The late, great British architect Richard Rogers once said that “Architecture is always political.” Few buildings embody that idea more than the UN’s new visitor centre, the Portail des Nations (Portal of Nations) in Geneva. The building, which opened to the public in June, has been designed to welcome some 200,000 visitors each year into a microcosmic utopia of the UN’s own design: a threshold between Geneva and the world of international diplomacy.
Designed by Swiss firm Charles Pictet et Baptiste Broillet Architectes Associés, the Portail is located just beyond the Allée des Drapeaux (Alley of Flags), leading to the Palais des Nations, the UN’s main building. Visitors enter the Portail through a central courtyard Agora – a reference to the Grecian origins of democracy – that connects three pavilions housing immersive installations dedicated to the international organisation’s work. The installations invite visitors to imagine working collaboratively towards the greater good. It’s an idealistic yet somewhat ironic proposition given that international co-operation is in increasingly short supply.
Its idealism puts the Portail at risk of becoming something akin to a Disneyland for diplomats – not because it trivialises diplomacy but because it transforms sprawling geopolitical problems into a carefully choreographed experience that visitors can navigate in under an hour. Like Disneyland, the visitor centre relies on immersive storytelling, controlled movement through space and emotional participation to render a complex world more understandable.
The Palais des Nations is visible throughout the Portail’s pavilions and the contrast between the two structures is revealing. While the stripped classical grandeur of the Palais des Nations is, unsurprisingly, palatial and awe-inspiring, the Portail is subdued. It’s a single-storey complex with wooden colonnades that support terracotta and timber roofs – an effect that creates an air of humility, groundedness and accessibility. The modest scale reinforces equality of experience rather than institutional authority.
Ultimately, the Portail des Nations had the opportunity to challenge our collective understanding of diplomatic design but it doesn’t quite hit the mark. With a clear aversion to causing offence of any kind, its architectural language resembles a checklist in Diplomatic Design 101: large windows for transparency, neutral tones for tranquillity, a single-storey floorplan for universality. Check, check and check. If minimalism has become the visual language of institutional reassurance, then the Portail des Nations speaks it fluently.
Diplomatic architecture need not be sanitised within an inch of its life. Geneva’s own Hôtel de Ville has stood in the heart of the city’s political life for more than 500 years. Its monumental ramp remains one of Europe’s great civic spaces and it was here that the first Geneva Convention was signed in 1864. Architecture can embody diplomacy without retreating into neutrality.
The Portail is curiously devoid of the UN’s character. Were it transplanted elsewhere, stripped of its exhibitions and signage, there would be little to distinguish it as a building belonging to the world’s foremost international organisation.
By contrast, Kieran Timberlake’s US embassy in London consciously embeds national symbolism into its architecture, notably through its star-spangled façade. The Portail, by comparison, functions as a competent venue for diplomacy rather than an architectural expression of it.
Lead architects Charles Pictet and Baptiste Broillet have clearly delivered – without contest – the project that they were commissioned to realise. Yet you cannot help but wonder what forms and styles could have been proposed by firms from other parts of the world had the visitor centre been the subject of an open architectural competition. Might the fluidity of neo-futurism, the environmental intelligence of contemporary tropical modernism or the material experimentation of emerging practices have offered a more compelling expression of an organisation that continues to evolve? Therein lies the missed opportunity.
If all architecture is political, then each brick is a vote. Here, the votes are stacked not into a monument to power but into one devoted to participation. The Portail des Nations might not become Geneva’s next architectural icon but it could just become one of its more important civic spaces. In that sense, its social ambition may prove more thrilling than its form.
It sounds like the battle sequence from a science fiction film. An enemy is detected by sensors that transmit the information to a command centre where software using artificial intelligence calculates an attack plan. A human approves the plan, then deploys an automated drone to destroy the enemy. The sensor confirms the kill.
Four-and-a-half-years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this system, known as a kill web, is a reality. It combines live intelligence with tactics, planning processes and real-time logistics data to enhance precision and speed in war. While militaries around the world have been developing kill webs for decades, Ukraine is the first nation to use them at scale. That has shifted the war onto the internet and into space.
Ukraine’s kill web is made possible by an online connection between front-line units, command centres and hidden launch sites. But combat units can’t drag fibre-optic cables around behind them, so broadband-beaming satellites have become as important as missiles and drones. Access and use of those satellites is a battlefield in itself.
For much of the war, Ukraine has depended on Starlink, the SpaceX-owned, Elon Musk-run satellite internet network. Though sanctions prevented Russia from accessing the network directly, Russian troops used Starlink through terminals – the portable antennae that connect to the satellites – bought from resellers in the Middle East. That was until February of this year, when Ukraine’s then-defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov lobbied Musk to enforce stricter verification systems on the terminals, blocking Russia from accessing the network.
Russian forces suddenly found themselves without communications and Ukraine’s military took advantage of the ensuing chaos to recapture territory in the south. That loss of access and the ensuing operational impact drove Russia to speed up the deployment of Rassvet, its sovereign answer to Starlink, launching the first 16 satellites earlier this year. If everything goes according to plan, Rassvet will have 292 satellites in orbit by next year and nearly a thousand by 2035.
The introduction of Russian satellites will undoubtedly shift the war. By building its own network, Moscow will be able to deliver more precise attacks on Ukrainian troops, cities and infrastructure – something that Kyiv can’t do inside Russia. This is because SpaceX implemented geofencing, meaning that Starlink can only be used inside Ukrainian territory.
The network has made Ukraine vulnerable in other ways. During 2025 negotiations between the US and Ukraine, the Trump administration threatened to cut off Ukraine’s Starlink access if Volodymyr Zelensky refused to sign a deal. So, Ukraine has been exploring alternatives, such as Europe’s Eutelsat OneWeb.
Rassvet is a problem for Ukraine’s allies, too. Russia has already used drones for sabotage, reconnaissance and disruption operations in the UK, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Germany, the Baltics, Romania and more.
Russian forces are slowly capturing tiny pieces of Ukrainian territory at an enormous cost to Ukrainian lives but Rassvet would shift the momentum in their favour. For now, the network is too small to provide the continuous internet coverage that Moscow needs to gain a battlefield advantage. Ukraine is furiously hitting the factories that make Soyuz-2 rockets (which launch Rassvet satellites) to stop the network from being completed.
The war in Ukraine has led to the fastest innovation cycle of any war in history. Both sides are constantly developing new capabilities, which each tries to counter and match. It began with tank battles, helicopters and large numbers of troops. Next, it was a race for artillery shells, then a contest of drone tactics and production. Now the battle has moved into space but the prize is still very much on Earth: the precious land of Ukraine.
Dubai’s location between Europe, Asia and Africa has made it a popular hub for international air traffic. This year, however, the very geography that fuelled its rise became its Achilles heel.
In March 2026, missile and drone strikes rattled the UAE, grounding flights, prompting government warnings and sending foreign airlines scrambling for safer skies. Dubai International Airport saw passenger numbers plunge to 31.5 million in the first half of 2026 – a steep 31.3 per cent drop from the previous year. Yet hope is now returning, with traffic growing from 3.5 million in April to 5 million by June.
But will travellers who found new routes through Seoul, Singapore or Istanbul continue to come back? Asian hubs have benefitted from a pause in Dubai air traffic and for a city whose airport powers its economy, permanently breaking the habit of transit is a far greater threat than a temporary dip in numbers.
Paul Griffiths, CEO of Dubai Airports – the operator managing both Dubai International Airport (DXB) and Al Maktoum International (DWC) – remains optimistic. When Monocle sat down with him, he spoke about ballistic alerts, emergency drills and refuelling solutions, arguing that Dubai’s aviation engine was already roaring back to life.
This conversation can be listened to on The Globalist from Monocle Radio.
Was this the most difficult period you have faced running Dubai Airports?
How many CEOs have you interviewed who have been subjected to direct ballistic attacks on their infrastructure? There was nothing in my studies that said, “In the case of a ballistic missile attack, this is how you deal with it.” It was extraordinary. Fortunately, the impact on our infrastructure was slight but it tested the resilience and professionalism of our people.
Where were you when the conflict began?
I was sitting in my garden having coffee with friends. The British ambassador was with me and suddenly his phone started going off; so did mine. He went into one room to take calls from the prime minister and foreign secretary, and I went into another to find out what was happening. I then got to the airport operations control centre.
The temptation as a leader is to rush in and take charge. But the better thing [to do] was to support [the people] making the real-time decisions.
Can you actually prepare an airport for missile attacks?
We had something like 111 alerts for ballistic activity. The liaison among the military, regulators and the government was incredibly quick. We would receive an alert, take the appropriate action to make sure that everyone was safe and then, minutes later, go back to normal.
Even when we couldn’t fuel aircraft, we developed a “splash and dash” contingency whereby aircraft took off from DXB, landed at DWC, refuelled and then continued their journeys. A contingency plan emerged from each incident, allowing us to keep the operation running.
Figures from the first half of 2026 show just how significant the disruption was. How quickly can you recover?
We started the year with our busiest-ever month, with 8.7 million people. During March and April we still moved six million passengers on 32,000 flights.
Traffic is now back to about 80 per cent of where we were last year, and that is increasing month to month. Emirates and Flydubai are back in the 90 per cent range compared to 2025. I’m confident that we should be back to 100 per cent of our operation by about the end of the year.
Passengers who used to connect through Dubai have spent months travelling through Asia instead. How do you win them back?
If you look at the services that have resumed, their load factors are incredibly high. People really missed their routines.
We have about 56 airlines serving 236 airports in 100 countries. People have very short memories. If you’ve dealt with a crisis professionally and given nobody reason to doubt the integrity or quality of your operation, people will return for more.
Some European airlines still haven’t returned. Does that frustrate you?
During the crisis, many governments advised against travel to the UAE and in some cases that advice has not yet been corrected. That affects passengers getting travel insurance and it can affect airlines getting cover too.
But if I were running one of those airlines ahead of the summer [in the northern hemisphere], I might have taken aircraft out of the Gulf and redeployed them to Spain, Greece and Italy, where I knew I could sell the seats with certainty. That was quite a wise thing to have done.
Air France has recommenced services and its load factors have been strong immediately. When the summer ends, I’m sure we’ll see more of that capacity return to the Gulf.
You hoped that DXB would pass 100 million passengers this year. Is 2027 now the target?
If we continue on the trajectory [of recovery] that we’re on, it’s just a question of time. When that moment comes, it will be a very sweet one.
Has any of this changed your long-term plans for Dubai World Central?
Absolutely not. One of the biggest mistakes people make is confusing long-term strategic objectives with short-term hiccups.
I asked my chairman whether the conflict created any concern about where we were heading. It was the shortest conversation: the answer was an absolute ‘no’. We’ve put 17,000 concrete piles into the ground and moved 45 million cubic metres of earth. The 2032 timeline for building the world’s largest airport remains.
Hear more from Paul Griffiths on The Globalist from Monocle Radio.
Further reading:
– As regional conflict takes its toll, Dubai’s hoteliers are responding strategically
– Summer in Dubai isn’t for everyone – but that’s the beauty of it
This year I spent part of my summer in New York. It’s a place that’s close to my heart: I lived and worked here for six years as Monocle’s US editor, watching the country lurch from Barack Obama’s final months to Donald Trump’s first term. When I returned there for the first time in a while from my new home in Milan, the contrast was stark. At the time, the Lombard capital was beginning to shut up shop for the season; residents were heading to Sardinia or Liguria, or perhaps the mountains of Valle d’Aosta for a much-needed cool-off. New Yorkers, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be on holiday at all. Waiters wanted to tell me all about their acting gigs and PRs quickly followed up queries by email. It was a reminder that the city is full of hustlers and many people live to work rather than vice-versa.
The cities’ relationship with work couldn’t be more different. While, thankfully, no Milanese communications professional has yet suggested that we have a “desk-side” meeting (a New York staple that essentially means stalking you at your desk, rather than going somewhere nice), the difference goes much deeper than that. In New York, a sort of middle-tier friendship exists that is below full-fledged confidant but above colleague. You might have things in common – and even a shared sense of humour – but the relationship has a transactional element. It’s part of a network that promises the potential of an auspicious future career. I would often be invited to drinks at people’s homes and realise I was in that middle tier. Everyone around me worked in the media or other creative industries and the only question they could muster was, “What do you do?”
Italy is decidedly “work to live”. I recently refurbished an apartment in Milan; I lost count of the number of times that I had to chase workers for quotes. It was as though I was expected to be grateful to them for the chance to spend my money on their services.
A few years ago, I visited a tech summit in a northern Italian city and spoke to one of the organisers. He mentioned that Italian start-ups are more risk averse when it comes to making the next leap. Does an aversion to risk explain why they lack the same raw work ethic as their New York counterparts? Or perhaps they are simply content with their lot – no bad thing – which means not rocking the boat too much and living the good life when the opportunity arises. There’s probably room for these two very different tribes to meet in the middle. One thing is abundantly clear, however: there’s no need for a “desk-side”, wherever you are in the world.
Ed Stocker is Monocle’s Europe editor at large. For more insight and analysis, subscribe to Monocle today.
Serbia’s former president Boris Tadić got it right. Ratko Mladić was a “stain” – and his death in custody in The Hague, where he was serving a life sentence for genocide and crimes against humanity, will not cleanse Bosnia and Herzegovina or Serbia of his toxic legacy. The former Bosnian-Serb general isn’t the only murderous figure from the past lionised as a national champion in the Western Balkans. The obsession of some prominent figures with presenting villains as heroes is a significant obstacle to the region’s reconciliation and progress.
When Mladić was arrested in 2011, Serbia’s then president, Tadić, was rather more optimistic. As far as he was concerned, Mladić’s capture drew a line under a turbulent period of history; he hoped that it would allow his country and its people to move on. “We have lifted the stain from Serbia and from Serbs, wherever they live,” Tadić declared, adding that the arrest would end a “difficult period in our history”.
But the assumption that everything would be different after the arrest of the “Butcher of Bosnia” didn’t survive contact with realpolitik, Western Balkans-style. Rather than embracing the idea that Serbia and its people could distance themselves from the horrific deeds of Mladić and the other war criminals convicted at The Hague, some politicians continued to push the idea that any Serb fighter was, by definition, a national hero – and that Mladić was the most heroic of the lot.
On the day of the former general’s death, Aleksandar Vulin, who has held multiple ministerial posts in Serbian governments over the past 14 years, declared that Serbia should honour him with a state funeral and a day of mourning. “From Gavrilo Princip to Ratko Mladić, the best Serbs are killed while tied up,” he wrote in a media statement.
Governments have often indulged Vulin’s outrageous pronouncements, largely because they help to make them look reasonable by comparison. But there are plenty of otherwise sensible politicians who have spoken about Mladić in sympathetic terms too. Days before the former general’s death, President Aleksandar Vucić said that it was hard to understand why Mladić had not been allowed to return home to see out his final days. Around the same time, justice minister Nenad Vujić submitted a formal request to The Hague for Mladić to be released on “humanitarian” grounds. Vujić later confirmed that the convicted war criminal would “receive all the military and state honours to which he is entitled”.
It would be a mistake to think that this sort of thing only happens in Serbia. Earlier this month, Croatia buried the remains of more than 500 Nazi collaborators who were summarily executed by Partizan forces at the end of the Second World War. There was no word of the crimes that they – or the Nazi-allied Croat nationalist Ustasa movement – had committed. Instead, ministers talked about offences committed by “totalitarian regimes”, meaning Tito’s Yugoslavia. Meanwhile, planes arriving at Zagreb land at Franjo Tudjman Airport, named after the president who steered Croatia to independence in the 1990s but who would have faced war crimes charges at The Hague had he not died in 1999.
In Kosovo, special clocks in city centres are counting down towards another war crimes decision. In mid-September, a court in The Hague will deliver its verdict in the trial of former president Hashim Thaci. In Kosovo, there’s little mention of the charges – crimes against humanity for overseeing murder, torture and illegal detention in the late 1990s – or the scores of victims. Instead, there’s outrage that a hero of Kosovo’s struggle for independence should have been brought to trial in a “biased court”. Naturally, this narrative is pushed by Thaci’s PDK party, which is currently in opposition.
And that’s the nub of the problem. Across the Western Balkans, ethno-nationalist politicians remain in power. They have little interest in regional reconciliation – in fact, they prefer to keep resentment bubbling away so they can divide, rule and, in many cases, profit. The posthumous veneration of Ratko Mladić is just the latest (and possibly most egregious) example. Unless and until the countries of the Western Balkans can shake off the culture of denial and be honest about the crimes of the past, little will change. That suits many political leaders just fine. Perhaps, in time, the people will feel otherwise.
Do you have a geographical fix on your happy place? Is it the end of the jetty at your weekend house in northern Maine? Or a quiet stretch of beach north of Comporta? Or perhaps it’s the corner table at the café in your Madrid neighbourhood? I have a few happy places but one of my favourites is about 50 minutes’ flying time north of Nome, Alaska. As most Japan-to-Europe flights fly over the North Pole these days, there’s a certain point where satellite footprints cut out, in-flight wi-fi disconnects and you’re instantly cut off from colleagues, newsfeeds, cloud services and whatever counts for 21st-century humanity. Bliss on a Boeing.
On Thursday, I boarded the LX 161 service from Tokyo Narita to Zürich with my colleague Noriko. For the first 40 minutes after take off I cleared the emails that had landed overnight, then settled into bed mode for a few hours and woke up just as we were crossing the international date line. I typed out a few more emails, read the news from various sources and went back to reviewing some material for upcoming shoots and future issues of Monocle.
As Alaska passed by below, I started to wrap up my correspondence and within the hour the signal dropped – right on cue. I put my phone and laptop to one side, rustled around the overhead locker, plumped up the pillows, asked for a glass of chasselas and started to dig into the pile of mags that I’d bought in Tokyo over the past few days. When a big part of your job is running a company that produces more than 25 magazines and books a year, there’s a fine line between consuming periodicals for professional intelligence versus pure pleasure.
Sometimes I open a favourite magazine – I started with a copy of Japanese lifestyle title &Premium on this occasion – and get lost in its pages, simply enjoying the pleasure of good photography, cleverly commissioned illustrations and smart layouts. But at other times it only takes a few flips before I’m wondering how we might get a meeting with the advertiser in the opening spread or if we’re connected to the photographer who snapped the food story in Kyoto.
For the next four hours, I went through copies of Brutus, Popeye, Uomo and assorted special editions before moving onto some European and North American titles, including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, WSJ, Les Echos’ weekend supplement and tattered copies of The New York Times and the Financial Times from earlier in the week. Somewhere along the way I dozed off. When I woke up, I went back to the Japanese titles for a closer study. What do the Japanese do better than publishers in Europe or the US? Here’s my take:
1.
Japanese print quality is a cut far, far above. Photos are sharp, rich and dense. Illustrations have texture and life. Words stand out from the page.
2.
There is a complexity in page layouts and stories we no longer see in most corners of the world. Features go deep and are detailed. This demands research, layers of fact-checking and, above all, planning.
3.
Japanese mags put the “j” in jealousy. I get very envious of how the smart editors at a publisher such as Magazine House are able to layer a story that ranges in scale, with micro images, break-out fact boxes, witty accompanying illos and then expansive images.
4.
Western titles are slaves to templates. Make that Western media in general. I like the fact that I can deliver you this column in digital newsletter format on a Sunday but it can be a straitjacket that inhibits creativity, designed for efficiency rather than complex layouts. If you care about these things, spend time in the pages of Brutus to see how they tackle a single subject and constantly surprise.
5.
Japan shows us Western periodical publishers how to not only stay relevant in a digital world but also how to push ourselves. Ninety-six hours in Tokyo this week was a creative kick in the ass.
What does all of this mean for you, dear reader? If you’re a subscriber or newsstand buyer of our monthly edition, it means even better things are coming. As Monocle approaches its 20th anniversary (cards, bouquets and rare works of art can be sent our way on 14 February 2027), you’ll notice some fresh changes – not only on page but on air and on-screen. If you’re not a paid-up subscriber to the print edition (and its digital sibling), time to jump aboard. More from Lisbon next weekend.
Hakushū in Japan’s Southern Alps is famed for its cool climes, rich soil and clean water, which emerges from Mount Kaikoma before flowing through the forested Ojiragawa Valley. The river has sustained the Shichiken saké brewery for nearly three centuries and, since 1973, it has been the lifeline of an award-winning Suntory whisky distillery too. This landscape dotted with traditional houses, rice fields and well-tended vineyards is just a two-hour drive from Tokyo.
Hakushū was once a rest stop on the Kōshū Kaidō, the highway that carried merchants through this part of Yamanashi Prefecture to Edo (present-day Tokyo). It has now become a place that people travel to on purpose – and forget to leave. “We eat local vegetables, breathe clean air and spend many mornings bathing in the Ojiragawa river,” says Dawid Nowosadzki.
Dawid and his partner, Ayako Ono, left the bustle of London for Hakushū – Ayako’s hometown – in 2023. “When I came back, I was surprised,” she says. “More people from Tokyo had bought second homes here and there were foreigners settling too.” Together they opened Koma, a deli serving colourful plates of seasonal vegetables, from roasted broccoli and sesame seeds to radishes topped with a creamy turmeric sauce and pita with red cabbage.
Koma’s produce reflects Hakushū’s agricultural richness. “Everyone heads to michi-no-eki [roadside stops] for their vegetables,” says Ayako, but not far away “you’ll find lettuce, sweet tomatoes, asparagus, cabbages” growing up and down the mountain.
Hakushū is part of Hokuto, where the aroma of Japanese cedars and momiji (maple trees) drifts across the rural city. “Today, many people want to live in Hakushū but very few houses are for sale,” says Inaka Life real estate agent Yudai Komiyama. “About 10 per cent of those looking for a place are foreigners, with some coming for retirement and others for remote work. They all seem to be looking for the same slower rhythm.”
There’s also a steady stream of weekend visitors. Some head to the Suntory distillery, known for its 25-year-old single malt, while others queue for a shingen mochi with molasses at the 124-year-old confectionery shop, Kinseiken. The 13th-generation saké brewery Shichiken occupies a wooden house in the beautifully preserved Daigahara-juku.
Yamanashi also houses some of Japan’s oldest wineries. Château Charmant, founded in 1919, produces Japan’s indigenous koshu grapes alongside French varieties. “The water nourishes the soil – you can taste that in the wine. That’s why our cabernet franc thrives,” says Yamamoto Masahiko, a third-generation winemaker.
Unlike Tokyo, Hakushū offers a cooler, calmer place to put down roots. Just don’t be surprised if, somewhere between its produce, the river and another glass of saké, the return journey begins to feel wonderfully optional.
Five recent arrivals to the region:
1.
Esoto
Shichiken’s newest intimate stay for just four guests, with a traditional Japanese set-up: kaiseki dinners, a private onsen, tea ceremonies and the house’s finest saké.
sake-shichiken.com
2.
Itoma
This bean-to-bar chocolate workshop does everything in-house, from roasting cacao beans to moulding the final bar. Opened this past October, it is Kōshū Kaidō’s sweetest new arrival.
itomachocolate.com
3.
Eighten
A restored kominka (folk house) for yoga with tatami floors and shoji screens, surrounded by cedar trees and overlooking the Minami Alps.
eighten.jp
4.
Albero
Italian frittata, house-baked focaccia and local sausages. This riverside breakfast spot opens at 08.00 on weekends.
cafe-albero.jp
5.
Listude
Japanese wooden-speaker brand Listude arrived in Hokuto a year ago, bringing a programme of artists who perform alfresco in the forest.
listude.jp
The forecast says 29C and not a cloud in the sky. Neither perfect weather nor the promise of a glass of wine sat under the shade of a jacaranda should really determine whether you attend a conference but, well, they kind of move the dial, don’t they?
I hope that by now we have tapped you on the shoulder a couple of times to remind you that The Monocle Quality of Life Conference is imminent. We gather this coming Thursday for the welcoming drinks and then spend all of Friday and Saturday morning together.
And, yes, even at this stage, I want you to clear your diary and come. So just in case you are dithering, I wondered whether answering a few of the common questions and concerns that hit my inbox might help.
1.
I’m a bit shy – is it OK to come alone?
Yes. Most delegates fly solo. Everyone makes friends and finds their people. I love watching guests arriving solo at the registration and then spotting them again surrounded by their new besties at the leaving breakfast, which is on a rooftop overlooking Lisbon this year. Again and again, I hear about friendships forged and business ideas hatched – in the arc of one conference – that have endured and flourished.
2.
I’m not a conference kind of person. I hate lanyards.
So do we. There are no lanyards, no workshops, no breakout sessions. There are no over-rehearsed Ted Talks, no CEOs doing Powerpoint presentations. We will not make you sing a song or hold hands with anyone in some weird bonding exercise (if you want to have a moment with your neighbour, that’s down to you). Think of it as an urban retreat with interesting people who are keen to do even more with their lives.
3.
It’s quite a lot of money.
Not if it changes your life.
4.
Is everyone super cool? Do I need a new wardrobe?
Yes, most people are super cool but not because of who their tailor is or the logo on their handbag. They are cool because they are inquisitive, caring and know stuff. It’s relaxed: there will be people who embrace a shorts-and-T-shirt vibe and others who feel happier in a blazer. It’s an event where you can be yourself.
5.
I’d like to meet the speakers. Is that possible?
We don’t run their diaries but I am happy to say that most of our on-stage talent is going to be around for the whole event. Conversations that begin on stage often continue late into the night.
6.
And the Monocle team?
We love being good hosts and if you want to catch up with our design editor, Nic; Konfekt’s editor, Sophie; or Tyler, just say hello (it’s likely they will find you first). Or join them on the dancefloor – because there’s always a dancefloor.
7.
Some of the panels don’t seem relevant to me.
You’ll change your mind. Take the hospitality session – this week I have caught up with all three speakers on that panel and I am genuinely excited to see what unfolds. Between them, they know about making brands and going against the flow but also about reorienting a family business and changing careers later in life. Their stories hold the promise of reshaping yours.
8.
Will there be time to explore? I want to see the city.
Yes and we have organised access to some amazing places on the Saturday. We’ll ensure that you go beyond the usual sites that Lisbon visitors see.
9.
Are there any surprises this year?
Of course.
10.
How do I get one of the final tickets?
You can purchase tickets here or email my colleague Hannah Girst now at hmg@monocle.com. Be spontaneous. End summer with a smile.
Want to read more of Andrew’s columns? Click here.
Monocle touches down in Lisbon early next month for our annual Quality of Life Conference. For some, the design of the Portuguese capital echoes saudade, a romantic form of longing for an absent person, place or time. To satiate this yearning, most visitors turn their attention to the yellow trams winding up the 16th-century cobbled streets but in doing so, they often miss a different vision of the city – one built on boldness, foresight and rationalism – in its downtown Baixa neighbourhood.
The reconstruction of this locale is an epic tale that begins with a crisis of biblical proportions. In 1755, Lisbon was struck by an earthquake, followed by a fire and a tsunami, that left thousands dead and much of the city in ruins. Enter Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo – later known as the Marquis of Pombal – a minister who seized the moment to transform the city’s urban fabric and, ultimately, its society. Three years after the catastrophe, De Carvalho e Melo’s team of engineers and architects produced a plan for Lisbon’s reconstruction – a revolutionary document considered by many to be the first modern urban plan in the Western world, predating Haussmann’s Paris by a century.
Under this 1758 blueprint, housing, commerce, mobility, sanitation and, crucially, the financing of reconstruction were all accounted for. Streets were levelled and straightened into grids; land was parcelled into standardised blocks. Stone window frames and wooden slabs were made uniform, allowing for off-site prefabrication. Each building was reinforced by a cage of timber beams, known today as the gaiola pombalina, to withstand earthquakes.
Baixa was reimagined as a whole. It’s now home to landmark structures such as the Praça do Comércio gate (pictured, left) and the neo-gothic Elevador de Santa Justa (pictured, right). The city remade itself in the language of the Enlightenment, shifting from a medieval landscape of alleys and cloisters to one of wide boulevards, where commerce thrived and a middle class emerged. Today the measured elegance of Lisbon’s Baixa endures. Visitors who look beyond the havoc of tourists, tuk-tuks and souvenir shops that now crowd the streets can still admire the harmony and order of a city centuries ahead of its time. The neighbourhood has become a global benchmark for architects looking to reshape their own metropolises, proving that saudade can be transformed from transient beauty into permanent urban-design wonder.
Gaia Lutz is Monocle’s Lisbon correspondent.For more opinion, analysis and insight,subscribeto Monocle today.
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South Korea’s soft-power ascendancy goes beyond catchy songs, skin-care routines and K-pop Demon Hunters: it also extends to its artistic exports. Multidisciplinary artist Suh Do-ho held a hit exhibition at London’s Tate Modern last year while Lee Bul’s mid-year retrospective arrives this November at the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp.
Though Suh and Lee, both in their sixties, attract global eyes on merit, it is impossible to ignore the influence that K-pop’s genre-crossing stars are having on the country’s art scene. The growth of global interest in recent years can be traced to musical icons-turned-patrons such as G-Dragon and BTS’s band leader, RM, whose passion for collecting has moved young people toward fine art. After completing his military service last June, RM is back to growing his collection (and performing); a single post from his Instagram account can ensure that a museum show in Seoul sells out.
That kind of K-power does not go unnoticed. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is presenting RM’s personal collection in October, with the show including works by modern masters, such as Yun Hyong-keun, Park Rehyun and Kim Yun Shin. The National Museum of Korea (NMK) in Seoul was a traditional and staid museum until its embrace of popular Korean culture, which transformed it into the third most-visited museum in the world, trailing only the Louvre and the Vatican Museums. Blackpink’s members – Jisoo, Jennie, Rosé and Lisa – recorded multilingual audio guides for its galleries, while NMK’s grey façade and grand plaza were illuminated in hot pink for the group’s latest EP. The museum mania went into overdrive with the release of K-pop Demon Hunters merchandise; fans queued from dawn to buy limited-edition collaborations from the institution’s gift shop.
Say what you will about these pop-culture crossovers but they are injecting plenty of fresh energy and buzz into Seoul’s already well-established museum and gallery scene.
However, it was the arrival of industry heavyweights, including blue-chip international institutions from Centre Pompidou to the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as Frieze art fair in 2022, that truly transformed the South Korean capital into a must-visit destination for art professionals. Choi Soo, director of gallery PS21, says that she now spends more time in Seoul to meet with visiting collectors and improve her shows instead of hopping fairs worldwide. Homegrown prospects are looking hopeful as well: the country’s art dealers are expecting serious buyers with patronage to emerge from the surge of young collectors seeking quick investment.
Korean art’s global momentum continues this October with Korea, a major showcase at the British Museum. The exhibition, which features works from the collection of late Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee and NMK, spans 2,000 years of Korean artistic history, including famous celadon ceramics, ink paintings and the works of Suh Do-ho. NMK director Yoo Hong-jun has talked about fans of K-culture going beyond pop music and film to uncover the country’s history. If Korea can pull off a smash hit without the influence of G-Dragon, RM and Blackpink, then K-art will have truly made it on the world’s stage.
