The Monocle Minute
On Design

This week’s dispatch sees our editors delve into 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize-winner Liu Jiakun’s Tianbao Cave District, set off for a light-filled weekend retreat outside Mexico City and sit down in contemporary furnishings with Giorgetti CEO, Giovanni del Vecchio. We also flick through Copenhagen-based design brand Moebe’s compact booklet from the curved comfort of the Peduzzi rocking chair. At the head of the queue with popcorn in hand is our design editor, Nic Monisse.

It’s a Tuesday night and I’m surrounded by cinemagoers who have turned out to see The Brutalist at the Barbican Centre, London’s most celebrated brutalist building. “This is great for architecture,” I think, as I tuck in to my popcorn. As an art form, architecture has a bit of a reputation problem. Its lengthy academic pathways can make studying it off-putting. In everyday life, people’s views on buildings are only sought when councils want feedback on development plans. And we’re accustomed to accepting mediocre, poorly designed environments, from badly lit supermarkets to dingy train stations.

To change this, the discipline needs to find ways to communicate why it is important – and why people should care. And that’s what The Brutalist does. Brady Corbet’s feature deservedly picked up three Academy Awards – best actor, best cinematography, best original score – on Sunday night. Other films have touched on architecture before: think Nora Ephron’s 1993 romcom Sleepless in Seattle, about a widower architect finding love; or Parasite, Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning 2020 thriller set in a strikingly austere residence.

The difference here is that Corbet uses both an architect and architecture as his film’s protagonists. It tells the story of László Tóth, a Hungarian-Jewish refugee and Holocaust survivor loosely based on Marcel Breuer and Ernő Goldfinger, who travels to the US after the Second World War and introduces brutalism to North America. When Tóth’s concrete walls frame a crisp, blue sky, the audience gasps; and when a modernist library (pictured) is revealed in a renovation scene there’s a collective intake of breath.

After the screening, I hear people walking out of the film discussing the trauma that Tóth experiences but also how the on-screen architecture affected them. I pass a couple talking about commissioning their own light-filled library. The Brutalist is a great PR campaign for architecture. It encourages us to demand more from our environments and reminds us to take delight in great buildings – and not just at the cinema.

Nic Monisse is Monocle’s design editor. For more news and analysis, subscribe to Monocle today.

Casa Catarina is a weekend retreat set in Valle de Bravo, a rural enclave for the well-heeled just a few hours’ drive from Mexico City. Sitting on a plot of land the size of two football pitches, there’s more than enough space for a grand swimming pool that runs parallel to the house and its own reservoir. Architect Hector Barroso arranged the residence in a V-shape, pointing down a gentle slope towards the waterbody. It’s a design decision that hints at the prioritisation of the natural landscape and outdoor environments.

The building hugs the ground closely, only rising in two key sections: at the edge of one of its wings, where a sitting room has been added on top of the principal bedroom for the client to enjoy tranquil moments; and at the centre of the structure in the form of two double-height communal living rooms. “Having side-by-side living space is very Mexican,” says Barroso, explaining that the living room closer to the garden acts as “an in-between space”, halfway indoors and halfway out. “It’s because we have a brilliant climate here, so people want to spend a lot of time outdoors.”

Throughout the year the sunlight reflects off the pool, bounces off the deep recesses framing the wall-to-wall windows and is gently directed back into the communal rooms. The result? A home that makes residents feel that they are part of the landscape – whether they’re indoors or out.

For the full back story of Casa Catarina, pick up a copy of Monocle’s March issue today.

Liu Jiakun was yesterday announced as the winner of the 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize. The Chengdu-based architect is best known for working on projects close to home, such as in the steep hills flanking the Chishui river basin in Sichuan. Here you’ll find the world’s largest natural caves used for storing liquor – appropriate given the area’s renown for making baijiu (a distilled grain spirit). You’ll also find one of Jiakun’s most ambitious development projects: a host of cultural buildings for the Sichuan Gulin Langjiu Distillery Co that paid tribute to the area’s liquor-making history, including pavilions, a museum, gardens, a bridge and cliffside restaurant accessed via a towering sloped elevator.

As is characteristic of Jiakun’s work, the project plays into the existing natural characteristics of the site. The welcome hall, for instance, features a long horizontal window facing the river and framing distant mountains, while a suspended roof has openings to allow trees to grow through the ceiling. There’s also a pavilion that echoes the forms of classical Chinese architecture, and the use of fair-faced concrete and local stone throughout the project reflects the topography and geology of the area.

If the Pritzker Prize is meant as an industry bellwether indicating the direction that architecture should take, then Jiakun’s win, and projects such as his Tianbao Cave District, are a reminder that architecture is at its best and most unique when it echoes and enhances the character of its surroundings.
jiakun.com; pritzkerprize.com

Brianza-based Italian furniture maker Giorgetti has 127 years of history under its belt but it’s not complacent. The firm is embarking on an ambitious decade-long transition from a classical design brand to one rooted in modernity, continuing to work with the well-known designers and architects on its books alongside a clear policy of nurturing new talent. Its CEO, Giovanni del Vecchio, talks to us about this ambition from The Place, the brand’s new townhouse and showroom, on Milan’s Via della Spiga.

Giorgetti talks about undergoing an evolution in recent years. What does this look like?
“Evolution and not revolution” has been one of the pillars of our strategy since the company was acquired [by Italian private equity fund Progressio] in 2015. Since then we have been working to make the brand look more contemporary and more “lifestyle”.

Where was the company at in 2015?
The company was already a very well-established brand. It was probably considered to have more attention from the Asian market than the European or American ones. And this is the reason why we’ve tried to let the company evolve into a more contemporary design, but it’s also part of our tradition. Even in the early 1980s, Giorgetti launched the Matrix collection: an incredible, out-of-context collection comprising colourful pieces and innovative shapes. This need for continuous evolution has always been part of our make-up.

How do you continue to build on this legacy?
One of our directions is to keep collaborating with some of the designers who have been working with us for many years. If you look at what we offer here, you see products designed 10 years ago that are still in a dialogue with products designed last year. Therefore, when we start a collaboration, our objective is to have it be long-term because when you learn how to design a Giorgetti piece, we want you to keep doing it.

For more from design industry leaders such as Del Vecchio, tune in to ‘Monocle On Design’ on Monocle Radio.

The Mobilier National is a French design anomaly: the state-funded organisation not only manufactures and maintains all the furniture that is used by the government, it also runs an atelier that pays contemporary designers to produce their prototypes. L’Atelier de Recherche et de Création, or ARC, is where designer Richard Peduzzi turned when he had an idea for a rocking chair in 1992. “I wanted to make it just one continuous line,” he says. “I like taking an old thing, like a rocking chair, and turning it into something completely new.” The ARC’s expert artisans quickly turned his idea into reality using a thick cherry wood laminate.

The rocking chair quickly became a signature piece for Peduzzi, turning up in stage sets, interiors and exhibitions, most recently Perspective, a career retrospective held at Mobilier National. And it’s easy to see why: the design provides all the fun of a rocking chair without looking one bit like a hand-me-down from grandma. Peduzzi recently had the idea to create the same shape in iron, which was also realised by ARC. Both versions will be on display at this year’s PAD design fair in Paris – and hopefully in wider production soon.

Copenhagen-based design brand Moebe has a philosophy of less. Less noise, less clutter and less waste. As such, this compact booklet, 5(00) Questions for Designers, is simple both visually and in essence – much like the furniture that the brand creates. The publication asks its readers questions about products and furniture that include, “Does it do more than just look good?” and “Can it really last a lifetime?”

Moebe, formed in 2014 by Danish architects Martin de Neergaard Christensen, Nicholas Oldroyd and cabinet-maker Anders Thams, functions proudly on the design maxim of “form, function and the future”. This ethos, which is captured in this publication, is intended as a call to action for designers, rather than a call to purchase products. Its simple and pared-back visuals, created in partnership with Copenhagen-based designer Sara Krogsgaard, includes mind maps and diagrams. Additionally, its pleasingly rounded font is akin to the soft edges of its modular sofas, encouraging readers – and designers in particular – to consider the effect of their work.
moebe.dk

The late Copenhagen-based architect and furniture designer Henning Larsen established his namesake architecture firm in 1959. Since its inception, the studio has looked to blend beauty and utility. And these qualities are certainly present in its newly released Ekko, which marks the studio’s return to chair design for the first time in more than 60 years.

Manufactured by Danish furniture firm Brdr Krüger, the oiled oak chair is defined by cylindrical legs and a pliable linen seat. The Ekko is also stackable, making it a practical addition to any home or workplace that needs to keep a few seats set aside in case of an impromptu dinner party or large office meeting. Built to meet the highest EU standard for extreme use (in short, appropriate for contract environments), this sturdy seat will always be ready for you and your morning coffee or meeting.
brdr-kruger.com; henninglarsen.com