether the plans will encourage a generic approach to design for diverse communities and landscapes in New South Wales, not to mention reduced avenues for public feedback and local council approvals. Others also doubt that these developments will genuinely reduce high real-estate prices in the state.

But those in favour have their eye on faster approvals, inherent sustainability qualities and lower costs. And there is reason to be optimistic – there’s a long tradition of pattern books delivering buildings with a strong architectural perspective that communities rally around, from the Renaissance to Pettitt+ Sevitt. Many of these are still revered as “castles” in their own right. Here’s hoping the same might be true for this latest set.

Cat Woods is an Australian journalist and contributor to Monocle. To read about how Australia is revitalising its lanes and alleyways, click here