Ah, Saturday morning. Looks like we made it – and in some style. As you read this, the 2026 edition of the Monocle Quality of Life Conference is in its final stages, wrapping up with a host of special-access city tours and a farewell breakfast on the rooftop of the Museu Do Design. But yesterday was the biggie – a day of talks, discussions and entertaining interludes – set within the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, surely one of the most beautiful museums in the world. Throughout the day we heard from pioneers in everything from architecture to foot health, industrial design to fashion, and they all had lessons to impart. Here are 10 of them.

1.
Artist and designer Joana Astolfi was tasked with explaining Portugal in 10 objects (she ended up bringing 20 – we forgave her). And one key theme that became evident as she spoke was that this is a country where soul matters, where taking your time is considered a good thing (“we enjoy being a little late at times”) and where a love of poetry is the norm.

2.
Lisbon is a city where tolerance endures. The city’s mayor, Carlos Moedas, talked us through the urban projects that are helping to transform his city. He also explained how Lisbon is special because of intangible elements – one of which is tolerance. The city has welcomed 200,000 people from around the world and the mayor explained how quickly they feel at home. He also stressed that for this to endure, new arrivals need to participate in the city’s rich cultural life.

3.
The creators of Amble One – a Portuguese electrical vehicle that looks like a souped-up prestige golf cart – revealed that they took orders for more than 3,000 vehicles during the debut model’s first few weeks on sale. Made in Portugal might be reaching beyond clothing, furniture and wine by driving deep into tech but, staying true to its roots, Amble One has a nice cork steering wheel.

4.
How do you fix the shopping mall model? Paul Sirisant – the CEO of a multi-use development called Cloud 11 in Thailand – said his company thinks beyond the ding of cash registers and focuses on delivering cultural value. In his case, this has included providing recording studios and spaces to hang out.

5.
Architect Manuel Aires Mateus explained how design can change your life – and your health. He gave a good example: cutlery, which he designed in the form of a lightweight set that encourages you to eat slower (and perhaps a little less).

6.
Nicolas Gabard, owner of Parisian tailoring house Husbands, spoke eloquently on the power of making an effort, on why having an image is not superficial. His session encouraged everyone to embrace the joy of getting dressed. “It should be fun,” he insisted. 

7.
Many people dream of changing careers and we happened to have many perfect case studies on stage. One of the best was Pedro Oliveira, who left a successful career in finance to open a jewel of a hotel in Lisbon, Das Amoreiras. He’s a man who cares deeply about design and hospitality but perhaps the key lesson he imparted was that sometimes you have to change course if you want to be truly happy.

8.
We had a great panel on foot health and why walking can fix not only your balance but your mind too. Courtney Conley, the founder of Gait Happens and the author of Walk, shared numerous lessons. Here’s one takeaway: when you take your shoes off, the widest part of your feet should be your toes. If you can’t splay them, you need to think about your toe strength. Oh, and barefoot is best.

9.
António M Feijó, the president of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, talked about the challenges of extending the institution’s museum, with the recent addition of a new wing designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. How do you add to a building that people already see as a masterpiece? One of the ways that they triumphed in stitching it all together was through planting. The resident ducks definitely approve.

10.
A final lesson: if you missed the 2026 outing, you need to join us in 2027.

Want to read more of Andrew’s columns? Click here.

The lakeview rooms at the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise are like stepping into a painting. Throw open the curtains and you’re enthralled by one of the most famous mountain vistas in the world: the regal Victoria Glacier hanging above the turquoise Lake Louise.

But down on the lakeshore is another matter. In high season, the water’s edge is packed with early birds who snagged a precious parking spot, late risers who caught the shuttle and motorcoach masses on their grand tour of the Canadian Rockies. Under a sea of selfie sticks, Lake Louise scarcely resembles the charming landscape that painter Albert Bierstadt immortalised on canvas in the 1880s, just a few years before the site became part of Canada’s first national park.

Ecotourism is hardly a new phenomenon but places such as Banff National Park are facing a particular crush. This is thanks to the runaway success of the Canada Strong Pass, a government initiative now in its second year, which made entry into all Canadian national parks free of charge from June to September. While some more obscure locations could use a boost, marquee destinations have been overwhelmed. Last year, Banff broke records with 4.5 million visitors – a 30 per cent increase in a decade. On a recent visit, Monocle hiked shoulder-to-shoulder with crowds more often found in central railway stations at rush hour and abandoned plans for an alpine breakfast at one of the park’s famed backcountry teahouses when the queue stretched an hour long.

Destinations from Barcelona and Kyoto to Venice have long expressed similar laments but cities were built for people. The endangered black rhinos in South Africa’s Kruger National Park can’t wave placards at a city-hall protest, nor can Iberian lynx in Spain’s Doñana National Park, whose habitats have been disturbed, wield squirt guns to unload their displeasure into the crowds. How can national parks protect their flora and fauna for future generations, while also inviting humans to engage with the natural world? “We call it the dual mandate,” says Jonathan Jarvis, a lifelong park ranger and former director of the US National Park Service, who now consults for national park systems around the world. Jarvis shares a few suggestions for striking the right balance.

Design boardwalks where you want people to walk

In the most crowded settings, too much foot traffic can trample fragile vegetation or create a spider web of social trails that deviate from official footpaths. Enter the boardwalk, a simple but elegant solution that clearly signals where you should – and should not – put one foot in front of the other.

Boardwalks are versatile tools, just as easily deployed in deserts as in mountains. The Snowies Alpine Walk – a 55km trek through Australia’s Kosciuszko National Park – opened two years ago with an extensive network of steel mesh and wooden boardwalks to protect rare alpine grasses while keeping boots from getting mired in bogs and wetlands. Rechristened this year, the Salt Creek Boardwalk in Death Valley National Park prevents hikers from disturbing the rare pupfish. 

Encourage visitors to see less popular locales

Social media has wreaked its havoc on countless natural landscapes, with people swarming a handful of digitally famous viewpoints. As the former superintendent of Mount Rainier National Park, Jarvis knew the pattern well. “If the sun was out and the mountain was visible, by 10.00 the parking lot at Paradise was full,” he says. Visitors would flock to the tallest volcano in the continental US, whose flanks are home to what naturalist John Muir calls “the most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings.”

But when those mountain-top wanderings involve shuffling in a line of people, Jarvis and his staff nudged visitors to look elsewhere in the vast park. There are other visitor centers, vantage points and alpine gardens besides the one with a name as alluring as Paradise. 

On that score, Parks Canada has done a clever job with its Red Chair campaign. In 2011, staff at Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland set up Adirondack chairs at beautiful locales away from the Unesco World Heritage Site’s most obvious vistas. The scheme caught on and now the seats with a view, always in patriotic rouge, are sprinkled across more than 100 sites from coast to coast. 

Give visitors a nice ride

If you build it, they will come. And if “it” is a beautiful place that you can drive right up to, then they will come in droves – with traffic jams to prove it. For national parks that have reached peak traffic, the best model is the zero-emission electric Zion Canyon Shuttle System, which has moved more than 100 million people through Utah’s stunning red-rock countryside since its 2000 debut. Other well-branded buses include the Island Explorer, which carries visitors around Maine’s Acadia National Park, and the seasonal Wasdale Explorer in the UK’s Lake District National Park. Top marks also go to two mammalian-inspired systems: the Igelbus (“hedgehog bus”) in Germany’s Bavarian Forest National Park and the Yamanakako no Kaba amphibious bus, which tours a Japanese forest in a hippopotamus-themed bus before splashing into Lake Yamanaka in Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park.

While the Swiss are known for their trains, the canary-yellow Express Parc Naziunel that climbs the Engadin to the country’s lone national park is actually a ride on wheels. For a first-class rail journey, Belmond’s Hiram Bingham promises a rolling Peruvian feast and fiesta en route to Machu Picchu National Archaeological Park.

Require reservations

The world’s hottest tables require booking months in advance, so why shouldn’t the most popular natural attractions? From climbing Mount Fuji to swimming in the coves of Parc National des Calanques near Marseille, you’ll need to plan ahead. Reservations might frustrate locals who are used to spontaneous jaunts but they are often the best strategy for dealing with the tragedy-of-the-commons scenario where too many people degrade the experience for everyone.

The US national park system experimented with reservations earlier this decade as a way to manage seasonal draws, receiving generally positive reviews. But in February, the Trump administration scrapped timed entry everywhere except at the Rocky Mountain National Park, turning park rangers into harried maître d’s. “Now some poor ranger who should be handling bear incidents is in the road directing traffic, parking cars and herding crowds instead,” says Jarvis.

Mandate local guides

In many developing countries, national parks can be economic drivers, attracting nature-inclined travellers who disembark with top-of-the-line gear and return home with a new perspective gleaned from local knowledge. In order to make the most of tourism’s economic benefits, the right rules that require domestic guides and porters must be in place – otherwise “some foreign company is going to come in and leave with all the money,” says Jarvis.

Countries that have already heeded this advice include Nepal for trekking the Himalayas, Costa Rica for touring three of its most ecologically sensitive parks, Ecuador for climbing its glacier-capped volcanoes and visiting much of the Galápagos, Indonesia for observing the venomous dragons on Komodo island and Uganda for safaris to see mountain gorillas.

Charge foreigners more

Foreigners hoping to climb Mount Kenya or hike the Parque Nacional da Serra dos Órgãos outside Rio de Janeiro must fork out an entry fee higher than what the locals pay. A similar dual-pricing scheme applies at Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda, Yala National Park in Sri Lanka and across the board from Argentina to Thailand. Jarvis says this is understandable, given that user fees cover more than 50 per cent of the budget for national park systems in many African nations. For someone who has planned an international trip around a national park visit, the additional fee is a small price to pay.

Ottawa is currently plugging the gap opened by the Canada Strong Pass but entry fees have historically made up about 25 per cent of the national park budget. The percentage is lower for the US National Park Service – just 10 per cent – which raised eyebrows this year when the Trump administration began charging non-residents $100 (€86) to visit 11 of the country’s top parks. As deferred maintenance takes a toll on national park facilities, an extra bit of coin from the 14 million overseas visitors to the likes of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon could help keep parks in tip-top shape, improving the experience for everyone.

Gardeners have set down their tools and are watching as a crane lifts a 60-year-old olive tree and slowly lowers it on to a large truck. It’s only 09.00 but the sun is beating down on Finca Hermosa, a tree nursery near Spanish city Alicante. This careful choreography is the final step in a process to ensure that this shipment of trees arrives at its final destination, across the continent in Romania, in good condition.

“Olive trees are incredibly strong and adaptable,” says Sílvia Botía, the company’s sales representative, as we seek shelter below the branches around us. This shade is precisely what many of Finca Hermosa’s clients are after. “Sooner or later, an awning will tear or get dirty and you’ll have to replace it. But a tree, especially one like this, can be planted for the next generation to enjoy too.”

With Europe experiencing brutal heatwaves exceeding 40C this summer, trees are important business. They keep cities cool and improve wellbeing, which is why everyone from local governments to individuals with private gardens are planting more. The global tree-services market has grown rapidly in recent years and is expected to reach €2.5bn in 2030 – largely thanks to an increased focus on urban greening and a rising investment in green infrastructure.

Canopy cover plays a crucial role in cooling cities. Studies recommend a minimum of 30 per cent tree coverage in urban areas to meaningfully improve microclimate, air quality and health, so this is becoming a priority for densely populated cities. In April, New York announced plans to increase its tree canopy to about a third by 2040.

Limited space in urban areas means that planting large trees is not always viable; pollution and lack of space for the root system can also be challenging. Small trees can take several years or even decades to grow – but saplings are easier and cheaper to plant and will adapt to their environment. “In five years, saplings can grow into a forest but a mature forest is much harder to create – the chance of a big tree surviving is lower,” says Belgian landscape architect Bas Smets. His projects include a new park around Notre-Dame in Paris that is set to be completed in 2028.

As the need for shade becomes more urgent, full-grown trees are becoming more desirable. Those with a larger trunk diameter can store more carbon; are better at intercepting precipitation and air pollutants; and regulate temperatures more effectively. Planting and protecting taller species in cities is something that officials and landscape architects are also having to consider. “There’s no trick formula,” says Smets. “It’s about understanding the timeline in five, 20, 50 years and then coming up with the right strategy.”

Finca Hermosa, founded in 2008 by eight Dutch business partners, including Anton Visser, specialises in fruit trees such as fig, palm and citruses, as well as a variety of olive trees. It also has one of the oldest examples of urban green space on its doorstep. Nearby city Elche is home to a vast Unesco World Heritage-listed palm grove, planted during the Moorish era as a planned oasis. Its irrigation network, combined with the palms, is a good example of an effective cooling method for extreme heat.

Despite geographical limitations, demand for trees is rising. Vivers Planas, a nursery near Girona in northeastern Catalonia, supplies conifers across the EU and beyond. “We’re seeing a 20 per cent increase of our revenue yearly; we can hardly keep up with demand,” says Vivers Planas’s Manel Gálvez, who works with private and public clients. “There has been an important shift in mindset at the public level. Town councils have realised – perhaps a bit late – that there’s a clear need for more trees.”

Gálvez adds that many redevelopment projects must now include greenery. “Before, you had public projects that were all pavement with just one or two trees; now, with the temperatures that we’ve had recently, it’s clear that this will be unbearable. There’s a huge demand from town councils and architects coming from public works for large quantities of plants,” he says. “We’re also seeing more demand from smaller nurseries, private homes, architects and landscapers.”

There’s still a long way to go before officials and architects move away from concrete paving and make towns that resemble forests. But the business of trees is growing. “The question you must ask yourself is: would you prefer to live in a desert where it’s hot, unprotected from the sun and the wind or in a forest with a constant temperature and moisture?” says Smets. “Instead of just saying that we need more trees, the whole city should be rethought as a way to introduce nature.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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