The Monocle Minute
On Design

Sit back in a well-crafted chair and press play on one of Bang & Olufsen’s refurbished CD players because the year’s final design dispatch is as sharp as one of Mühle’s chrome-plated razors. We trek north from Oslo and find refuge in the pared-back Norefjell cabin, admire the craftsmanship of a family of Singaporean woodworkers and talk shop with Danish designer Cecilie Manz. Taking us away is Nic Monisse with a look back at 2024.

When this time of year rolls around I always find myself reflecting on the previous 12 months and anticipating the year ahead. Despite the social hangover from a hectic run of Christmas parties and an actual hangover from New Year’s Eve incoming, I’m particularly upbeat as we head into 2025. Why? Well, because I met a host of creatives in 2024 who gave me plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the future. It’s in this spirit that our final Monocle on Design newsletter for 2024 dives into some of Monocle magazine’s best stories from the past year. To kick it off, here are highlights from five of my favourite industry-focused conversations in recent months.

Architecture: Spirit of place
“There’s a crisis of meaning in architecture,” UK-based designer Alison Brooks told me recently while touring her new building, Cadence, in London’s King’s Cross. “We can start to address this by recalibrating our relationship to nature,” she added. Buildings are at their best when they work with the prevailing conditions, embedding into distinct hillsides and embracing local environmental quirks – an approach that enhances the spirit of a site.

Graphic design: think more
Australian graphic design legend Mark Gowing’s advice to young designers is to view artificial intelligence and new technologies as an opportunity. “I began my career as computers started happening,” Gowing told Monocle on Design. “If you’re worried about machines taking your job, then I’m not sure you’re actually thinking. I’m sure that the generation that grew up casting type out of metal thought that computer technology was the devil – but it freed people like me.”

Furniture: lifelong learners
We should never stop learning or observing, says Kobe-based furniture design duo Kotaro Tominaga and Futo Sakurai. “We want to make products that are firmly rooted in reality,” Sakurai told us. “We observed routine acts of everyday life, such as sitting, for our latest collection.” The result is a dining chair, a contoured shelf and an angled footrest that transforms routine acts into effortlessly ergonomic experiences.

Product: feel not function
“Designers have an unspoken obligation to break new ground,” said Samuel Ross when we met him at Salone del Mobile in April 2024. The UK creative explained that while the products he makes must be functional, they need to also engage with the user on an emotional level. “A well-versed, nuanced audience is looking for a product or object that will evoke an emotion.”

Landscape: life between buildings
The Golden Horn Waterfront Sports Park and Public Space in Istanbul was a wasteland. But now it has been landscaped to include sports courts and walking paths, breathing new life into the area. “Before, you couldn’t walk next to the water,” said Renay Onur, general manager of the Istanbul municipality’s sports facilities. It’s proof that investing in urban landscapes can elevate visual quality while inviting residents to be healthy and active.

Nic Monisse is Monocle’s design editor. To never miss stories such as the ones featured in this newsletter, subscribe to Monocle now.

In a rocky region northwest of Oslo, the Norefjell cabin designed by Kim Lenschow is a straightforward, honest structure that seamlessly blends with its surroundings. “The project was born from understanding the relationship between architecture and nature,” says Lenschow. The Norway-born but Denmark-based architect was commissioned by a friend seeking a peaceful retreat near his Oslo home and a modern take on the hytte, the country’s traditional off-grid winter cabin. “These structures are a big part of Norwegian culture – they offer a break from routine.”

The outcome is a cabin kitted out with modern amenities that stays true to the hytte spirit through its pared-back structural form and minimal material use. Sitting on a masonry base, the home has a spruce-wood façade in muted tones that complement the rocky terrain. “We stripped away unnecessary features, staying true to the simplicity of a traditional cabin,” adds Lenschow.

The bright and airy interiors are furnished with Scandinavian design classics. Large windows maximise natural light while offering sweeping views, and the wood-panelled floors bring a dose of warmth. The result? A cosy place to escape the dark days of Norwegian winter.

For more on Norefjell, pick up a copy of Monocle’sDecember/January issue, which is available online, on newsstands and at Monocle’s seasonal Alpine outpost at Hotel Steffani in St Moritz.

From its headquarters down to its carefully made products, Germany’s Mühle takes design seriously. Founded as a manufacturer of shaving brushes by Otto Johannes Müller in 1945, it has grown into a leading supplier of high-quality accessories for wet shaving. The company is renowned for its attention to detail, which is also present in Mühle’s newest building, Hall 4, on its campus in Stützengrün.

Here, products are packed by hand before being shipped to customers and suppliers. For the project, Mühle turned to husband-and-wife team Sebastian Thaut and Silvia Schellenberg-Thaut, founders of architecture firm Atelier St in Leipzig. The architects were inspired by the precision of the company’s chrome-plated razors in creating the building’s façade. “We wanted the structure to look sharp, with shiny metal that echoes the style of Mühle’s products,” says Thaut when Monocle visits the facility, gesturing at the anodised aluminium exterior. It really is cutting-edge design.

Mühle’s Hall 4 was a winner of a Monocle Design Award 2024 and featured inIssue 173.

Cecilie Manz is a Danish designer who founded her namesake studio in 1998. Since then she has contributed to the catalogues of manufacturers including Fritz Hansen, Kasthall, Maruni and Hermès. She was also named designer of the year at the 2024 Scandinavian Design Awards. Here we speak to Manz about her process, sticking to her mock-ups and design virtues.

How do you balance output with inspiration?
It’s just work; I like to get on with it. You might draw some bad sketches but you can always destroy them. I’ve never needed anything to be just right. You have to produce and then at some point you might find something interesting. I like to do some quick sketches and quick models. It’s one big open process that goes very quickly. If I see something I like then I take it a step further and refine it; maybe I’ll finesse a shape or a height. When I work with a manufacturer, I actually like the constraints and rules of a brief. It can be quite helpful to set a task for yourself and follow an idea to its end.

How important is it for you to keep your design process analogue?
I’m of a different generation. The last year I was in design school was the first year that they introduced computer drawing. I thought that it was the most boring thing in the world because you write down digits and then a line comes out of it. It’s not so intuitive. So I’ve skipped that part and stayed with my paper rolls, pins and mock-ups. In my opinion, with furniture, you can’t skip the part of making a 1:1 mock-up. You need to test it and see how it interacts with your body.

Do you have any concerns about the design industry?
When I entered this field, I worried a lot. I felt guilty about bringing more stuff into the world. But on the other hand, I just really enjoy making beautiful objects. I design functional pieces that should last a lifetime – that’s what I tell myself when I want to ratify my work. At least it’s of a high quality and nicely designed. It fits within all these parameters that you might consider good old design virtues.

Cecilie Manz shared her outlook on the design industry for Monocle’s View From feature inIssue 178.

Obsolescence built into technology products is an open secret. “If we continue to operate the industry in the same way, we’ll have a huge problem,” says Mads Kogsgaard Hansen, head of product circularity and portfolio planning at Bang & Olufsen. At the company’s headquarters in Struer, technicians are busy sourcing and taking apart Beosound 9000 CD players, originally designed by UK industrial designer David Lewis in the 1990s. The firm is refurbishing 200 of them as part of its Recreated Classics Programme, a project that began in 2020 with the revisiting of the Beogram 4000c turntable from 1972.

When the Beosound 9000 was first released in 1996, the acceleration of the CD-grabbing mechanism was said to be faster than a Ferrari. The player silently whizzes at speed between the six albums encased in glass. When the technology was first introduced, the idea of seamlessly gliding between different albums and genres was unheard of, a kind of prototype for a shuffle playlist before the age of digital streaming. The refurbished Beosound 9000 features the same sleek aluminium-and-glass materials but the colour scheme has been inverted. As a design, it’s a sculptural piece capable of commanding attention. As a piece of technology, it also provides the opportunity to dig out old CDs and engage in a more ritualistic approach to music listening. “We’re hoping to show that a second life is not a compromise but a more attractive option,” adds Kogsgaard Hansen.

We visited Bang & Olufsen’s production facility for MonocleIssue 174.

When Morgan Yeo and his two brothers, Lincoln and Ryan, took over their father’s carpentry business in 2014, they knew that it was time to go against the grain. Carpentry was a flagging industry in Singapore, riddled with run-of-the-mill furniture and confined to the island’s fringes. What followed was a full rebrand into Roger&Sons, with a new focus on creating custom furniture. “We wanted to take on projects that most local carpenters would reject without batting an eyelid,” says Yeo. A sleek shaving brush and competition tables for the World Chess Championship are just two unconventional projects from recent years.

Crafting in a way that’s environmentally sound is now an inbuilt part of Roger&Sons too. Yeo set up The Local Tree Project, which salvages trees felled for urban development and refashions them into handsome furniture, such as benches for Singapore’s aviary, Bird Paradise. As Yeo and his brothers reflect on their first decade, the trio acknowledge that bold changes have taken root but one thing has stayed the same: their palpable passion for carpentry. “A lot of heart goes into our woodworking,” he says. “When you touch our products, you’ll instinctively know that it was made from love.”

We kicked off our year by visiting Singapore’s Roger&Sons in Issue 170 of Monocle.

After four decades at the helm of his namesake imprint, Lars Müller has released more than 800 books on the topics of architecture and design. It’s a legacy that the Zürich-based publisher is now building on with his newest venture, Flat & Bound, a shoppable repository of the past century’s most precious printed matter. In addition to hundreds of posters and about 1,000 books are many museum-worthy pieces, from Ikko Tanaka and Josef Müller-Brockmann rarities to a treatise by Le Corbusier with a dedication from the author. These collectibles are complemented by a small selection of works by contemporary graphic designers such as Dafi Kühne.

The stock of Flat & Bound is mostly made up of Müller’s personal collection, accumulated across a long career working in print. Significantly, Flat & Bound emerged from Müller’s realisation that this growing treasure trove would have a lonely life on his shelves. “It was contradicting my idea of being a publisher, which is about distributing to as many people as possible,” he says of his coveted collection, which includes items that don’t come cheap but are priced well below market rates. “We look for young aficionados who might spare the price of a pizza to afford a poster.”

Looking to build your graphic design archive? Read more about Flat & Bound in MonocleIssue 171.