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
Claro Arena by Idom
Monocle Design Awards 2026: Best civic renovation, Chile
A good work of architecture should enhance the landscape that it’s in – and that’s exactly what the Claro Arena does, framing a striking view: the distant peaks of the Andes. Located in Santiago’s northeastern foothills, it has been the home of football team Club Deportivo Universidad Católica since the 1980s and has hosted concerts for the likes of Andrea Bocelli and Oasis. But the ground’s former 12,000-seat capacity needed expanding and modernising. “We maintained 95 per cent of the sightlines,” says Borja Gómez Martín, a lead architect at Spanish architecture firm Idom, which was tasked with transforming the brutalist and beloved sporting landmark. “By approaching the project like a tailor, we elevated and extended the ground, rather than tearing it down, expanding capacity to 20,000 spectators.”
The stadium originally sat low in the terrain but Idom introduced a lighter frame that hovers above the concrete base. A new upper level incorporates dressing rooms, press centres, technical areas, premium hospitality spaces and viewing galleries. Central to this is the 360-degree perimeter boulevard, a concourse that operates as the ground’s circulation system. It connects all areas of the site and choreographs the movement of visitors while offering them panoramic views of Santiago and the landscape through its slatted wooden façade.
Gómez Martín and fellow lead architect, César Azcárate Gómez, resisted the generic steel and glass used in most modern stadiums. Instead, Idom opted for laminated Chilean radiata pine slats that tilt and extend to offer shade, open to allow ventilation and can be narrowed where sound needs to be kept in, amplifying the atmosphere created by spectators.
For architects, modern football stadiums are a difficult proposition: how do you create a lively atmosphere in residential neighbourhoods that are averse to too much noise; make matchgoers feel welcome while striking fear into the opposition; and adapt the space for dual use, while maintaining a place that devoted fans have adored for generations? “We approached it sensitively,” says Gómez Martín. “We collaborated with local firms and we sought to understand how locals in the Los Condes neighbourhood interact with the stadium.” The renovation shifts the space from a single-purpose venue into a multipurpose one with better hospitality, commercial and event infrastructure. It ensures that the Claro Arena generates revenue beyond match days, embedding itself into the city’s economic fabric and corporate offering year-round. It’s a project that understands that a stadium is not just a container for sport but also a piece of civic architecture. Oh, and in this case, something that frames a famous view too.
Care to learn about the other beautiful buildings and architectural design that won a Monocle Design Award this year? Here are eight spaces that caught our eye this year – from a trade school to a revived waterfront.
The mood in Dubai’s hotel lobbies has shifted. For much of the past three years, there has been little room to breathe. Occupancies were high, rates were higher and the city’s hospitality machine – one of the key engines of the emirate’s non-oil economy – appeared unstoppable. Then came weeks of regional conflict.
Now, some of Dubai’s most famous hotels are using the downturn to shut their doors, including the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab, which will close for 18 months for a major restoration. Its owner, the Jumeirah group, has brought forward plans that had long been in the works. (In February, authorities confirmed that debris from an intercepted drone caused a minor fire on the Burj Al Arab’s outer façade.) According to industry reports, nearly 2,000 hotel rooms across the city are set for refurbishments. Others are quietly accelerating renovation cycles, pausing operations over the summer and betting on a rebound by the fourth quarter.
The question is whether this is strategic opportunism or a sign of deeper anxiety. “It has been a slowdown, to say the least, in terms of travel patterns coming into the city,” the chief executive of Dubai’s Corporation for Tourism and Commerce, Issam Kazim, told Monocle Radio. Still, he insists that Dubai is already in recovery mode, not waiting for a “reset moment” but “aligning constantly with partners” and tracking demand in real time. “We’re always looking at it in a pragmatic but optimistic way.”
That optimism is a familiar Dubai reflex. During the 2008 financial crisis, the coronavirus pandemic and every regional shock since, the emirate has sold resilience as strategy. The playbook is well rehearsed: slash rates, stimulate staycations, pivot to regional markets and keep building. Hotels have revived the pandemic-era tactic of filling rooms at almost any price. “The old adage: bums in beds,” says Zacky Sajjad of property consultancy Cavendish Maxwell, which is headquartered in Dubai. “Let’s not worry too much about the revenue per room at the moment. Let’s just focus on the occupancy.”
That explains why some portfolios are still posting occupancy rates in the 80 and 90 per cent range, albeit at sharply discounted room rates. A full hotel at half price might keep the breakfast buffet running and the minibar stocked but it’s not the same as profitability. Dubai has a lot of beds to fill, with more than 155,000 hotel rooms and another 11,000 under construction. Roughly 180,000 rooms are expected by the end of the decade, according to Cavendish Maxwell. That target was made on assumptions of endless demand.
Will those assumptions still hold? Thomas Meier, the CEO of Jumeirah, frames the current slowdown as an opportunity. “We have fast-tracked all the projects we had for this year,” he told Monocle Radio from Jumeirah Marsa Al Arab. Rather than renovating 150 rooms a year over three years, some hotels are now tackling 300 in one go. “If we can accomplish that now, next summer… you already have the new rooms.” There is logic in that. Summer is traditionally soft in Dubai. Why not use the lull, exacerbated by geopolitical tensions, to refurbish ageing stock and emerge fresher for winter?
But there is another reading. Closing to renovate can also stem losses. Landmark hotels might have government or quasi-government backing and can weather months of downtime. Smaller, independent operators and restaurants might not be so lucky. Sajjad acknowledges that some F&B outlets simply “may not survive”. Then there is the question of labour. Hospitality in Dubai runs on vast workforces. Renovation periods might mean unpaid leave or reduced shifts. The impact is not immediately visible in the polished marble lobbies – but it’s real.
For international visitors, perception matters as much as reality. While life in Dubai might have remained largely functional, global headlines have been harsher. “What we’ve seen on the ground is very different to what is reported in certain places around the world,” says Sajjad. But tourism can be emotional. If travellers associate the Gulf with instability, discounts alone might not be enough. Kazim argues that Dubai is already segmenting its messaging market by market and targeting “resilient” audiences first. Real-time data, AI tools and search sentiment help the tourism authority gauge who is ready to return and who remains cautious. It’s sophisticated but marketing can only do so much.
Ultimately, Dubai’s tourism machine has always bounced back because it offers certainty: reliable sunshine, service and spectacle. This current wave of closures and refurbishments might prove a clever tactical move – using crisis to upgrade the product. If peace holds and winter bookings return, hoteliers will look prescient. But if instability lingers or if consumer sentiment shifts more permanently, the emirate might discover that resilience has limits. Dubai has spent decades selling itself as the city that never stops. For the first time in a long while, some of its hotels have decided that stopping (albeit briefly) might be the only way to keep going.
Inzamam Rashid is Monocle’s Gulf correspondent. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
US president Donald Trump doesn’t usually do well under fire. That’s why when a gunman entered the Hilton hotel in Washington this weekend, during the annual White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) dinner, Trump was joined by a magician on stage rather than a comedian. Ducking behind a table during the secret service’s presidential disappearing act was one Oz Pearlman – aka Oz the Mentalist, a 43-year-old, third-place finisher on America’s Got Talent and good guesser of pin numbers. His booking for the evening was rather telling.
The century-old event has been televised since the early 1990s, with a comic traditionally hosting a cadre of DC journalists, White House staffers and the commander in chief for an evening of raillery. Every president since Calvin Coolidge in 1924 has attended the WHCA dinner at least once in their term. That was until Donald Trump, who avoided the evening during his first term. So, why did he go this year? Because he has spent years successfully curtailing press freedom – and he still can’t take a joke.
Pearlman was the perfect guest for a president who prefers his room read, not roasted. A mentalist’s act is built on making his subject feel seen, understood and flattered. For a White House that has spent two years dismantling the independence of the press corps, a mind reader who tells you what you want to hear was a white flag of a booking by the WHCA – practically hiring the court jester.
The WHCA did not capitulate in a vacuum, it has been curtailed by an administration that resents an outspoken press pack. In February 2025 press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced that the White House, not the WHCA, would decide which reporters gained access to the president – whether in the Oval Office or on Air Force One. For more than a century, that function had belonged to the WHCA, an independent nonprofit established under Woodrow Wilson. The Associated Press famously learned what non-compliance cost. After refusing to adopt Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, its journalists were barred from press-pool events. The Wall Street Journal was later restricted after publishing stories about Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The message to the remaining press corps was plain: play along or lose your seat. On Saturday night, the WHCA played along. The night, as we knew it, was already over.
No matter your opinion on magicians – or mentalists, as Oz may prefer to be called – Pearlman is a surprisingly apt metaphor for the times. He described his act to Washington Monthly as being built on “partial truths”, concluding that “in essence, all we’re doing [us magicians] is cheating.” The WHCA, a press-freedom organisation, at its flagship annual gala, chose to platform a performer who openly describes deception as his trade. Trump would have loved Pearlman’s show: naff, a little pandering and entirely devoid of face-to-face mockery.
And now, Trump has been spoiled again with exactly the kind of company he prefers, swapping the court-approved jester for King Charles III, who touched down in Washington on Monday. All pomp, no politics. A king, like a mentalist, does not ask awkward questions – he reads a room and works a crowd.
The president has eagerly insisted that the dinner will be rescheduled. Trump has already stressed the need for a safe space to host such functions and dignitaries. Few would bet against it ending up somewhere he can glance at the guest list. A White House ballroom, perhaps? Whoever hosts, expect the same trick that the Trump administration has been performing for two years: making the free press disappear.
It’s safe to say that Bert Bos, a sod farmer in British Columbia, would rather be watching grass grow than doing whatever you have planned this weekend. That is because, in fewer than 50 days’ time, the turf that has been growing since last June at his family’s farm in a verdant valley an hour-or-so inland from Vancouver will have been rolled out at BC Place. After a full year of meticulous cultivation, the city’s World Cup stadium will be ready for players from the likes of Australia, Belgium, Egypt, New Zealand, Qatar and, indeed, Canada, who will all recast it as the field of their respective dreams.
“The pitch is the thing,” BC Place’s general manager, Chris May, told a reporter from the Vancouver Sun newspaper last weekend, noting how exacting a customer Fifa is when it comes to its World Cup pitches. But much like Fifa’s choice of honoree for its inaugural prize for peace, being bestowed with the top job in World Cup grass-growing was something of a surprise.
Bos and his three adult children (also sod-farmers in the family firm) hadn’t even submitted a proposal to Vancouver’s call for World Cup turf growers. Despite his sod-sowing pedigree, Bos was nervous about the high-pressure prospect of producing a perfect pitch. But before he knew it, his farm, which he established in 1993, had scored the top job.
The challenge for growers of the World Cup’s pitches this time around is to ensure that the surface in contrasting climates, such as Miami, San Francisco or Guadalajara, is on a level playing field with those in Seattle, Toronto or Monterrey.
So, what’s the secret? Well, the blades of glory are a hybrid of Kentucky bluegrass, perennial ryegrass and synthetic fibres, which reinforce the natural turf and constitute about 5 per cent of the finished pitch. Another varietal – Bermuda grass – was trialled last year during the Club World Cup in the US. But that was given the chop when players complained that the pitches felt more like putting greens underfoot.
The mix is bedded into a base of peat and sand (sourced from British Columbia, to avoid US-imposed tariffs), then grown, watered and tended to in a way that allows the natural grasses’ roots to cluster as they grow – this strengthens the sod and allows it to withstand the rigours of an international football game.
So, when you tune in to the World Cup this summer, think of Bert Bos and his family – and the other sod farmers across North America – who gave life, long before the first kick, to these level playing fields.
Further reading? Fifa’s shamelessness is its superpower – it only has one goal in mind
Shanghai remains the primary hub for any major brand with serious ambitions in China’s vast market. The giant ship-shaped space unveiled by Louis Vuitton last year is just the latest example. While much of the attention this century has been on the ups and downs of European luxury, consumer trends in China’s commercial capital are fast-moving with increased competition from domestic brands.
The best in class embrace a broader view of luxury and modern lifestyles to deliver international looks that reference Eastern traditions. They also invest more in their offline shop windows, notwithstanding the significance of Tmall, Xiaohongshu and other e-commerce channels.
Shanghai’s retail scene is sophisticated, full of confidence and less mall-centric than other Asian megacities. Heritage houses are being transformed into monobrand maisons, while art deco architecture by László Hudec and the like are being restored and put to use as shopping compounds and public spaces (Robert Ho Tung’s former residence at Shaanxi Road 457 has just opened to the public after nearly a century). Zhangyuan’s historic shikumen (traditional stone-gate houses) are opening in stages, a quarter of a century since the Xintiandi district was pedestrianised, setting the bar for developers to do better.
So if you’re in town, touching down or planning a trip, here is a selection of 15 must-visit addresses across six districts that offer Shanghai’s singular take on fashion, design and the future of retail. Here’s one to get you started.
Icicle
Icicle has been at the forefront of Chinese sustainable fashion for almost three decades, using natural fabrics from ethical sources and incorporating eco-friendly pigments such as pomegranate peel and pu’er tea. Married owners Ye Shouzeng and Shawna Tao continue to run their understated brand, which now operates in two timezones. Global expansion started 13 years ago with a design studio in Paris and the label has since grown to include four shops in the French capital and ownership of couture label Carven. The first Garden Store concept debuted in Shanghai in 2024, combining the two brands with a restaurant and café in a restored 1920s villa.
icicle.com.cn
James Chambers is Monocle’s Asia editor. For more opinion, insight and analysis, subscribe to Monocle today.
Milan Design Week wrapped up today – an event that’s almost impossible to fully absorb. Across seven days, new furniture was launched, global project deals were struck and conversations about the future of design filled the Salone del Mobile fairground as well as the city’s showrooms, cafés, restaurants and bars. It was a collision of creativity and commerce which we unpack in this weekend’s special newsletter. Here are a few key takeaways from my week in the Lombard capital.
Sunday
Landing at Linate first thing Sunday morning almost always makes you feel as if you’re behind the eight ball during Design Week. Thankfully my first appointment was with Sophie Lou Jacobsen at Disco Aperitivo (see “The Treat” below). The designer is renowned for looking at the importance of using well-designed objects to ground us in daily routines. “The point for me is to create something that is a little bit out of the norm,” says Jacobsen. “When people are using them, they’re really paying attention to what they’re doing, a forced engagement and ritual are created from that.”
Monday
On the eve of the opening of the Salone del Mobile trade fair – an event whose participants, events and connected activities generated €278m in 2025 – its organisers welcomed a delegation of designers, journalists and industry leaders to a performance at La Scala. Kicking off the evening was Maria Porro, Salone del Mobile’s president, who addressed the current global political, security and trade turbulence. “Design can contribute to peace as a daily practice,” said Porro, evoking 13th-century Persian poet Rumi. “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field – and this week, let that field be design. Let’s build a better world together.” A reminder that Milan Design Week is as much about giving meaning as it is about making money.
Tuesday
USM, Snøhetta and artist Annabelle Schneider offered a critique of culture with their installation “Renaissance of the Real” (pictured). The work aimed to draw visitors away from the digital world by creating a womb-like structure with sunlight streaming through bulbous, permeable white walls. “It’s about critiquing the feeling of how we use technology,” said Schneider. “The installation looks great on the phone but it feels different in person. We’re used to navigating flat, perfect, digital images but this is about tactility and the imperfect, and the moment of surprise that you can’t capture in the digital.”
Wednesday
Meaning was also invoked by Deyan Sudjic, who curated an exhibition for Rosewood called Objects that Speak, a conversation continued with Andrea Branzi. The showcase celebrated the late Branzi, a pioneer of the Italian radical design movement, who challenged mass production’s erasure of individuality, and championed the notion that design is not just about form and function but about creating objects that carry meaning, tell stories, and reflect and critique culture.
Thursday
Design can provide the backdrop for life to play out. This year a host of musicians took to stages across Milan to embody this, including Honey Dijon, James Blake and a stellar line-up at the Miu Miu Literary Club that featured London-based Ider and French-Senegalese singer-songwriter Anaiis.
Friday
Jil Sander’s “Reference Library” offered a moment of reflection. The installation presented a curated list of books selected by leading creatives, which visitors could leaf through (if they wore the elegant white gloves provided). I’m going to be reading The System of Objects by Jean Baudrillard. “It’s probably the best book about furniture ever written,” said architect Jack Self, who selected it for the collection. “It describes the home as an exotic ecosystem where things and people coevolve in space over time.”
Saturday
As I headed for home, I reflected on L’Appartement, an exhibition imagined by Antoine Billore for L’Artisan Parfumeur. The Paris-based Billore created a Lombard home for himself in a Milanese apartment, importing his own furniture and dotting the space with personal artefacts. Despite its temporary nature – it closed today – it was a residence filled with memories, personality and humanity.
Nic Monisse is Monocle’s design editor. For more reflections on Salone del Mobile, tune in to this week’s episode of ‘Monocle On Design’.
More from Milan:
– Milan Design Week thinks outside the box as the industry reacts to a fractured zeitgeist
– How Milan’s central Brera neighbourhood became a premier creative hub
– A photographic tribute to Milan’s sciure: Icons of style, power, and cultural legacy
