Issues

Meet the restaurant fixers: Three hospitality specialists helping get branding, uniforms and lighting just right

1.
The restaurant consultant to protect your identity: Imschweilers
Munich, Germany

Few people understand the workings of a good bar better than Martin Imschweiler. His credentials as a hospitality consultant stem from 12 years behind the counter at Schumann’s, the Munich institution that, as Süddeutsche Zeitung once put it, helped make the Bavarian capital “more than just another mid-sized city”.

In 2021 he founded Imschweilers, a consultancy that develops hospitality concepts from the ground up. “Too often, we see excellent restaurants with weak branding or beautiful spaces without a strong food concept,” he says. “It becomes an either/or proposition.We create places that people genuinely want to return to.” What matters are the details. “When the staff greet you by name, remember your usual order or notice that you haven’t been in for a while – that’s when a restaurant or bar becomes more than somewhere to eat or drink.”

Imschweilers always begins with the space. “We look at what’s already there: the architecture, the history, the light and the neighbourhood,” says Verena Glup, the company’s creative director. This guided Imschweilers’ work at Parkhotel Mondschein in Bolzano in 2021, one of its first commissions. “The building already had a soul and a rich history so we wanted to create something that felt as though it had always belonged there,” says Imschweiler. They used the region’s culinary traditions as a blueprint, turning the restaurant into an ambassador for South Tyrolean produce. The owners also wanted the bar to become a gathering place for local residents. “Guest chefs and collaborations with artists, musicians, designers and makers create an evolving platform that carries the spirit of the region beyond the hotel,” he says. Then there are the operations. “We often say that they are the perfume of a place. You may not notice them consciously but you feel them.”

Clients come to the company at every stage of the process. “Some arrive with little more than an idea; others want to rethink an existing concept or venue,” says Glup. Recent projects include a modular bar with Swiss furniture-maker Lehni that fits into a trunk; a café concept for Munich design brand Orno; and the identity for Iza Noodle Bar, due to open later this year in the Bavarian capital. “The strongest stories come from the food, the founders, the location and the culture behind a place. We’re here to uncover them.”
imschweilers.com

2.
The outfitter for a timeless uniform: Service Works
London, UK

After Tom Chudley made the move from working in kitchens to fashion, he realised that the staid uniforms in which he had spent years cooking had been research for a brand idea.

Launched in 2020, Service Works makes organic cotton workwear that’s breathable for hot kitchens and able to withstand countless washes. Its checkered chef trousers, designed to conceal stains, pay playful homage to the traditional version, while the seersucker suit jacket recalls traditional waiters’ tailoring. “It was never about making fashion inspired by kitchens – it was about making better products for the people working in them,” says Chudley. “A uniform doesn’t need to look intimidating. Comfort, personality and practicality can all exist together.”

Seals of approval from the likes of London restaurants Impala, St John and Wildflowers are a compelling sales pitch, while Service Works also weaves its utilitarian aesthetic into everyday wear. “Good uniforms shouldn’t just look good on opening day,” says Chudley. “They should work for their lifespan.”
serviceworks.xyz

3.
The lighting luminary for perfect ambiance: Lundi
Bangkok, Thailand

Even the best meal can be ruined by bad lighting. Too bright and guests are rendered in a ghostly pallor; too dark and you begin to worry what the restaurant has to hide. The conundrum is something to which Bangkok-based lighting firm Lundi has devoted itself for the past decade.

“In Thailand, it’s common for restaurant lighting to be set up in a way that focuses on aesthetics, at the expense of creating the right atmosphere or enhancing the presentation of food,” says Lundi’s CEO and founder, Kunlatida Suwintrakorn, who studied architecture in France, where she learnt to custom-make lighting. “Architecture creates the physical structure of a space. Light gives it atmosphere, emotion and a human dimension.”

Rather than interior designers, she says, it takes a lighting designer to understand complex technicalities and spatial psychology that can be easy to miscalculate. “This also eliminates costly on-site rewires and guesswork,” she adds.

Whether working with fine-dining spots or casual restaurants, the same process holds true. After developing a concept with the client and installing the fixtures, the Lundi team visits to fine-tune the space. “We’re always one of the first in and one of the last teams on site,” she says.

At Bangkok restaurant Nusara, Lundi analysed its views of Wat Pho, which shift with the daylight, and adapted the set-up to create an intimate evening dining experience. “When lighting is done well,” she says, “it becomes part of what people remember after the meal is over.”

Great escapes: Four new hotels worth knowing in Chianti, Vienna, Fort Lauderdale and Rome

1.
La Darbia
Chianti, Italy

Sometimes it’s no bad thing to fall for the Tuscan clichés: cypress trees, sun-bleached stone farmhouses and sloping vineyards. Less than an hour’s drive south of Florence, La Darbia is set in an 11th-century hamlet. In restoring it, architect brothers Gian Carlo and Matteo Primatesta kept the materials strictly regional: pietra serena, the “stone of the Renaissance”, a firm favourite of Michelangelo; terracotta from Impruneta, the town that made the tiles adorning Florence’s cathedral dome; and travertine from centuries-old quarries in Rapolano.

“We weren’t looking for a famous destination for its own sake,” says Gian Carlo, “but for somewhere with a strong sense of place and a genuine identity.” The restaurant, led by chefs Matteo Monfrinotti and Sebastiano Pagliaro, honours the estate’s agricultural rhythms. Its olive oil comes from the on-site grove and 40 beehives produce lavender honey.
chianti.ladarbia.com

2.
The Companion
Vienna

Berlin-based architect and interior designer Piotr Wisniewski was entrusted with the interior design of The Companion on Mariahilfer Strasse in the Austrian capital. He has revitalised the historic Wilhelminian building with contemporary clarity. Columns marked by time are flanked by black-lacquered metal beams; terrazzo floors reference the city’s material heritage; and shelves made from bubinga veneer surround the lobby fireplace. At restaurant Boca, chef Lauryn Therin, who sharpened her skills at London’s Ottolenghi, delights with communal Mediterranean dishes such as tuna skewers with pistachio, tahini and sumac.
companion-hotels.com

3.
Perroquet
Fort Lauderdale

In Fort Lauderdale, where ever-larger resorts continue to reshape the “Venice of America”, Perroquet has taken a less brash route. Hidden on a leafy residential street between the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean, the 37-key hotel occupies a 1950s motel that has been turned into a polished retreat by Belgian architect Bernard Dubois.

The emphasis is on quiet craftsmanship versus the spectacle that often typifies south Florida – neighbouring Miami, in particular. Rather than erasing the building’s history, Dubois has embraced it. Its original low-rise footprint remains, while lush landscaping and carefully choreographed outdoor spaces unfold gradually from arrival to the pool.The guest rooms continue that narrative with custom furniture, Sferra linens, Byredo amenities and an art collection featuring works by Jean Cocteau and Jeff Koons.

Perroquet has opened at a time when Fort Lauderdale is broadening its cultural appeal. Las Olas Boulevard’s boutiques, the 14-hectare Bonnet House Museum and Gardens, NSU Art Museum and the beach are all within a 10-minute drive, making the hotel an appealing base from which to explore the city’s pizzazz.
perroquethotels.com

4.
Casa JK Place
Rome

Walk into a room at the new Casa JK Place in Rome and it’s clear that this is far more expansive than the average hotel. Each unit is an apartment imagined on a grand scale, with five-star services and amenities. In the living rooms, gold-handled double doors seem to lead in every direction.Through one doorway, a black marble bathroom; through another, a sprawling Calacatta marble-topped kitchen, then bedrooms with walls painted Venetian red, ivy green and tobacco tones.

“Everyone dreams of a home that’s like a hotel and a hotel that’s as cosy as a home,” says Michele Bönan, the Florence-based architect of Casa JK Place and its European counterparts. The hospitality group has become synonymous with a lavish aesthetic: Florentine grandeur rendered in richly saturated tones, chrome and velvet, with antique statuary and vintage pieces akin to a collector’s house.

“Michele and I have developed a hospitality concept that’s become iconic over 25 years of working together,” says Ori Kafri, the owner of the JK Place group, which also has properties in Capri, Paris and a 41-key hotel opening next year in Milan. “Our clients are looking for privacy and flexibility,” says Kafri.
jkplaces.com

Rome City Guide
Explore the breathtaking beauty and illustrious cultural heritage of the Italian capital, while eschewing the tourist traps, with our in-the-know travel guide.

A place to remember: Oslo’s Carpe Diem is helping people with dementia age gracefully

It’s a Monday afternoon and residents of a village outside Oslo are throwing an impromptu dance party in the central square. Soul music blares from two speakers – feet tap, hips shimmy. It would be a moving scene anywhere but every participant here has severe dementia, a condition that erodes memory and cognition and that is increasing along with the world’s average age: nearly 10 million new cases are diagnosed every year, a figure expected to triple by 2050.

For decades, dementia care meant locked wards and sedated patients. But this afternoon’s shindig shows another way. The dementia-village concept was born in the Netherlands when two nurses, dreading institutionalising their parents, created De Hogeweyk, a residential development where sufferers move freely rather than being confined to rooms. It opened in 2009 and began inspiring others.

The Norwegian government’s 2015 Dementia Plan emphasised a desire to build communities in which those with dementia can remain integrated within wider society. Carpe Diem, the country’s first dementia village, opened in Bærum, a municipality on the outskirts of Oslo, ten years later.

Camilla Heier Anglero, head of healthcare design at Nordic Office of Architecture, which designed Carpe Diem, explains that the brief was novel in a number of ways. “It had to be a village,” she says. “Which is hard as we don’t have many villages in Norway.” Here, 18,000 sq m of wooden-clad postmodern Scandi buildings contain 158 bedrooms split between 17 apartments around a garden square. There are no sterile white corridors but individually designed, brightly coloured housing units entered using special wristwatches. Paving stones aid natural and intuitive wayfinding.

Textured walls, carpets and paving stones allow hands, eyes and feet to “remember” a route when minds no longer can. “When you have dementia, it’s your senses that go last,” says Heier Anglero. “We made sure we designed spaces with this in mind. That’s why, for example, there are hundreds of different plants in the yard.”

Carpe Diem has a pub, a hairdresser, a supermarket, a gym and a tiki bar. There’s a boat workshop for the village’s many former casual seafarers. Haircuts and pints are paid for using a card preloaded with funds by a resident’s family, allowing for independent sustenance rather than favours dispensed by staff.

Later-life care places financial strain on both families and governments. Though Bærum is an affluent district in a wealthy country, Carpe Diem’s residents cover most of their bed and board. Fees are paid from their state pension, which usually accounts for 75 to 85 per cent of the bill. While the generosity of Norway’s system might limit the potential for this model to be exported, its obvious benefits – longer-living patients and less carer burnout – have altered the way that policymakers think about dementia. Villages such as Carpe Diem allow the dance of life to continue a little longer.

Mount Street Printers demonstrates the appeal of fine print in a digital age

In a struggling industry, London-based Mount Street Printers is a rare linchpin of stability. Work at its production facility in the west of the city is in rude health: customers include the likes of Burberry and Sotheby’s. The business’s original Mayfair shop also remains a dependable institution. While neighbouring luxury brands come and go, the company, which specialises in fine corporate printing and luxury stationery, has maintained a constant retail presence at 4 Mount Street since 1981. “When we started, everything was printed – there was no such thing as email,” says the business’s director, Alex Cain. “But the marketplace and the area around us have changed. We have gone with what the customers are demanding.”

The son of Mount Street Printers’ founders, Peter and Fridette, Cain has found success by embracing what others fear. “We love programmes such as Canva because they enable people to create their own vision,” he says. “But the real test of a designer today is whether they can make things look good in print. The big agencies are moving towards these touchpoints that make a product feel special.”

At its production facility, innovation is crucial. Traditionally, when a client places an order for, say, an event invitation at a printer, jobs such as making envelopes or letterpress are outsourced because of a lack of specialist skills. “But because we buy the equipment and do it all in-house, we can build a high level of trust with our customers,” says Cain. “You can start from a point of inspiration and let your imagination run wild with techniques, colours, shapes, materials and sizes.”

During Monocle’s visit, we see a wedding announcement with gold-foiled lettering shimmering over a digitally printed watercolour design. Nearby, an employee operates a laser, cutting out plates for die-stamping; the machine was adapted for the business two years ago. Cain has his eyes on what comes next. “We’re obsessed with future-proofing the business,” he says. “My objective is to ensure that it lasts 100 years.”
mountstreetprinters.com

As interest in Stem careers fade, Germany turns to foreign workers to fill the technical talent gap

German-speaking countries were once considered a stronghold of tinkerers and inventors. But today young people are avoiding technical degree programmes with serious consequences. If a company can’t find young engineers or IT specialists, workers from India are often the last hope. Immigrants can compensate for the lack of motivation among domestic employees to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (the so-called Stem subjects). Germany now has 33,000 Indian nationals in Stem professions. In 2012 there were 4,000.

That shortage of homegrown workers will worsen. An estimated 200,000 German engineers will retire in the next 10 years. At the same time, fewer young people are choosing to study the subjects necessary to replace them. Only 80,000 students are enrolled in mechanical engineering. A decade ago that number was 120,000. The situation is particularly precarious in fields such as electrical and civil engineering, and especially bridge construction. Once, this nation produced ground-breaking inventions, thanks to pioneers such as Carl Benz and Werner von Siemens. Now, that engineering prowess is disappearing.

The same trend can also be observed in Switzerland and Austria. The University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria has investigated the career interests of different age groups. The results show that the younger the age group, the less popular Stem subjects seem to be. For Generation Z, which comprises those born between 1997 and 2010, a technical or scientific degree is the least appealing. Among young men, physics and chemistry are considered particularly unattractive. Mechanics and mechatronics degrees receive the least interest from women. The latter combines the former with electronics and computer science – a specialism required in robotics and medical technology.

Statistics professor Harald Kindermann, who led the study, describes the findings as “alarming”. “The low interest of the younger generation in technical professions jeopardises the future competitiveness of our economy,” he says. Kindermann notes that competition, particularly from China, has significantly increased too.

Without enough young, talented people entering the workforce, European industry risks losing its pre-eminent position. Kindermann is concerned that the attractiveness of technical fields has declined further since the most recent survey three years ago. “This affects both genders,” he says. “Among men, interest has decreased even more sharply.” Nevertheless, the traditional gender disparity persists, in which women are far more likely to avoid technical fields.

What’s the explanation for the growing disinterest? Kindermann cites a number of factors, which he bases on his study as well as his practical experience as a lecturer. A Stem degree is perceived as more demanding and strenuous, which deters many people despite the good career prospects it offers. “The younger generation tends to be less resilient,” he says. “Furthermore, they increasingly struggle to understand more complex content that requires logical thinking.”

Shifting incentives

This is partly due to the school system, which doesn’t adequately train people in these skills. Societal trends exacerbate the problem. “Social networks shape a model in which young people focus on well-being rather than achievements,” says Kindermann. The goal of contributing to society also seems to have lost some of its sheen. The professor believes that young people should be challenged more. Likewise, skilled trades and apprenticeships need to regain some prestige. “Because the academic path is considered more attractive, there’s a lack of talented young people at technical universities,” he says.

Stem departments face a dilemma. The public funding that they receive is tied to student numbers. These are also expensive courses that require modern laboratories and equipment. When fewer people enrol on a subject, the revenue disappears.

Matters of scale

According to Kindermann, this increases incentives to make exams easier and lower performance standards to avoid losing even more students. Smaller universities, in particular, are at risk of falling below thresholds at which they would have to discontinue certain subjects.

This divergence can also be observed in Switzerland. Leading university ETH Zürich continues to attract a large number of students, with more and more coming from abroad. Nearly half of the master’s students there now hold a foreign passport. By contrast, universities of applied sciences are experiencing a decline in enrolment in Stem subjects among domestic young people; since 2017, the number of new students has fallen by 7 per cent. While there has been a slight increase in computer science, the drop in the wider technical fields is in double digits. Non-Stem subjects, on the other hand, continue to attract more applicants.

High price of cost-cutting

The Haute École Arc in western Switzerland has first-hand knowledge of the threat that this decline in interest poses for engineering faculties. It operates in three cantons: Neuchâtel, Jura and Berne. In engineering, the number of bachelor’s students plummeted by 28 per cent in just eight years. The fall was even more dramatic for new enrolments, which fell by 38 per cent from 160 to a record low of 100.

According to Tristan Maillard, the Haute École Arc’s director general, the school management has had to implement painful cost-cutting measures. “We were forced to part ways with several lecturers,” he says. “Nevertheless, we made every effort to retain the best professors.”

In response to this tug-of-war with industry, the Haute École Arc reformed its Stem education last year with great success. New enrolments quickly rose again to 130 and the university expects a further increase in the coming semester.

Without the co-operation of the cantons, the cuts would have been even more drastic. Maillard says that the already significant shortage of young professionals has exacerbated the decline in student numbers. “Companies are fighting to retain their apprentices,” he says. “They pay them good wages to keep them in their jobs instead of attending university.”

Flex appeal

“We thoroughly analysed the students’ needs and found that they wanted greater flexibility,” says Maillard. In response, the school now offers part-time study at the bachelor’s level, three days a week, allowing students to remain at their companies for the other two days. This change makes it far easier for companies to retain sought-after young talent.

To accommodate such alterations, the programme has been extended from three to four years. Full-time study, meanwhile, will continue to be offered, albeit with a reduction from five to four days a week. From next year, the number of weekly hours will be cut from 36 to 32 too. “We are confident that we can maintain the quality of the training here despite this streamlining,” says Maillard.

Despite such efforts to make Stem studies more attractive, little progress has been made in addressing the low proportion of women. Eight years ago, 12 per cent of engineering students at Swiss universities were female; the current figure is barely higher at 15 per cent. According to the Swiss Academies of Sciences, Stem education in the country has hit a “glass ceiling”.

The gender-equality paradox

Research suggests that this situation won’t be changing any time soon. The data shows that the proportion of women in technical professions is generally lower the wealthier and more egalitarian that a country is. This trend is known as the “gender-equality paradox”. The most common explanation for it is that increasing wealth and the pursuit of individual self-realisation often have the effect of reinforcing gender-specific career aspirations.

The proportion of women in Stem degree programmes is at about 40 per cent in countries such as India or Algeria; it is particularly low in Scandinavia. The same phenomenon can be observed at German universities. According to the country’s Centre for Higher Education, only a ninth of domestic first-year engineering students are female. Among international students, however, women make up a quarter.

Kindermann too says that the low interest in Stem subjects is a consequence of greater material prosperity. This makes it all the more important to raise young people’s awareness of the economic implications. “Quality of life in Europe depends on our ability to maintain our leading position in technological expertise.”

The country’s technical-expertise shortage is already resulting in a €13bn loss of added value, according to the Association of German Engineers. The wave of retirements among skilled workers means that even more skills will need to be replaced in the future.

Are city kids safer than those in the countryside? The walk to school matters more than you might think

I often daydream about life in the countryside. I picture my children ambling along lanes flanked with wildflowers, perhaps with a pony in tow, and spending time roaming fields, blackberrying and climbing oak trees. The Cotswolds childhood that Laurie Lee describes in Cider with Rosie leaps to mind as I find myself scanning the property pages, looking for a bucolic alternative to my townhouse. Who knew that perusing detached villas that you’ll never buy in the Inner Hebrides could be such a pleasure?

But this romanticism evaporates whenever I visit the country and attempt to walk anywhere. As a committed pedestrian and keen urban cyclist, I’m plunged into panic when countryside vehicles hurtle towards me on byways without pavements, their drivers taking hairpin bends at speed and missing you by a few inches. During a recent weekend trip to Gloucestershire, I was gripped with fear as my young family walked in single file along a narrow lane to the village shop, while cars sped past at 60km/h.

Town mice are not used to this kind of velocity. With pedestrian-friendly low speed limits in London, my children are far freer to roam. “Bye, love you,” they holler as they leave for school every morning, still holding pieces of buttered toast. They set off on foot and sometimes bike, usually with gaggles of friends. Though our east London neighbourhood is far from serene, I feel that they’re safer here than on any rural lane.

Being a parent of pre-teen children involves having a little faith in community. London might be a city of almost 10 million people but its boroughs are made up of village-like hubs: a market street, a grassy green planted with plane trees, usually one or two Victorian schools. The porters, park rangers and corner-shop owners we know and chat to are part of a social infrastructure keeping an eye on youngsters who have a remarkable amount of freedom. With its traffic-limiting policies and 30 per cent car ownership, our area can sometimes hint at Cider with Rosie’s idyll.

London’s state schools encourage children to walk to school independently. There’s a shared sense that kids have the right to go somewhere without being trailed or tracked and that it’s society’s responsibility to support them as they travel in uniforms with rucksacks laden with water bottles and books. They are ushered through the urban community, with parents of younger children (who they usually know) keeping an eye on them and lollipop ladies marshalling difficult crossings. The biggest challenge is the scores of commuters belting along on Lime bikes with the grace and spatial awareness of runaway trains.

There are fierce debates about whether children should be given devices and access to social media but most kids I know are still smartphone-free. Instead, parents arrange their 10-year-olds’ living-room computer-game sessions on group chats. Some mums and dads hover around their children more than others; meanwhile, it’s striking that boys seem to have freer rein.

Voices always whisper reasons to bring children home, lock the door and batten down the hatches but it often feels that the biggest parenting challenge today is how to quieten those worries. After helicoptering our children through their early years, it can come as a shock to find out that the next step is to set them free and teach them how to live in a big city without your supervision.

I was thinking about risk the other day as I taught my nine-year-old daughter how to make pasta. The process of chopping onions with a new Sabatier knife and then watching her manoeuvre vats of boiling water into our sink tested my ability to resist the urge to zoom in and whisk it all out of her hands. I had to stop myself shouting, “Be careful!” at strategic intervals that would have only served to increase the likelihood of trips and spills.

Of course, I could have done all of these tasks myself. But seeing the pride that my daughter took from navigating the dangers of a large colander reminded me how significant such moments are to her sense of self. It was immediately evident in her face (and even stance) that this was an important part of growing up.

To show that I trust her was also vital. Risk doesn’t come naturally to me when it comes to parenting. I could see her stern determination to contend with the task – an urge to be considered old enough to deal with scalding hazards. This is what’s needed in life and love. You won’t find it sitting in front of the TV.

That’s not to say that I would sling my child a Sabatier to play with – for the record, my position on whittling with Swiss penknives has changed after a couple of trips to the accident and emergency department with my 10-year-old son. Even so, I’m constantly pushing myself to trust them more and curb my instinct to shadow their every move. I realise that I can’t solve their problems and that resilience comes from navigating rocky friendships and sinks full of washing up.

With all of this in mind, the six-minute walk to school takes on a greater meaning. It seems that policymakers are increasingly aware of its importance and are giving more thought to shaping children’s pedestrian experiences in cities and villages alike. At a time when children are playing outside less and less, when mental health in the young is declining, creating safe corridors to green spaces where they can scramble up trees and kick a ball is rightly climbing up the political agenda.

I recently asked my son why he likes walking to school and he said that it makes him feel free, grown-up and happy. (Also “sick”, which isn’t a malady but rather London “tween” parlance for “cool”.) In that moment, I realised that our cities have the potential to create young people who feel safe and confident in their surroundings – to the benefit of all. Child-friendly streets aren’t just about slowing down and restricting cars but rather creating environments that support the freedom of youngsters to exist without their parents. This creates diverse, balanced communities that make us all aim to be better and more open.

Cities have a remarkable chance to get it right. So, despite the litter and the noise, the speeding Lime bikes and the theft (I can go on), I realise that my corner of the Big Smoke is closer to Laurie Lee’s vision of childhood than I thought – and that perhaps I need to stop scrolling for houses on countryside lanes.

How the art world repackaged ‘cross-category collecting’ as a clever new trend

The more persuasive a narrative, the greater its power to mislead. For proof, consider the (allegedly) novel trend in my industry, the art world, for so-called “cross-category collecting”.

According to the slightly shaky theory, past generations only collected with a honed interest and tight focus on, say, contemporary portraiture or impressionism. The counterpoint, touted by art folk and auctioneers, is that over the past decade collectors and auctions have become less rigid and more eclectic. They have started, the hype masters continue, mixing art from multiple eras and collectable objects in many mediums into motley wholes. The main reason given? Smartphones, algorithmic newsfeeds and now generative AI’s worrying propensity to flatten reality. Technology, some critics say, is blending every historical epoch, genre and distinction into a smooth, easy-to-slurp slurry.

The narrative’s centerpiece was the sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi”, which fetched $450m (€391m) in November 2017 and became the most expensive artwork ever auctioned. That happened, admittedly unusually, in a Christie’s sale nominally devoted to postwar and contemporary art. Since then, top auction houses have not only continued to selectively sell historical works in marquee weeks of modern and newer art but have also included more unorthodox rarities and sometimes frankly strange pieces, perhaps with an eye on social-media feeds or newspaper headlines. Examples include Christie’s taking bids for “Stan”, an almost complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton in 2020; Sotheby’s offering a 1962 Ferrari GTO in 2023; and Phillips consigning the “Thunderbolt”, which bore the faintly ridiculous and Instagram-ready description “the longest gold nugget ever found”, last autumn.

Meanwhile, prestigious galleries such as David Zwirner and Sprüth Magers have daringly presented thematic shows linking contemporary artists with old masters and antiquities. Art fairs have got in on the mixing and meddling too. Frieze Masters launched in 2012 as a historic complement to the brand’s original, contemporary fair. London’s Treasure House Fair emerged in 2023 as a one-stop shop for fine and decorative art, design objects and other collectables. Two years later, contemporary show Art Basel Paris gave the Gagosian gallery special permission to centre its booth on a Rubens painting. The 17th century is suddenly cool again.

This cross-category, mix-and-match momentum is certainly real but its newness is not. At least as far back as Rubens’ day, members of royalty and aspiring elites were assembling wide-ranging collections of art and artefacts from across epochs and cultures. Germanic Wunderkammern (cabinets of wonders) and Italian studiolos brought together human-made objects, marvels of natural history and scientific innovations. Empires ranging from the Mughal to the Qianlong added European prints, paintings, clocks and more to their holdings. People have always gravitated to works that they like rather than adhering to any rigid categories of movement or style.

Private capital certainly followed suit in the 19th century. The Rothschild banking dynasty’s opulent spending on fine art, decorative art, furniture and more from sundry eras and cultures established Le Goût Rothschild (“the Rothschild taste”). It doubled as a template for pushy American industrialists trying to buy their way to international respectability during the Gilded Age. Several contemporaries with revered art collections followed the time-tested strategy, from late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s troves of historic guitars and early computing artefacts to Neue Galerie founder Ronald Lauder’s caches of arms and armour, classic cars and film memorabilia from Casablanca.

This raises the question: why are market forces presenting crossing categories as a fresh turn? Who gains by pretending it’s novel or interesting to like more than one thing? Technology probably plays a role – all context tends to be collapsed on small screens. But I also believe that, in this most disposable, machine-generated moment, Old-World craftsmanship – the allure of owning something that’s time-tested – has renewed appeal. In a small way, it can appease our anxieties about the future or position galleries as gatekeepers of a culture worth preserving. Plus, in an art world whose sales plateaued around 2014, the best story about the value of collecting is whichever one is the most convincing at the time.

A new chapter for Berlin’s Stabi, as a decade-long overhaul seeks to restore Scharoun’s civic landmark

Known as the Stabi, Berlin’s public library was built by West Germany in the hope that it would one day be a focal point for a reunited city. With its spacious reading rooms and five million books, it has since become a favourite place to study for Berliners. A a renovation, set to take more than a decade, will refresh the original design and add an entrance from the east, delivering on its 1960s dream.

Because it grants people from all walks of life access to knowledge, a public library can be seen as a reflection of the value that a society places on education. Such structures are among the most important civic buildings a testament to intellectual freedom, transparency and equity.

It’s these qualities that West Berlin’s Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation looked to endorse when it built the Staatsbibliothek Potsdamer Strasse. After the partitioning of Berlin in 1945 and the construction of the Wall in 1961, most of the city’s old cultural institutions – the museums, theatres, opera house and state library – ended up in the Soviet-controlled territory of the German Democratic Republic. In response, West Berlin’s technocrats decided to build their own cultural centre from scratch on the razed no-man’s-land next to the Wall.

Called the Kulturforum – and still standing today – it was constructed as a projection of the West’s cultural heft and in the hope that such institutions would one day be the focal point of a united city. The site is home to Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie, as well as the new Philharmonic, but the largest building by far is the Staatsbibliothek (Berlin State Library), which is now known as the Stabi.

Work began on the golden-hued “treasure house” in 1964 when Hans Scharoun, who had just completed the much-acclaimed Philharmonic nearby, won a competition. The Bremen-born architect had an aversion to symmetry and right angles, conceiving the library as one large reading room with a three-storey-high ceiling and a maze of balconies and mezzanines spanning most of its 230-metre length. Its façade, clad in anodised, champagne-gold aluminium panels, is punctuated by apertures that flood the interiors with natural light. It’s an effect enhanced by a complex geometric ceiling grid similarly dotted with fibreglass bubbles that filter daylight downward, casting an even, glare-free glow over the study desks. Construction took 11 years and Scharoun died before the building’s completion (the project was finished by longtime collaborator Edgar Wisniewski).

Scharoun never got to see the Stabi win global recognition from world-class architects. Kazuyo Sejima, of Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning firm SANAA, recently took a class of Japanese students to visit Scharoun’s buildings on the Kulturforum. The Stabi is also one of Europe’s key depositories of valuable documents. When the Fondazione Prada in Venice organised a sweeping survey of historical diagrams, the library was the main lender of artefacts. But, most importantly, it’s Berliners’ favourite place to study, with people of all stripes attracted by the long shelves of legal tomes or, more likely, the Stabi’s starring role in the 1987 Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire. (In one scene, the middle-aged angel, played by Bruno Ganz, roams the reading room, leaning over the desks to listen in on students’ thoughts.)

“In Berlin, we have little beautiful architecture, so it’s rare to have this kind of space,” says Filippo Weck, who started frequenting the library in 2020, when he decided to tackle Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. “You can’t really be a serious person if you haven’t read it. I needed a quiet space with no distractions.”

On his Mondays off from his job at art gallery Buchholz, Weck headed to the Stabi in the morning, left his phone in a locker, sat down near the windows on the lower level of the reading room and made his way through Proust’s seven volumes. It took years but it’s a routine that he is continuing, moving on to Letters from Prison by Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci.

When Monocle visits, the Stabi has welcomed a mix of readers into its soaring, 900-capacity general and specialist reading rooms. Scholars are working on papers and doctoral students type theses, taking their lunches and cigarette breaks in a small park outside (“Whenever one of my friends complains about dating in Berlin,” says Weck, “I tell them to go to the Stabi”). This, despite the fact that after decades of use, wear and tear on the Bücherschiff (or “ship of books”) is starting to show.

Various renovations and refurbishments have taken place over the years, largely to expand the library’s storage capacity. But the information desk is still equipped with clunky 1990s computers, many of the lockers are out of function, some of the ceiling lights flicker and the moss-green floor moquette has developed a greyish hue. The café, meanwhile, has a cigarette machine and unapologetically serves bockwurst with potato salad for lunch.

For years, Berlin has been preparing for a major renovation of the whole heritage-protected building and has slowly been moving the 5.4 million books and periodicals that it houses elsewhere. The renovation is expected to commence in 2030 and will take 11 years (a time span that is not exceptional in Berlin, where the Pergamonmuseum is currently expected to fully reopen in 2037), with the building closed to the public for several years. All of the interiors will be stripped away, the cladding replaced and there will be key changes to the building’s entryways and circulation.

“For me, it is a symbol of democratic architecture,” says Stephan Schütz, partner at Hamburg-based architecture firm GMP, which has been entrusted with the renovation. “You don’t have any clear and straight axes; you always have new perspectives when walking through, and there are no dominant materials.”

Schütz has been working for more than seven years in preparation. In the vast ground floor lobby, GMP will install original furniture and lighting designs by Scharoun – which can currently be seen at the Philharmonic – and create group-working spaces accessible to the public. In the rest of the building, most objects will simply be cleaned and put back or, like the wall-to-wall carpet, refitted according to the original design. “It is more of a refreshment than a real change,” says Schütz. “I think that people will come in after and say that everything is the same.”

There is, however, one intervention that will carry a lot of symbolic heft given that Scharoun designed the library to be oriented entirely to the west, with windows and entrances looking out over the Kulturforum. “This building always had one clear public direction,” says Schütz, explaining that its eastern side was closed off for the simple reason that, at the time, there was nothing there.

Now, right next to the library is Potsdamer Platz, one of the city’s main hubs through which about 100,000 people pass each day, with Pritzker Prize winner Renzo Piano’s Theatre am Potsdamer Platz now adjacent to the building. In response to this changed context, GMP will punch out a new main entrance to the library on this side, building a café and a new, open-air reading terrace. Open to both east and west, the Stabi’s layout is set to accurately reflect its place in the heart of Berlin, finally uniting the city in a powerful display of civic architecture.

Can good design support learning? A Catalonian kindergarten is trying to find out

Escola Casa Nostra sits near the shores of Catalonia’s Lake Banyoles, a 25-minute drive from Girona and a short bike ride from the small town of Banyoles. It traces its origins to the 1920s, when Catholic laywoman Magdalena Aulina launched educational initiatives for local working women and children. The school itself was officially founded in 1967, admitting both girls and boys from the outset. 

Architect Pau Sarquella, who attended the school, led its recent redesign. “I was able to see the project through the eyes of the children because I was once there with those same eyes,” says Pau. “Memories came back and that helped us design something special.” After graduating from architecture school in Barcelona, Sarquella moved to Thailand in 2015, where he and Carmen Torres built their first kindergarten in Dum Yai, a village near the border with Laos, in 2018. The next year, they returned to Spain to found Sarquella Torres in Sarquella’s hometown of Banyoles. 

Their philosophy is simple: in early education, the physical environment is often known as the “third teacher”, working alongside parents and educators to shape how a child interacts with the world. By incorporating plenty of natural light, versatile materials and easy-to-use resources, the duo creates well-planned environments that encourage children to work together, investigate and learn. 

At Casa Nostra, this begins on the outside. Shaded by acacia trees, the two-storey building is finished in a dusty pink. To Spanish children, the colour is instantly recognisable. “It’s the colour of Frigopie, a popular strawberry-flavoured ice cream,” says Sarquella. Along the roof, a waterspout in the shape of a dragon head hangs from the eaves in a playful nod to Catalan folklore. Legend has it that the Banyoles monster slumbers beneath the lake’s waters. 

Planning regulations restricted the building’s footprint, which meant that every square metre had to perform multiple duties. More than 90 children are divided by age group: up to three years old on the ground floor and ages three to six above that. Small balconies and a garden make the structure look more like a large house than an educational facility, referencing the school’s name, which translates to “our house”. “It creates a feeling of familiarity,” says Sarquella.

The corridors are wider than average school hallways, designed to double as a library, workshop, art space or somewhere to shelter when a Mediterranean downpour hits. Upstairs, a space clad in matte blue Portuguese porcelain tiles recall the colour of the lake nearby. “We decided to [design] this spare playroom without a roof,” says Sarquella, explaining that it therefore didn’t count toward the strict urban-planning limits. The result is a simple, open-air space that lets the elements in.

Classrooms are divided by sliding doors. The clear glass on the top half of the partitions allows educators to maintain a visual connection across rooms. “On the bottom part, at a child’s eye level, the glass is replaced by mirrors,” says Sarquella. “For the teachers, it was important that kids could recognise themselves from a young age.” On warmer days, the glass doors retract fully into the walls, dissolving the boundary between the classrooms and the sprawling garden.

By late afternoon, children take the bike path home, past trees and the lake, towards Banyoles. Many will be humming Toni Giménez’s “El Monstre de Banyoles”, a song about the legendary dragon that they learn at kindergarten. The school continues to be a place where memories begin. Like Sarquella, some children might later draw on them for projects of their own.
sarquellatorres.com 

Lessons from Margaret Calvert, the designer who helped shape Britain’s road signs

As one half of the duo appointed to redesign the UK’s road signage in the 1950s and 1960s, graphic designer Margaret Calvert oversaw the aesthetics of travel across Britain. Calvert, now 90, was born in South Africa and moved to London in 1950 for school before studying illustration and printmaking at the Chelsea College of Arts. It was here that she was taught by graphic designer Jock Kinneir, with whom she went on to create the typefaces, pictograms and signs that remain ubiquitous across Britain’s roadsides, as well as signage for railways and airports. Calvert also spent 35 years as a tutor at the Royal College of Art, where she served as its head of graphic design until 1991.

After such a long and varied career, some might take a step back to focus on other interests. But when Monocle visits Calvert on a sunny day in her London home, her desk is scattered with freshly drawn sketches in preparation for exhibitions in Tokyo and Kyoto next year. “As a kid, I just loved drawing and I’ve never abandoned my coloured pencils,” says Calvert. Here are some lessons from talking with the design maestro.

A good teacher is one who stays flexible.
“You need to learn to listen and not come across strongly with your opinions or what you’re working on at the moment,” says Calvert. “It’s not about you – it’s about the students.”

Conversely, a good pupil is one who maintains a level of resolution.
It is about listening. You’ve got to show absolute enthusiasm for what you’re doing and not be hesitant in asking questions because they might sound stupid. It’s really just a conversation between two people about an issue that you’re questioning.

Getting out of a creative rut requires help – ideally, a conversation.
The issue is that this kind of block is usually down to a personal problem. I had a student once with this issue and he was just stuck. I always kept my door open and he came to talk to me. I questioned him, we exchanged ideas and I took him through it all very slowly. In the end, he managed to focus and ended up getting a distinction.”

There is plenty of inspiration to be found in everyday moments.
I like to walk around the streets near my home and look down into the basements. I’ll see a cat drinking or a little child playing. And at about 19.00, the light changes and some things will shine and some things will glow. It’s magic, isn’t it?