Issues

Sound of silence

In Giske you could go days without seeing a soul. “If you look at a map, the next stop from here is Greenland,” says Terje Erstad, who manages Ocean Sound, a recording studio on this small island off the coast of Norway. “In front of us, it’s just the big, wide Atlantic.”

Ocean Sound’s remote location is the very thing that makes it appealing to artists from Oslo and beyond. Originally based on a house- boat, the business started out as a private studio for The Margarets, a rock band whose members grew up on Giske. In 2009 it moved to a larger space: a wooden barn-style building with a roof carpeted in grass on a rocky outcrop by the sea. It also opened its doors to other artists: since then, the likes of A-ha, Arcade Fire, Sigrid and Sampha have hunkered down here to write and record music. “We did something against all odds – and it worked,” says Erstad.

For some foreign visitors, the experience can feel like a fantasy of the wild High North. “When you look at the photos, it looks like the perfect place to be creative and get away from the noise of everyday life,” says Erstad. “We have four bedrooms in the studio and some people rent houses on the island.”

But even Norwegians find Giske unusual. “The islands around us are mostly mountainous, with peaks and fjords,” says Erstad. “But here in Giske, everything is totally flat – like a pancake in the middle of the sea.” Musicians find this setting inspiring. “The sound of the birds and the wildlife also help.”
oceansound.no

Original vision

Ming Smith bought her New York apartment because she liked the view. “I’ve always chosen places for that reason,” she tells monocle from her living room overlooking Harlem’s Malcolm X Boulevard. “Even when I lived in Montclair, New Jersey, I could see the New York lights from home; I called them my diamond bracelet.”

The Detroit-born photographer, who has snapped the likes of James Baldwin, Sun Ra and Nina Simone, has always had an eye for capturing beauty. Known for her live action portraits of prominent cultural figures, Smith’s photos are at once unfeigned and tender. American photographer Tyler Mitchell once said that her work “pulls poetry and spirituality out of the mundane”. Smith chalks it up to kismet and a bit of luck. “I photographed Tina Turner because I was there as a dancer for one of her music videos,” she says. “When I photographed Grace Jones at the hairdresser, I was there to get my hair done too.”

Smith rose to prominence in the 1970s as a member of the Kamoinge Workshop, a collective of African-American photographers who gathered weekly to review and critique each other’s work. But she didn’t always know that she was going to work in the art world. At university she studied medicine before quickly switching to microbiology when she realised she was too squeamish to dissect a frog. “I’ve never liked killing bugs and things,” she says. “I always made them fly into a jar so I could let them out.”

After moving to New York to model, Smith discovered that she could channel that empathy into her photography. “It was also a way to avoid being shy,” she says. “I liked that the attention was not on me but on my subjects.” So Smith brought her camera everywhere: on walks, to concerts, to modelling jobs she had booked. “It helped me navigate the world,” she says. It was around that time that she began to see New York in a new light and slowly people began to notice her photos too. In 1979, when The Museum of Modern Art (Moma) bought one of her prints, she became the first black woman to have her work acquired by the institution.

But the photographer, who is now in her seventies, says that success – or the real kind, at least – didn’t come until later. “Back when I first moved to New York, it used to be more about little communities of artists,” says Smith, whose work will be on display at Moma’s street-level galleries in early 2023. “As a black female photographer, I didn’t think of museums. Now there’s interest from galleries; there are talks and Frieze.”

Smith credits the renewed interest in her prints to a younger generation of artists who respect and praise her photography. Her main piece of advice to them? “Always work for yourself because if you keep working that way, someone else will eventually see it,” she says. “Too many people – and this is older photographers too, not just young ones – think that if they copy someone’s work and it looks like it, that’s good.” But sacrificing originality, she adds, is never the way to go. “Good artists always work from themselves.”

That said, she feels optimistic about the future of the discipline. “The current scene gives people more possibilities,” says Smith. “Before, deciding to be a photographer, especially a black photographer, it was like holding hands with poverty.”

These days, Smith is amazed at the pace at which the field is growing and accommodating new talent. “We can’t all fit into nine-to-five jobs or the corporate world,” says the photographer. The way she sees it, artists are always going to try to do what they were born to do. The only difference? “Now, people can dream.”

Outsider art

Running a sculpture garden in a region infamous for its polar vortex winters can be a formidable task. “Our registrar always says, ‘These sculptures have a hard life,’\” says Mary Ceruti, executive director of the Walker Art Center, a contemporary art museum in Minneapolis that commissions and preserves the pieces in its public garden. Every artwork – from the stone benches inscribed with disquieting sentences by Jenny Holzer to Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenberg and Coosje van Bruggen, an icon of the Twin Cities – must be hardy enough to stay upright in sub-zero winds. “Minnesotans don’t mind it, of course,” says Ceruti. “Our snowshoe walks through the garden always sell out.”

The Walker has long been an ambassador for Minneapolis. It grew out of the art collection of a local lumber baron, Thomas Barlow Walker, who built the museum in 1927. The centre has since earned a reputation for championing performance art, as well as spotting underappreciated artists internationally and bringing them to the Midwest. Ceruti has continued that tradition since taking the reins. The promising Iowa-based artist Jordan Weber was invited to create work at the Walker and collaborated with a community organisation in the historically under-invested north of the city to turn a vacant plot of land into an urban farm and verdant oasis. The project broke ground in 2020, just five days after George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis cop. “The city was having difficulty functioning at that point,” says Ceruti, yet Weber and the rest of the Walker team pushed on even as the city was engulfed by protests.

The success of the farm, which opened in 2021, has underlined a renewed sense of purpose for the institution. Ceruti has urged her team to think beyond the museum’s campus and look for ways to reactivate some of the more underserved parts of the city, especially through community partnerships, pop-ups and performance.“We are not urban planners or economic developers; we are an arts institution,” she says. “But part of our role is bringing in artists who can help build the imagination of the city. Rather than trying to get everything back to the way that it was 20 years ago, it’s about thinking, ‘What does the new version of Minneapolis look like?’ Artists can be part of that conversation.”

The Cabinet
(from left to right)

Christopher Stevens, Chief of Advancement “Our rock. Raises money and knows everybody in town”

Doc Czypinski, Associate Director, Exhibition Installation “Runs our installation team and art handling.”

Michael Muenchow, Engineering Manager “Ensures buildings are the right temperature.”

Keith Parker, Director of Operations “Came from the State Department.”

Peter Hannah, Lead Preparator “Great technical skills.”

Joe King, Director of Collections and Exhibition Management “Takes care of the art.”

Felicia O’Brien, Director of Business Development “Brought in to think entrepreneurially.”

Amanda Hunt, Head of Public Engagement, Learning and Impact “Connects people through art.”

Pavel Pys, Curator, Visual Arts “Manages our collection.”

Philip Bither, McGuire Director and Senior Curator, Performing Arts “Creates unconventional theatre performances.”

Pablo de Ocampo, Director of Moving Image “A truly great collaborator.”

Siri Engberg, Senior Curator and Director of Visual Arts “Knows the collection intimately.”

Henriette Huldisch, Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs “Incredible art expertise and a great eye.”

Broadcast views

“It all started with a meeting between Renzo Piano and Carlo Fuortes in 2021,” says architect Massimo Alvisi of the fruitful encounter that spearheaded the redesign of the studios for Rai News 24, Italy’s most prominent rolling news channel. It’s a meeting that he was instrumental in organising. Before founding his own Rome-based office with wife Junko Kirimoto in 2002, Alvisi worked for Piano. Back then Alvisi was the site manager for the Auditorium Parco della Musica concert hall, which is where he met Carlo Fuortes, the venue’s director at the time. Now Fuortes is CEO of Rai, Italy’s gargantuan public broadcasting service, and he has crossed paths with Alvisi and Piano again. “Fuortes and I had a spark of inspiration and thought, wouldn’t it be great if Piano designed a TV studio for Rai?” says Alvisi.

The studio resulting from this meeting of two giants in Italian contemporary culture is as functional as it is elegant. Alvisi also acted as design manager, while his partner Kirimoto was design lead. “The idea of creating a workshop for the news was central to Piano’s vision,” says Alvisi. “A place where you could clearly see exactly how the news is made and who makes it.”

On Monocle’s visit to the new studio, the nuts and bolts of TV production are clearly on display. “Be careful,” says Rai News 24’s director Paolo Petrecca in a soft, paternal tone. “We are live and the cameras are pointing this way.” His note of caution is warranted: the newsroom we’re currently in sits within vision of the cameraman recording anchor Gianluca Semprini, whose studio lies just beyond a pane of glass. “It was important for Piano that the newsroom and those that work in it be fully visible to the TV audience,” says Petrecca.

The newsroom, sitting within the vast Rai production centre on the outskirts of the Italian capital, is dominated by a long table flanked by 10 high-backed white leather chairs, with computers providing workstations for journalists, reporters and presenters. One person who has all three of these roles at Rai News 24 is Emanuela Bonchino. Having interviewed Piano many times, whether at his office in Paris or in Rome, Bonchino probably knows more about architecture than most of her colleagues. “Transparency is always so important for Piano,” she says. “But the use of wood is also something I’ve noticed about the maestro’s way of working.”

In the studio itself, these design elements are immediately visible. Transparency and openness are maximised with the use of an enormous mirror running down one side of the rectangular space. “The notion of reflecting back to the audience what is normally behind the scenes was key to the concept,” says Alvisi. Indeed, the live broadcast has an intimate honesty: as the cameraman’s lens pans out, his own reflection becomes visible in the shot. Piano’s penchant for wood comes by way of three simple, pale cherrywood tables that act as desks for the presenters. They are visibly supported by a light metal structure on wheels, which allows for flexibility so that the studio can adapt to the ever-shifting news cycle.

“Wood is a material that we tend to associate with domestic spaces, not the news,” says Alvisi. Warm, yet sleek and functional, the cherrywood desks contrast dramatically with the plexiglass and flashy led panels that grace most news desks around the world. “There is a lot of fakery going on in most TV studios,” says the architect (referring to their design – not their journalism). “Here, we wanted to create a real place; a real home for the news.” Alvisi Kirimoto’s expertise in both set design and the architecture of theatres helped but designing for TV posed its own challenges. “Everything from the perspective to the tone of the wood looks totally different through the lens, so we decided to do all the model-making and visual trials by using a TV camera.”

The world of the news has changed dramatically since Rai News 24 launched in 1999. “Rolling news was ultimately geared towards industry insiders: we were speaking mainly to other journalists, people in politics or finance,” says Petrecca in hushed tones, just behind the studio’s mirror, as an hourly bulletin is going live. The internet, social media and smartphones have made following the news very different to how it was at the dawn of the millennium – and Petrecca is all too aware of that. “We need to constantly diversify and adapt our product,” says the director, eager to justify his channel’s existence. “We want to involve everyone, from university students to people who normally skip the news.”

The studio that Piano and Alvisi Kirimoto have designed should certainly aid Petrecca in his mission. For Alvisi, there are many parallels between the function of the new studio and the role of public television itself: he believes that Italy’s state broadcaster has helped to construct modern Italian culture. Thinking back to the reflected image of the cameraman at work, he says, “In many ways, Rai is the mirror of our country.”
rainews.it

Golden touch

Comebacks are a common trope within the movie industry. The revamped London HQ of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) proves that they aren’t just limited to the big screen. Its historic premises, which finally opened in their new guise last year, saw architect Renato Benedetti overhaul the space that the academy had occupied since 1974.

The building, which is mostly referred to by its address, 195 Piccadilly, has long been used for the organisation’s public-facing work, while its main administrative offices are located around the corner on Charles II Street. As the academy’s flagship location, 195 Piccadilly hosts industry events, including panels and screenings, as well as its outreach programme of educational talks and workshops. But by the mid-2010s, Bafta had outgrown the building’s patchwork of board rooms and meeting spaces, which were ill-equipped to meet its ambitions in both size and infrastructure.

With the lease on the building nearing its end, in 2014 the Bafta team decided to evaluate whether to search for a new location or invest in renovations. That’s when Benedetti and his team were called in. His canny design for the new space, which included adding a fourth floor and fully restructuring the existing layout, convinced the academy that it was worth going for a total rehaul. “Every floor had to be completely transformed,” says Benedetti. “It was a top-to-bottom renewal.”

Bafta is best known for its prestigious awards ceremony, which celebrates achievements in film, television and video games, and has been held annually since 1947, but its operations go far beyond this. “The organisation is, first and foremost, an arts charity that aims to support and promote the next generation of industry talent,” says Benedetti. “So it needed flexible, functional learning space as well as an increased capacity in order to serve a growing number of students and mentees.”

Aside from private donations, Bafta’s charitable operations are funded by two major income streams. The first is paid memberships that allow industry figures to attend events such as talks and screenings, as well as access to an exclusive lounge. The second involves letting out spaces at 195 Piccadilly (capitalising on its desirable location in the heart of London’s West End) to commercial clients, who use its rooms for events. The building needed to increase its revenue-generating potential in both these regards by making more intelligent use of space, introducing stylish, state-of-the-art facilities that would attract both members and private renters.

The building dates to the late 1800s, when it was constructed as a gallery space for the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours. Then it passed through the hands of several businesses and organisations, until Bafta eventually moved in in the 1970s. Each of the tenants left its mark on the building, remodelling it for their own purposes. “The interior had been so denuded of its original fabric that pretty much the only thing left intact was the façade,” says Benedetti.

In order to fund the renovations, the academy launched a £33m (€38m) fundraising campaign; the names of the individuals, trusts and companies who then donated are commemorated in a stained-glass work created by young artist Maya Simms. Some of the most significant supporters had spaces named after them, including the Steven Spielberg Projection Room.

When the newly renovated building opened its doors in 2022, it came complete with a new 41-seat screening room lined with plush red velvet. The original screening room, the 227-seat Princess Anne Theatre, was also completely refurbished. Up on the newly constructed fourth floor, a glamorous lounge and bar (complete with a roof terrace boasting hard-to-beat views across central London) opened to members. “The members’ lounge is the centrepiece of the newly refurbished building,” says former Bafta COO Kevin Price. “The rooflights from the original 1882 building create a glass box that embraces the trees and gardens from the neighbouring St James’s Church. It’s a truly beautiful room.” These elegant, arched windows were discovered by Benedetti while exploring the building’s rafters as he was researching ahead of the renovation. “Through the ceiling, we could see glimpses of beautiful Victorian skylights that had been blocked in,” he says. “They’d been hidden away for about 40 years.”

Moving the members’ lounge up to the fourth floor also meant that the entire second floor could be dedicated to Bafta’s learning and new-talent initiatives. “The increased space means that we’re able to offer a wider range of activities and create more opportunities,” says Tim Hunter, Bafta’s director of learning and new talent. “The redesign has addressed many previous access issues too. We now have two lifts, removed unnecessary steps and widened corridors and doors. This ensures that we’re able to welcome all audiences.”

Benedetti also redesigned the building’s interiors, drawing inspiration from the glamour of the 1930s and 1940s, the so-called golden age of British cinema. “It was also a nod to the historic fabric of this area of London,” says Benedetti. “Piccadilly Circus Tube station is just at the end of the road and it was also refurbished during that period.” This art deco-style elegance is achieved with creamy travertine marble walls, parquet flooring and gleaming brass fittings.

Hung throughout its corridors are framed black-and-white images of talent across film, games and television jubilantly clutching their Bafta awards. The trophy’s iconic mask-shaped motif is repeated around the building. “We wanted there to be a subtle sprinkling of gold dust,” says Benedetti. “Bafta is an important British institution and it deserves a headquarters befitting of that.”
bafta.org

Domestic harmony

Casa Costa is inconspicuous at street level: tucked away on a narrow road on the fringes of Barcelona’s Putxet neighbourhood, there are no external clues as to what lies behind its large, white concrete façade. “It’s easy to forget that there’s a street on the other side of this wall,” says owner David Martí Vilardosa, standing in his high-ceilinged living room, which extends onto a bright internal garden.

The layout of Casa Costa and its exposed-concrete ceilings and floors, gives the building a serene, sanctuary- like feel that is a world away from the bustle of the city around it. Crucial to this effect is the compact garden, which is enclosed by the indoor living spaces. “The building is completely open to the garden,” says Arquitectura-G’s Igor Urdampilleta, who designed the house with Aitor Fuentes for Martí Vilardosa and his wife, Nina Ordeig Masó.

The couple are at the heart of the Catalan design scene. Martí Vilardosa is the editor responsible for product development at lighting brand Santa & Cole, which Ordeig Masó’s father co-founded in 1985. Ordeig Masó herself spent several years working at the company, before moving on to become communications manager at Barcelona-based rug company Nanimarquina. Recently she co-founded communications agency Quintanas Ordeig Masó.

The house has been crafted to both adapt to and celebrate Catalonia’s seasons. “In a warm climate such as Barcelona’s, windows can remain open for most of the year, with only a curtain separating indoors from outdoors,” says Urdampilleta. With this in mind, the architect designed Casa Costa’s rooms to be interior spaces that want to be exterior. All three storeys of the L-shaped house are lined with floor-to-ceiling sliding-glass windows and curtains that can be drawn back to reveal the garden. Connecting the levels is a chunky, exposed- concrete spiral staircase that winds its way up to a vast roof terrace.

Martí Vilardosa and Ordeig Masó only recently moved into the house with their baby son, Olmo, but the family home was several years in the making. In 2017 they returned to their hometown of Barcelona after a stint in San Francisco and bought a small, single-storey house in a neighbourhood near Turó del Putxet, a hilltop park with views that stretch across Barcelona all the way to the coast. The original plan had been to renovate the property but, after living in the original 1970s structure for a while, the couple realised that the plot had more potential. “We liked the location and the sunny patio but the house was made up of small rooms and didn’t get much light,” says Martí Vilardosa. The solution was to tear it all down and start again from scratch.

When it came to who would design the new building, there was no question that it would be Urdampilleta and his firm, Arquitectura-G, a local practice renowned for its elegant contemporary designs and considered use of raw materials. “Igor is one of our best friends,” says Martí Vilardosa. “We always used to joke that one day he’d be such an eminent architect that we would have to beg him to build a house for us.”

Given this friendship, as well as Martí Vilardosa and Ordeig Masó’s own design nous, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the outcome is more of a collaboration than a straightforward commission. “David and Nina participated in the design process and understood perfectly the substance of the project,” says Urdampilleta.

“Working with Igor was amazing,” says Martí Vilardosa. “We learnt a lot. He’s more obsessive about details than we are, which I love.” Urdampilleta applied this trait even to the choice of greenery planted in the patio garden. “There are three birch trees, with green and silver leaves that create a beautiful vibration in the wind and change colour in the autumn,” says Urdampilleta. “In the winter they fall, allowing light to pass through. There are also shrubby plants that make it feel more like a piece of forest than a domesticated garden.”

The untamed greenery contrasts with the industrial edges of the exposed concrete used throughout the house, which reveals the building’s geometric structure. “The concrete forms a neutral skeleton but with a certain power,” says Urdampilleta. While the final design might seem stripped-down, keeping it that way was one of the biggest challenges of the build. “In the construction process, you often have to add unforeseen elements, which distort the simplicity of the project,” says Urdampilleta. “We made a huge effort to keep the structure clean so that the only thing we needed to add were large aluminium windows.”

Casa Costa’s interiors are a who’s who of Barcelona’s contemporary design scene, with chairs by designer Marc Morro and ceramics by Xavier Mañosa, both of whom are good friends of the couple. There’s also shelving by local brand Mobles 114, Nanimarquina rugs and, of course, plenty of Santa & Cole lamps.

The choice of artwork on the walls also has a particularly personal touch: there are pieces by Martí Vilardosa’s artist father, Melcior Martí, as well as Ordeig Masó’s father, Gabriel Ordeig Masó Cole. “Coming from creative families, it feels natural to have their work around,” says Martí Vilardosa. “Our house is basically a reflection of all the important people in our lives. Luckily, the people we love make amazing work.”

Train of thought

That’s our headquarters, this is our main U-Bahn maintenance facility, and over there is a tunnel running under the Danube Canal before it cuts through the Prater park to the main stadium,” says Markus Rubner, gesturing this way and that as he takes Monocle down a staircase at the back of the Wiener Linien maintenance depot Erdberg in Eastern Vienna. The underground, or U-Bahn, didn’t come to Vienna until the 1970s, though an urban rail system had existed in the city since the 1890s. Today its ornate Jugendstil station pavilions, designed by Otto Wagner, serve two of Vienna’s five U-Bahn lines.

The staircase becomes a concrete path running alongside a row of hangars. At the end of it, on a narrow side platform, is what we have come to see: a glistening new X-Wagen train by Siemens. By 2030, 34 of these will be delivered to Wiener Linien, Vienna’s transit authority. The one before us is number six. Rubner, who is project manager of the X-Wagen programme at Wiener Linien, explains that there’s an option to order a further 11, which would bring the total cost, including maintenance, up to €550m. The X-Wagen team is comprised of some 15 people and works in co-operation with Siemens, which produces rolling stock for both Wiener Linien and Austria’s state railway operator, öbb, and whose sprawling factory is conveniently close, making it easy to transport vehicles and parts to the Erdberg depot. “It’s a unique situation: not many cities in Europe have their own train manufacturer within their borders,” adds Rubner as the automatic doors swoosh open. “These trains are manufactured in Vienna, delivered to Vienna and will be used in Vienna.”

Railway technology evolves constantly but new models don’t come about often; development and manufacturing can take years and trains are consequently built to last. The first generation of Vienna’s U-Bahn – the U-Wagen, also known affectionately as the Silver Arrow – is still in use and remains the only public transport vehicle to win, in 1981, the Austrian State Design Prize. (By the same token, Vienna’s iconic E1 tram had been in operation for more than 50 years before it was retired last summer.) As a firstborn, the Silver Arrow’s futuristic all-aluminium design provided a template for both the second generation, the V-Wagen, made by Siemens between 2000 and 2017, and the X-Wagen, whose development began in 2019.

“Aesthetic continuity always plays a part when introducing new rolling stock,” says Rubner. “The front and back of the X-Wagen are black, in reference to the V-Wagen, which has a tinted windscreen. And if you look at the windows from outside, they are very similar to those on the Silver Arrow, so all these things work together to incorporate this new train into the existing fleet.” For that reason, all X-Wagen trains will be painted a silvery grey in order to complement the existing colour palette.

Inside, the X-Wagen will be instantly familiar to anyone who has been on the Vienna U-Bahn before, from the same reassuring voice on the tannoy to the seating and yellow railings. Yet some re-adjustment will be necessary. As Rubner explains future changes to the network maps over the doors, emergency workers get on to learn about the train, guided by a Wiener Linien instructor. They listen attentively as she describes where and how the X-Wagen is different from other trains before alighting, satisfied. “For emergency services, it’s always a challenge to have new rolling stock,” says Rubner. There are other changes too – some subtle, such as the rainbow-coloured rubber hand grips; others more noticeable, such as the difference in the number of seats. Wiener Linien’s experience has shown that people tend to congest around the exits, so in order to encourage passenger movement throughout the train, seating per car has been reduced from 250 to 200, compared to the previous generation. There will also be a redesigned passenger guidance system including pointers to connections and the best barrier-free travel routes.

The X-Wagen’s main difference to its predecessors is its use of driverless technology – though when the first of the X-Wagen begins service later this year, it’ll be in a hybrid mode. Gradually, drivers will be phased out, especially when Wiener Linien launches the first section of its much-awaited U5 line in 2026, designed to be fully automatic.

“Driverless technology is exciting but at the same time it’s nothing new in Europe,” says Rubner, citing Nuremberg, Milan, Barcelona, Copenhagen and Paris, all of which have driverless public transport systems. “The creation of this new train was not simply a technology-driven decision. Rather, we realised that you just can’t retrofit a 1980s train to fit modern needs. We knew that there would be demand for more trains with more comfort for our passengers – and that’s exactly what we’ve created.”

Setting the stage

Stepping into Copenhagen concert venue Vega feels like going back in time. With its mahogany panelling, sage-green walls and cream and brown floor tiles, the modernist gem by Danish architect Vilhelm Lauritzen opened in 1956 as The People’s House for the country’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) to host congresses, meetings and events. Located in the previously working-class neighbourhood of Vesterbro, the space also hosted a restaurant on the ground floor that served a simple smørrebrød lunch to the local workers. Today this labyrinthine building has turned into a beloved piece of the city’s music scene.

“The staircases confuse visitors,” says Vega’s head of communications, Søren Gaden, as he leads us in. “If you pick the wrong direction on the stairs, you have to go down and start again.” Gaden takes us through the backstage corridors, three stages and a warren of rooms and bars. Gazing up at the handsome balconies of the concert hall, it is hard to imagine that in the 1990s, after the sdp and workers’ unions relocated to bigger facilities, the building was nearly repurposed as a supermarket. Luckily, artist Bjørn Nørgaard and former environment minister Svend Auken moved to preserve it as a heritage site.

Lauritzen, who is best known for designing the old terminal at Copenhagen Airport and the city’s striking Radio House, was a functionalist and the details at Vega show his practical approach. The venue’s orange and yellow stackable chairs can also be folded and fixed together in rows. Brass chandeliers can be wheeled down, while the floor levels can be adjusted and raised to give the room the feel of an amphitheatre. “It’s amazing that a building designed for other purposes works so well for concerts,” says Gaden. “But, clearly, Lauritzen also thought about acoustics.” Vega holds three venues of different sizes. Concert-goers enter the building through different entrances, so each room has a distinct feel. The biggest stage, Store Vega, can hold up to 1,500 people. Smaller Lille Vega can host 500, while Ideal Bar, with capacity for 200, suits emerging acts. “We promote local acts, it’s part of our core dna,” says Lene Vive Christiansen, who has been the head of programming here since 2016. “We support talent throughout their careers. Vega is a homecoming for a lot of Danish musicians.”

Vega is a non-profit organisation and a Copenhagen regional venue, meaning that it receives DKK6m (€806,000) a year in support from the government. Still, it makes up to DKK100m (€13.4m) per year. After paying staff salaries, musicians and the costs of building maintenance, money is injected back into the Danish music industry to support emerging artists, in an act of public service that feels appropriate given the venue’s socialist origins.

The programme at Vega is a mix of quirky, up-and-coming and established acts. About 40 per cent of the artists are Danish. “I have a team that is constantly looking for new performers,” says Christiansen. On the day we visit, all three venues are in use and, including support acts, six concerts are set to take place. The only non-Danish performers are English rock band Wolf Alice, who’ll take the stage in Store Vega, while Copenhagen-based duo Gorgeous is headlining Lille Vega and indie singer Astrid Cordes is playing Ideal Bar.

“You see acts grow from Ideal Bar to Lille Vega and then to Store Vega; it makes you proud,” says venue manager Caecilie Nygård Konfoed. “Playing here is a big deal.” Singer Astrid Cordes agrees. “Vega is my favourite place to play because of the acoustics and the professionalism of the staff,” she says. “And it’s also my favourite venue as a spectator.”

Soon the building starts to fill with punters and, as the acts take to the stage, a glance around reveals people of all ages and styles. “Parents introduce their children to live music here,” says Gaden. “Lauritzen would be proud to see how the building survived the times and proved its qualities.”
vega.dk

Why it works:
The considered principles of mid-century design help to create a textured performance space with both intimacy and great acoustics.

Let’s dance

The hilly vineyards of Italy’s northwestern Piedmont region provide the backdrop for Simony Monteiro’s dance centre, Orsolina28. A New York-born artist of Brazilian heritage who trained at the Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre, Monteiro founded this venture near the small town of Moncalvo so that choreographers, dance companies and students could hone their craft in bucolic surroundings. Started in 2016, the site is part rural retreat, part school where guests can attend a production from an international troupe or take a masterclass with teachers such as Marie-Agnès Gillot, a former prima ballerina with the Paris Opera.

The project includes accommodation, a restaurant and a swimming pool as well as dance studios and indoor and outdoor performance venues. “Dance has profoundly changed my life and I was inspired to give back,” says Monteiro. “I fell in love with the magic of this small town. Here, people can connect with nature and experience dance in a completely new, unconventional context.” Monteiro has expanded on the 18th-century farmhouse and constructed modern facilities to offer students comfort, from rehearsal rooms with Harlequin flooring and cutting-edge sound systems to an exercise room with top-of-the-line machines.

For lodging, guests can sleep amid the greenery inside solar-powered dome tents with air-conditioning, wi-fi and bathrooms. “This area is a Unesco heritage site and, for this reason, we want our environmental impact to be as small as possible,” says Monteiro. Across the property, fountains use purified rainwater and the pool has a chlorine-free, natural filtering system. Staff also use electric-powered buggies to move about and food is harvested from a garden that grows herbs and vegetables using only natural pesticides. Chickens are also on hand to deliver fresh farm eggs. Vineyards with white and red grapes supply the restaurant with wine, while the on-site agronomist also looks after a small, two-storey greenhouse filled with subtropical plants, many from South America.

Monteiro wants to ensure that this setting is open to the surrounding area’s community: dance classes are offered to children as young as 18 months old. “Our belief is that dance is not elitist but for everyone,” she says. Locals and visitors to the picturesque region are welcome to attend shows at the centre’s venues, which include an impressive 850-seat open-air theatre with sweeping views of the Piedmontese landscape beyond. When Monocle visits, dancers from the Tel Aviv-based Batsheva Dance Company are warming up in a rehearsal room just beneath the stage. “It’s a remarkable space,” says dancer Billy Barry. “Here you have state-of-the-art facilities for dance right in the countryside. You can’t ask for much more.”

Barry and his fellow performers are going through last-minute preparations before the evening’s performance of 2019, a 75-minute piece created by Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin that is having its global premiere at Orsolina28. The Eye, an architecturally striking oval-shaped theatre set in a cherry orchard, has been specially arranged to accommodate the staging required.

For Naharin, who has come to Orsolina28 over the past few years to work on projects with his troupe, such attention to detail is just one of the reasons why Monteiro’s venture has been such a success. “When you are travelling as a dance company, you are usually outside of your comfort zone,” says Naharin. “She has managed to put together hundreds of elements that understand the needs of the artist; I feel it really helps the creative process.”
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Streets ahead

Like most children in Basel, Swiss architect Lukas Raeber first learned the rules of the road in a “traffic garden” – a large, leafy space where kids practise cycling on a miniature street grid. “Most people remember the experience fondly,” he tells Monocle. So when the city commissioned him to “energetically renovate” the modernist structure opposite its traffic garden, he embraced the task.

Designed by Erwin Glaser in 1970, the building, with classrooms for theoretical components, went through many changes over the years – mostly, according to Raeber, not for the best. “We had to get everything back to its original state in a contemporary way,” he says.

First on the list was stripping back the building to its main structure and introducing a central, oak-panelled structure, around which the classrooms are now arranged. “This is the centre of the plan and it allows people to move easily between rooms,” says Raeber. “We also wanted elements to flow throughout: the wooden ceiling travels through the whole building, as do the lamps.”

To create an inviting environment, the doors and windows are painted, respectively, in playful red and green. Natural light fills the building. “A well-lit space helps kids stay focused,” says Raeber. “Ultimately they’re the people we want to help feel more comfortable.”

That said, the city wants to open the building to the public: plans to remove the gates and put benches in the garden are in the works and Raeber looks forward to seeing the building become a greater part of city life. “Maybe people will even come have their lunch here,” he says. “That’s a nice thing.”

Why it works:

Warm timbers, light and use of colour has created a calm, inspiring educational setting.