The setting for prime minister Mark Carney’s announcement of Canada’s first national sovereign wealth fund could not have been more redolent of his country’s past ambitions. On Monday, standing at a lectern in the Locomotive Hall of the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, Carney evoked the generational effort to construct the Canada-Pacific Railway more than a century ago; the country’s first national project after gaining its sovereignty in 1867.
“Facing at that time an economic depression and threats to our sovereignty from our southern neighbour,” said Carney, nodding to history’s apparent rhyme in today’s context, “Canadians chose to build.” And it’s in that spirit that his government has set up the Canada Strong Fund – a project as consequential as the one represented by the gleaming steam train behind him.
This is perhaps Carney’s boldest move in office so far. It also confirms that the dominant theme that brought him to power a year ago – countering the economic threat posed to Canada by a hostile US – is still very much his guiding principle.
Full details are still to be published by Carney’s government – something his critics have been quick to pounce on. The populist leader of the opposition Conservative Party has already dismissed the endeavour as a “Liberal slush fund” for a government that spends too much. But here’s what we know so far. Set up with an initial endowment of CA$25bn (€15.6bn), the fund will be managed by a Crown corporation, a federal body that operates independently from the government. Its focus will be on landmark domestic-infrastructure investments, initially in mining, ports and technology. It will be open to a mix of stakeholders – public and private, home and overseas – as well as to individual Canadians, who will be able to buy in to some of the projects being financed by the fund, for a return on that investment at some point down the line.
The Canadian reaction to the new fund has been mixed – the conservative-leaning premier of Saskatchewan, for example, was thrilled at the prospect. For others, the unanswered questions surrounding the fund outweigh its promised benefits. “I’m a bit of a sceptic, for a couple of reasons,” says David Soberman, a professor at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. “The question you have to ask yourself when these funds are put together is: would it be better for the government to take these assets and put them into a sovereign wealth fund to be managed by the government? Or would it be better for them to use the assets that are going into the fund to reduce national debt?” That debt currently stands at about CA$80bn (€49.97bn). “But one of the most important things with a sovereign wealth fund is how it’s managed – if it is taken care of by an independent board that truly knows how to invest funds, that is one thing. But if a sovereign wealth fund becomes politicised, then it becomes a problem.”
There are models already in place in Canada that might prove instructive to how the fund will work. The Canada Pension Plan (CPP) or even the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund – Canada’s largest single-profession pension plan with net assets of CA$279bn (€174.8bn) – are each managed independently of the government. They have been very successful in their investments, as well as the yields they’ve earned for those who pay into them.
Carney’s big challenge is to convey to Canadians how profound and, perhaps, permanent, the change is. All spurred, of course, by the manoeuvres of a now-hostile neighbour. “Hope isn’t a plan and nostalgia is not a strategy,” said Carney recently in a video address.
Canada, broadly speaking, is a country whose operating approach often stems from the comfort of the status quo. To mark the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, for instance, one of Canada’s big current-affairs magazines published a memorable editorial that decried that sense of national complacency, stating that for too long “good enough has been good enough”. It explained that the country’s handling of the outbreak, particularly the fragmented and often chaotic roll-out of vaccinations, should push Canadians to want for something better. Did it have the desired effect? Not really. But here we are now, at a time when most of the long-held assumptions about the way Canada’s economy works, and what it’s anchored to, have been cut from their moorings.
Carney is trying to recast basic principles in the minds of the country that he governs, as the old assumptions of how the nation operates continue to get chipped away. In principle, a new national sovereign wealth fund is surely a good thing. Canada is a wealthy country, so it should behave like one, particularly at a time of seismic tremors in the world order. But neither words nor principles alone – much like hope and nostalgia – amount to a plan. That lies in the work, hard though it might be.
Further reading:
‘You can’t be truly sovereign by yourself’: Mark Carney talks to Monocle about geopolitical pragmatism and a confident Canada
On film: Monocle in conversation with Prime Minister Mark Carney
US president Donald Trump is not known for bowing to convention – or bowing to anything for that matter. True to form, he didn’t greet King Charles III at the start of the latter’s state visit on Monday with a dip of the head but rather his customarily hearty handshake. And yet for all his outsider posturing, few things seem to please the president more than attention from the British Royals. He was in buoyant form all week, revelling in the pomp and pageantry, and embracing his role as sidekick King to the real thing.
Nothing could spoil the mood. Even after a pointed speech to lawmakers in US Congress on Tuesday in which Charles made oblique references to constitutional checks on power and the importance of the Nato alliance, Trump remained effusive, calling it “a great speech”. At a lavish dinner of spring ramps, herbed ravioli and dover sole meunière, Trump grinned and chuckled as Charles dropped well-timed jokes about the 1814 British firebombing of the White House and how Trump “would be speaking French” if it weren’t for the English. All in all, the King’s speech was pitch-perfect, giving the feeling of good-natured ribbing between old friends.
Sure, there was the small matter of the president breaking convention and sharing a private conversation with a monarch when he claimed Charles “agrees with me, even more than I do” about curtailing Iran’s nuclear ambition. But that was a mere blip, and when ties between the US and its traditional allies across the pond are severely strained, it’s a welcome diplomatic success.
Since Trump took office in January last year, relations with Europe have been plummeting into an abyss. First Trump pulled back from supporting Ukraine, then threatened to invade Greenland and is now engaged in a full-scale retribution campaign against Nato allies who did not support his war against Iran.
Europe’s leaders have been lining up at the White House door to try and repair relations. Taking it in turns for ritual humiliation in the Oval Office, they sit with rictus smiles as Trump rakes them over the coals on tariffs, defence spending and other pet peeves.
There was no such confrontational diplomacy this week. Given that the US is celebrating 250 years since its independence from the British monarchy and many European countries are cooling on their own scandal-prone royals, there is an irony that it took a King to thaw the ice. But is the job really done? Are all fences mended and bridges rebuilt? Not so fast. Charles is far from the first visiting dignitary to pay their respects at the court of King Trump and leave feeling like they are best friends forever.
In early 2025, Trump stood next to a beaming Keir Starmer at a White House press conference, praising him and his “beautiful accent”. It provoked a rosy glow in British diplomatic circles and a feeling that the special relationship was alive and well. Now he is calling Starmer “not Winston Churchill” and a man who “ruins relationships”, while also apparently questioning Britain’s claim over the Falkland Islands.
Similarly, French president Emmanuel Macron’s early White House visit was all knee-touching and back-slapping with a jovial US commander-in-chief. Now, Macron is on the receiving end of Trump’s tasteless jibes about his wife.
It is highly unlikely that Trump is going to turn around after the royals depart and make similarly crude comments about King Charles and Queen Camilla, as he appears to have genuine respect for the British monarchy. But for a man who demands absolute loyalty from his acolytes, he gives out very little in return to his international allies, and when there is any deviation from his policy goals, all the goodwill evaporates. While Trump scoffs at the regular No Kings protests across the US and claims that he has no desire for absolute rule, his demands for absolute allegiance is clear – crown or no crown.
Featuring Monocle’s annual Design Awards, a tour around Cairo’s regenerated downtown and our timekeeping special. Discover the creative director to watch, the camera to buy and the dining chair for your home.
Plus: hear from the world’s best designers, architects, chefs and more about their favourite timepieces – and welcome special canine models for the watches of the season.
The recent completion of the Artemis II mission was meant to remind us that space can still be a shared frontier. Artemis represents a step toward sustained lunar exploration and, eventually, Mars. Yet that hopeful image sits alongside a harder reality: space is becoming a contested strategic domain and the gap between rhetoric and security practice is expanding like the universe.
The current state of arms control in space paints a picture of regulations that are thin, incomplete and increasingly outpaced by events. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty still bans weapons of mass destruction in orbit and on celestial bodies but it does not prohibit all military activity in space, nor does it provide a detailed rulebook for counter-space competition. Today’s UN process is therefore trying to manage the problem rather than solve it outright. In 2025, the General Assembly established a new open-ended working group for 2025-2028 to issue recommendations on preventing an arms race in outer space. That’s diplomacy but not disarmament.
The more immediate question is whether there are real prospects of open conflict in orbit. The answer is yes, in the sense that militaries are now planning for it as a live contingency. US Space Command planners are preparing for the first major war in space and Western officials increasingly speak of space as a war-fighting domain. Yet the more unsettling problem is that conflict is not a clear exchange of blows; instead, it is emerging as a pattern of coercion, rehearsal and ambiguity. That makes escalation harder to detect and therefore easier to misinterpret.
A lot that we can see in orbit looks a great deal like preparation for conflict. China, Russia, the US and India have all conducted anti-satellite weaponry tests, leaving behind debris that risks collisions with hardware. More recently, there have been reports of Chinese satellites practising co-ordinated “orbital dogfights”, as well as a Russian spacecraft that shadowed a US reconnaissance satellite for nearly two years.
Alongside this are persistent concerns about jamming, lasers, cyberattacks and close-proximity operations. European responses reflect this shift: France is developing patrol satellites to monitor adversaries; the United Kingdom is investing in sensors to detect laser threats; Germany is building a large encrypted military constellation; and the EU is expanding capabilities to improve resilience against GPS interference.
Recent reporting related to Iran is particularly sobering because it illustrates how space-based capabilities are being integrated directly into terrestrial warfare. In April, Iran reportedly acquired a Chinese spy satellite and used it to monitor US military sites in the Middle East. At the same time, Russia has been providing Tehran with targeting information on US warships and aircraft. Taken together, these developments point to a future in which orbital assets do not merely underpin deterrence; they actively enhance strike capabilities on the ground.
None of this is unfolding in a spacious or forgiving environment. Earth’s orbit is increasingly crowded and fragile, with more than 14,000 satellites and an estimated 120 million pieces of debris in low-Earth orbits. Even debris as small as one centimetre can be lethal, as the extreme speeds of hypervelocity impacts give such fragments enough force to disable a satellite or trigger catastrophic fragmentation.
This congestion has prompted warnings that parts of the atmosphere could become unusable without improved co-operation and data-sharing. Governments and commercial actors are acutely aware of how the security problem and the congestion problem are becoming one and the same. Starlink has announced a 2026 reconfiguration to lower its satellites and reduce collision risks.
And yet the most likely response from space powers will be familiar: to harden their positions. This will mean more patrol satellites, more resilient constellations, expanded electronic warfare capabilities and a greater emphasis on redundancy over vulnerability. Artemis II might have revived hopes of a co-operative future but the strategic environment surrounding it is moving in a harsher direction; toward a space order defined by enduring competition.
Gorana Grgić is Monocle’s security correspondent. To hear about what’s next for the space economy, tune in to Monocle Radio’s ‘The Bulletin with UBS’. And for more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
No matter who you are or where you live, you share a daily habit with the majority of the world. This morning, you, your neighbour, your children’s teacher and your tailor got dressed. For many, the routine is banal: combining various items that amount to a socially presentable outfit. But for some, the practice is an act of self expression and an opportunity to play with texture, colour and silhouette.
The difference between being well-dressed and well, dressed, often hinges on the garments’ fit, but it can also be distinguished by sartorial choices that reflect your personality. A relaxed mood might warrant fabrics that drape, while an alert attitude could draw one to dark colours and angled tailoring. In short, the key to dressing well is to maintain flexibility and to know that the rules are made to be broken.
Monocle asked three particularly fashionable people for their styling advice. The overwhelming consensus is to avoid pre-ripped jeans at all costs, to ignore trends and logos, and remember that life is long, so invest in clothes that will stick around. Here are their tips for creating a quality wardrobe.
Atsushi Hasegawa
The head of creative at luxury hotel The Newt in Somerset, Atsushi Hasegawa can be spotted wandering around its verdant grounds in a straw boater, longline linen shirt or even a kimono-inspired work jacket that he designed for UK gardening brand Niwaki. Hasegawa was born in Japan and became fascinated with fashion in the late 1980s, when he worked at Vivienne Westwood’s Tokyo shop. A passion for fly fishing brought him to Paris, where he worked at Maison de la Mouche, a shop that caters to the outdoors hobby. After about 10 years in the city, where he also worked in textile design, Hasegawa crossed the Channel to become the head of creative concept at footwear brand Clarks. Today he oversees The Newt’s visual identity, marketing activities and cultural partnerships.
Hasegawa’s tips for dressing well
Know thyself
“Clothes protect you so I’m serious about what I wear. As I get older, I know that what matters is what suits your body, your height, your posture. I’m quite obsessed with understanding what kind of hats suit me.”
Keep pieces around
“I collect clothes and never throw anything away. I still have clothes that I bought when I was 18 because I don’t want to be a part of throwaway culture.”
Dress the way you feel
“When life gets stressful, I become almost punk and more expressive. When I’m more relaxed, it’s reflected in my laidback clothing.”
Improvise
“I’m a DJ and only mix with seven-inch vinyls with the aim of seamlessly connecting everything without planning. I like to do the same with getting dressed, almost in a half-stressed state and with only 20 minutes to get ready. I start with one item and then co-ordinate from there.”
Maria Lemos
Maria Lemos certainly knows how to dress the part. The Greek-born entrepreneur has been running Mouki Mou, one of the most elegant retail addresses on London’s Chiltern Street, for more than a decade. Her knowledge of craft, textiles and the best makers to watch is practically endless. A sharp point of view and an appreciation for quality inform everything that Lemos does. Whether she is dressing herself, selecting new labels to stock in her boutiques or choosing a location for her next project, she’s not one to follow trends or veer away from her own aesthetic.
Lemos’ advice for a considered wardrobe
Build a wardrobe over time
“I was recently wearing a wool Lemaire dress that I picked up at the end of the season because no one else had bought it, yet I kept getting compliments on it. These clothes are ageless by nature; you can wear items from years ago and everything fits together. You’re building a wardrobe over time – but that does require a level of confidence.”
Invest in quality pieces
“I keep pieces that are more than 30 years old and it’s all about quality. They might have cost a fortune at the time but they remain in amazing condition and I still wear them.”
Build confidence in your choices
“Something happens when you hit your mid-fifties – you really know where you’re going. Until then, you’re always trying different things out. It’s about knowing yourself and bouncing things off the people around you. That’s why I like being around young, creative people.”
Luxury should feel curated and personal
“For many in the past, [luxury] was about buying into [established] brands, which have become oversaturated… Buying clothes should be the same; it should feel personal.”
Hirofumi Kurino
Japan’s sartorial big hitters have long intrigued the fashion world – and Hirofumi Kurino is right up there as one of the most influential figures in menswear. A co-founder of Japanese fashion retailer United Arrows (UA), where he is now a senior adviser, Kurino’s signature blend of high and low – a tailored jacket and New Balance trainers – is easy to admire and hard to imitate. Relentlessly snapped by street photographers, Kurino knows how to appreciate craftsmanship, whether in an Italian shirt, Japanese wool trousers or a good tweed, but he will happily try something new. Comfortable in his own skin, unfailingly courteous and curious about the world, Kurino, who is also a consultant for Japanese manufacturing organisation J-Quality, is the embodiment of great style.
How Kurino creates his outfits
Go with the flow
“There’s no formula. Sometimes I choose my clothes the night before, sometimes I decide in the morning. It depends if I have a certain image in my mind.”
Find your true colours
“Colour is key for me when I’m choosing what to wear; it’s more important than the fit. Royal blue is my favourite.”
If it isn’t working, change it
“If I head out in the morning and something doesn’t feel right – maybe the socks are wrong – I’ll turn back.”
Follow you own rules
“I don’t like rules for dressing and age is irrelevant but I do avoid logos and big luxury brands, and I don’t like pre-ripped jeans. If my jeans tear naturally, that’s different.”
Find your staples and stick to them
“I still wear a lot of jackets and suits. I’m a big fan of Caruso suits; I love the way they’re relaxed but elegant. I’m interested in mass production and love the socks from my nearby supermarket. I also go to a local barber. I’ve had my hair the same way for 30 years – if I go somewhere fancy my hair will look the way the stylist wants and not like me.”
For more on creating your own style, read:
– Adopt your own look: The case for dressing in a personal uniform
The fact that all emergency services in Venice travel on water is something that still fills me with child-like enthusiasm. Ambulances, firefighters and carabinieri speed around on motorboats emblazoned with insignia. These vessels are my first memory of the city. When visiting as a child, having made the journey from my hometown of Turin, I was in awe of the novelty – to me, they looked like irresistible Playmobil toys. Little did I know that, more than 20 years later, I would be back in the city to report on their activities and the logistical challenges they face for a Monocle story that involved zooming across the lagoon on a police boat (not handcuffed in the back, fortunately).
Every story that has taken me back to Venice over the years shares that same sense of wonder – from observing the glass-blowers in Murano reinventing a millennia-old craft to hopping across the vintage bagni on the Lido, which appear straight out of a mid-century postcard. Perhaps because of the city’s pull on visitors worldwide, Italians often have a disenchanted view on it: we like to show that we are keenly aware of the city’s issues and are attuned to its reality.
And yet, no matter how level-headed I have tried to be, I have always fallen for it. Something shifts the moment you walk out of Marco Polo airport, down to the taxis and vaporetto piers, and smell the salty air of the lagoon: how can you not be excited about a city built on water?
Still, what makes Venice so inviting is that despite the much-discussed spectre of overtourism, it remains a functioning city where you can still catch glimpses of the everyday. Almost a decade ago, when working on the Venice installment of The Monocle Travel Guide Series, the team and I based ourselves in the city for a few weeks, during a freezing January before Carnival started. It was then that I really came to understand Venetian rhythms as I waited for the frenzy of the day to give way to the quiet of the evening, when a different kind of life re-emerged in the bacari.
I was in charge of the guide’s retail chapter, and hunting for independent workshops took me to the residential sestieri – since then, I tend to spend most of my time here in Cannaregio, Castello or Dorsoduro. Speaking to the districts’ artisans and designers gave me a clear picture of their struggles but I also witnessed an enduring sense of pride and determination. Nevermind us visitors who idealise: Venetians are the people who are most enamoured by this splendid city.
Many of the hotels, restaurants, bars, cafés and shops that I discovered on my explorations then form the backbone of our online Venice guide – proof that businesses with soul can survive here. I have accrued the rest over the years during visits to the Art and Architecture Biennale, when having a sharp dinner-booking game can open new doors.
Arguably, it’s the job of any good travel guide to help readers steer clear of over-hyped locales, and that role is even more important when it comes to Venice. So our list of recommendations invites you to veer off into quiet, narrow calli and discover what still makes this such a seductive city. Because despite its traditions and past riches, Venice has become an edgy centre of contemporary art and design – somewhere young generations still find inspiration and purpose.
Read next: The Monocle City Guide to Venice, featuring the best hotels, restaurants and retail spots
Seattle Waterfront Park by Field Operations
Monocle Design Awards 2026: Best in urbanism, USA
The tidal waters of Puget Sound churn a blend of Pacific Ocean and glacier-fed rivers. The result is an estuary that teems with life, from Chinook salmon to Orca whales. But for decades, Seattle – the urban core of the Puget Sound region – was cut off from this briny admixture by the Alaskan Way Viaduct elevated highway, which blocked downtown from the water’s edge.
It took a magnitude 6.8 earthquake in 2001 to inflict a fatal blow to the concrete behemoth and another two decades of political wrangling to determine the waterfront’s fate. Today the dust has settled – the elevated highway has come down and an eight-hectare park has arisen in its place, designed by New York-based Field Operations. Monocle meets the firm’s founding partner and CEO, James Corner, atop the site’s signature feature: the Overlook Walk, a collaboration with LMN Architects. The award-winning landscape architect meanders inconspicuously amidst the tourists and locals taking in the panorama. People crowd the Salish Steps, a cascading set of stairs with a view of the downtown skyline. “It was always our intention to splice nature with the city – a merger of Seattle urbanism with Puget Sound naturalism,” he says.
The result is a testament to the power of design in shaping a city’s fortune. The park is an instant classic that has reinvigorated an ailing West Coast downtown and a proving ground for ecological recovery in an urban industrial setting. As pedestrians wander down boardwalks, Corner muses on the project’s early days. At preliminary meetings, citizens spoke up in favour of keeping the highway or against building a park. “There was a lot of resistance because of a lack of confidence that Seattle knows how to manage public spaces,” he says. A seasoned professional, Corner was unfazed. In 2012 the Field Operations team rolled out a series of renderings that slowly won over sceptics with a vision of piers, play areas, tree-lined cycling paths and places to access the water.
The plan proved to be the ace in the hole for local officials, as they built public support for a new tax and sought philanthropic donations to fund the $806m (€687m) undertaking that spanned seven mayors. “They just had an amazing sales pitch,” says Angela Brady, director of the city’s Office of the Waterfront, Civic Projects & Sound Transit, who moved her team from a municipal tower to the water’s edge to work more seamlessly with Field Operations. “We’ve built exactly the vision that they put together,” she says, though Corner notes a few omissions, such as a proposed mist cloud in lieu of the jellyfish-themed playground, a floating pool barge and a rooftop space atop the ferry terminal, which were axed for budgetary or other considerations.
The park covers 26 city blocks along 2.4km of prime waterfront. Ferries, water taxis and tour boats dock on the piers, while terminals for cargo vessels and cruise ships bookend the park. With the natural deepwater harbour of Elliott Bay, Seattle is very much a working waterfront, a feature Field Operations did not want to hide. That attitude comes across in the material choices, such as the exposed aggregate used for the promenade that forms the central pedestrian artery. “Let’s not create overly stylised, fussy or effete pavement,” says Corner. “Let’s do something that reflects tough, gritty Seattle – its working, pragmatic character.”
And yet, ecological considerations inadvertently created a distinctive look underfoot. The project’s high price tag includes massive underwater engineering work to rebuild the crumbling Elliott Bay seawall that shores up landfill (significant portions of downtown Seattle is built upon filled tidal flats). Field Operations designed the panels with ribbed walls and shelves to mimic natural habitat. The end result is a bustling ecosystem of algae, barnacles, mussels and kelp that attract migrating salmon. Key to the success is a diagonal pattern of purplish glass panes embedded in the promenade, set at the right orientation to maximise sunlight capture.
Clever angles benefit humans as well as fish. Field Operations positioned street furniture – from wooden benches hewn from massive timber beams, a nod to the port’s history, to new porch swings – to face the view of Elliott Bay rather than align with the north-south orientation of the adjacent roadway. “When the viaduct was here, the city was cut off from this massive asset,” says Corner. “They knew the bay was there but they didn’t pay any attention to it as a thing of incredible scenic beauty.”
fieldoperations.net
Tatamel Bike by Icoma
Monocle Design Awards 2026: Smartest mobility solution, Japan
A decade ago, industrial designer Takamitsu Ikoma had an idea for a scooter that wouldn’t require parking space. He had been thinking about it ever since moving from his hometown in central Japan to attend design school in Tokyo, which forced him to leave behind his motorcycle. In the densely populated capital, the monthly fee for a parking spot would have exceeded his budget. The scooter he dreamed up was a compact, electric-powered two-wheeler that could be collapsed, like origami, to the size of a suitcase and kept near the front door of a small apartment or under a desk at the office. Without an engine, it wouldn’t reek of petrol fumes or leak chain grease.
Ikoma’s Tokyo-based startup, Icoma, finally brought this idea to production in 2024 with its foldable electric Tatamel Bike (tatameru means “foldable”). When Monocle visits Icoma’s workshop, set in a cluster of industrial buildings in Matsudo city, northeast of Tokyo, an employee dressed in coveralls is assembling half-a-dozen scooters. Each one is handbuilt from a chassis and folding mechanism that are produced at a factory in Ota ward and combined with off-the-shelf and 3D printer-made parts. Outside, Ikoma demonstrates how the Tatamel Bike’s handlebars, seat and back wheel tuck inside of and under the body. In a matter of seconds, the scooter becomes a compact box that stands on its own or can be rolled around. “It’s very difficult to build a shape-changing vehicle that doesn’t cut corners on safety. Making it function properly and transform reliably is a huge challenge,” he says.
The Tatamel Bike is no hot-rod – it has a top speed of 45km/h and can travel up to 30km when fully charged. But that’s not as limiting as it might sound. “In the city, most people travel an average distance of 10km to 20km at a time,” says Ikoma. When Monocle takes a test ride, the scooter is stable and responsive, thanks to its electric drivetrain, rigid frame and robust suspension. And it’s not just a scooter: the battery can be used as a portable power source, capable of charging devices or used as backup power during outages.
Ikoma had no prior experience building scooters before the Tatamel Bike. He knew of the history of modern foldable motorcycles, going back to the Welbike, a British military invention that was parachuted to the battlefront during the Second World War. Still, designing his own road-ready scooter from scratch seemed ambitious. So he started with something familiar: a toy. His first job out of design school was with Japanese toy maker Takara Tomy, where he worked on Transformer robots that shape-shift into vehicles, weapons and animals. After stints developing AI-equipped robots and home appliances, he founded Icoma in 2021.
Building a miniature version of the scooter helped him refine the mechanics. He carried it everywhere, using it to explain his idea to engineers, designers and potential backers. Feedback – some of it through social media – fed into later versions. By the time he began constructing full-scale prototypes, the project was already attracting attention from scooter enthusiasts and media, and had won design awards in Japan and overseas. Today, with only seven employees, Icoma is racing to keep up with demand. In the past two years, it has sold about 100 Tatamel Bikes at ¥498,000 (€2,700) apiece. Buyers these days must wait six months to a year for delivery. Scaling up production remains a challenge, but the venture is turning a small profit.
Ikoma is considering upgrades to the foldable scooter. He is also exploring a range of new ideas, including AI-equipped, motorised, self-driving suitcases and smaller, lighter scooters with built-in robotics. Toyota recently hired him to collaborate on a Segway-like electric, self-balancing two-wheeled transporter. In the future, Ikoma envisions that more vehicles will behave like robots. The transforming feature of his scooter, he says, is only the beginning.
icoma.co.jp
Further reading:
All 25 winners of the 2026 Monocle Design Awards
Four high-quality bike makers you should know
There are few better ways to take the measure of a city than to watch it wake. Stand in the right place at the right hour and you can read its whole social composition in a single sweep – the street vendors heaving their carts into position, the motorbike commuters threading the arteries before they clog and cleaners stepping out of glass towers as the white-collar set step in with iced coffees at the ready. A city’s morning metabolism is perhaps its most honest portrait.
For those who prefer to start the day with exercise, there are few more apt sites in the Thai capital than Lumphini Park. Arrive early, before the mercury rises, and you’ll find a piece of urban theatre: there is the tai chi cohort moving in slow, deliberate ranks beneath the rain trees. There is the makeshift outdoor gym, nestled under shade, where elderly men work through their reps on old steel that looks as though it has been lifted from a 1970s YMCA. Nearby, a runner in the newest District Vision shades and Hokas glides past, Airpods in, Suunto watch synced. A monitor lizard hauls itself out of the water, takes a quick measure of the morning, and then slowly slides back in.
The cast keeps arriving. An aerobic dance class assembles, a leader in a visor calling out steps over a tinny speaker. Retirees try for their daily steps. By now, vendors are open for business. Skewers hit charcoal, jok (rice porridge) bubbles in pots and traditional Thai coffee is brewed thick enough to hold a spoon upright. The first commuters take breakfast standing before they disappear down the steps of the BTS at Sala Daeng, next to the Dusit Thani hotel.
All of it sits inside a frame that is unmistakably Bangkok in this decade: the embassy compounds along Wireless Road and the towers of Sathorn and Silom catching first light. It’s a skyline that seems to have added another building since you last looked. Bangkok is a city on fast-forward – metro lines opening, new mixed-use complexes rising over old shophouses and foreign capital flooding in. The park is the holdout: a green parenthesis inside a city otherwise rebuilding itself at speed.
Colin Nagy is a Los Angeles-based journalist and Monocle contributor.
Further reading:
Monocle’s complete city guide to Bangkok
The new morning economy: CEOs aren’t the only ones benefitting from crack-of-dawn starts
Hydro Circal 100R
Monocle Design Awards 2026: Best material development, Norway
On a sunny morning in the southern Dutch city of Drunen, a front loader moves slowly across one of the storage depots at Hydro’s aluminium plant, scooping up heaps of scrap aluminium. The scrap is then moved to the adjacent building, where the air is warm with an unmistakable industrial scent. It is here that the metal begins its transformation. Crushed window frames, street-light poles and greenhouse parts are melted down in a 1,000-degree furnace, then purified and extruded into long, silvery profiles. But the molten material isn’t only used to make new building envelopes or car parts – it’s also finding its way into our homes as covetable design items.
This is the unlikely link that Norwegian aluminium producer Hydro has forged through its R100 project, a programme that turns post-consumer material into refined furniture and lighting pieces made entirely within a 100-kilometre radius. When the project – a collaboration between Hydro and five leading designers – was first presented at Milan’s Salone del Mobile last year, it caused quite a stir. Its reputation was only enhanced by its most recent showcase at Eindhoven’s Dutch Design Week, where it presented works made near Drunen.
The initiative is as much an experiment in the circular economy – to see how a global manufacturer can both recycle and produce on a local scale – as it is an endeavour to elevate the status of aluminium as a design material. It has also been a breath of fresh air for its production teams, according to plant manager Ben Mul, who has spent decades working with aluminium. “I was amazed when I saw the products,” he says. “We’ve always been a traditional industrial site, but suddenly our work was being shown at leading design fairs. Even my son, who is studying design, is proud.”
For Hydro, recycling isn’t new – but keeping the entire process, from scrap collection to production of final items, within a 100-kilometres radius was. With the project being based in Drunen, the Dutch geography helped – most of the country fits within the limits set by the producer. Hydro’s business-development manager for the Benelux region, Yon van den Oever, explains that the main challenge wasn’t quality but logistics. “We had to find new partners for bending and anodising within that small radius,” he says. “Some had never worked at this scale before. The engineers had little time to test, but the quality that we achieved matched virgin aluminium.”
Hydro is convinced that aluminium has the potential for becoming a key material in the circular economy of the future. “It can be recycled endlessly without the loss of quality,” says Van den Oever. The company’s most advanced recycled aluminium, the Hydro Circal 100R, produces just 0.4 kilos of CO2-equivalent emissions per kilo compared with the global average of 14.8 kilos. As industries seek to diminish their carbon footprint, Hydro has seen a massive uptick in demand for its recycled aluminium. “The demand outstrips how much we can produce,” Mul tells Monocle. “We have the capacity, but the bottleneck is finding enough scrap.”
In Eindhoven, the results of Hydro’s project gleam under the soft lights of Kazerne, a local design hub. At the R100 exhibition presented at Dutch Design Week, curated by Hydro’s Lars Beller Fjetland, five designers unveil objects made entirely from Hydro’s groundbreaking material. Monocle meets two of them – Dutch designer Sabine Marcelis and German industrial designer Stefan Diez, who have each interpreted the Hydro Circal 100R through a different lens.
Marcelis’s Light Wings lamps are tall, gently curved extrusions that glow in shades of anodised bronze and rose. “The form follows the material,” she says. “Aluminium is light, it bends and you can give it so many finishes. People think of metal as cold, but anodising makes it alive.” The lamp’s structure is deceptively simple – the LED strip and dimmer are integrated into the extrusion so that, at the end of its life, the whole piece can be disassembled and recycled with minimal effort. Diez, meanwhile, has designed a family of cylindrical rubbish bins. Made from the same aluminium profiles, the pieces are both utilitarian and symbolic. “Why a trash can? Because we’re using scrap material,” he says. “It’s a metaphor: waste becomes a beginning. Circularity is complex and requires effort, but projects like this show that it’s possible if you start thinking differently.”
But why is Hydro doing this? The company could simply continue as one of the world’s biggest suppliers of industrial aluminium. For Hydro, the R100 programme is part of a broader strategy to future-proof its business. By 2030, the company aims to more than double its use of post-consumer waste, from 450,000 tonnes in 2024 to up to 1.2 million tonnes. For Marcelis, who usually works with glass and resin, aluminium offered a new challenge. “It’s opaque, so I had to think differently about how light interacts with it,” she says. “Colour became the way to bring warmth.” The project has also changed her professional expectations. “It’s given me the confidence to ask brands for more recycled material,” she adds. Diez, who also works as the head of industrial design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, has long advocated for repairable and recyclable design. He sees the collaboration with Hydro as part of a larger shift. “We designers still work in a linear way,” he says. “We need to create so that materials stay within their alloy families (a key to recycling). Don’t glue everything together – think about how to take it apart. It’s a major paradigm change.” Both creatives agree that working with Hydro gave them a rare level of technical insight. Marcelis describes the experience as “like being a kid in a candy shop”. Diez calls it “a laboratory where designers and engineers meet on equal terms”.
For Hydro, the impact of this project has been cultural as much as environmental. Workers in Drunen and the other plants followed the progress closely. “They were proud to see their aluminium become a desirable design,” says Van den Oever. And while these products were, first and foremost, experiments, they are already feeding back into the company’s mainstream operations. Van den Oever says the search for local finishing partners revealed new suppliers who now work with the company on other projects. The factory team, he adds, has learned to be “less conservative” about what aluminium can do. Fjetland believes this is where design and heavy industry overlap most productively. “Designers push us to the limits,” he says. “For example, we discovered new technical possibilities through [Marcelis]’s lamp, which will benefit Hydro long-term. At the same time, designers can learn what it means to manufacture at scale. There’s no contradiction between sustainability and mass production.”
The R100 project suggests a model for how the materials sector can evolve towards tighter supply chains, closer partnerships and a focus on designing for reuse. For Hydro, the goal is not to become a furniture brand but to show what circular production can look like when designers and engineers collaborate. As Mul puts it, “We are used to making lamp posts for roads. Now we also make beautiful lamps for people’s homes.” In a world where industries are rethinking how and where they operate, Hydro offers an example of what progress looks like as yesterday’s scrap turns into tomorrow’s design.
hydro.com
