Issues

Is the award-winning, windowless Stealth House a new blueprint for Western architecture?

In 2024, when Specht Novak Architects unveiled Stealth House in Austin, Texas, critics were quick to note the building’s fortress-like quality. A low-slung private residence without any outward-facing windows in its corrugated steel façade, it derives all of its natural light from two internal courtyards. This martial aesthetic marks a sharp break from the floor-to-ceiling windows that have defined high-end residential architecture for decades. Specht Novak touts Stealth House – which has received several prizes, including a National American Institute of Architects Small Project Award – as “a prototype for future urban living”. Is high-end residential architecture in the West about to shift towards the kind of a privacy-oriented “compound architecture” that is more commonly associated with the Gulf?

There is an obvious clash between the compound look and Western democratic sensibilities: after all, it seems to reject the idea of community and signal that wealthy homeowners no longer feel the need to even feign a connection with the rest of society. When Monocle puts these concerns to Scott Specht – a founding partner of Specht Novak, who owns and lives in Stealth House – he points out that people have been modifying their homes to maximise privacy for decades.

Typical suburban and urban neighbourhoods in the US have long been taking “traditional-looking buildings based on the loose template of a ranch house with acres of land around it and jamming them together”, he says. “You put in windows to make it look like a conventional house but always have the shades down because otherwise you wouldn’t be looking at anything except the nextdoor neighbour. You have a big open backyard but then you build a giant fence around it so the neighbours can’t look in.” For Specht, Stealth House merely streamlines and integrates the privacy features that US homeowners tend to clumsily bolt on to their conventionally “open” homes.

The house has caught the attention of private clients seeking similar features for their own residences. Specht isn’t naive about the fact that the design appeals to people’s desire for security as well as privacy. “We’re seeing a lot more electronic security systems going into the houses that we design,” he says. But he contests the allegation that the style’s opacity spoils neighbourly connections. “In New York, you live in a residential building with doormen or you have a locked door with a vestibule. Then you go up through another locked door to your apartment and your view of the street is a distant one through a window. But people there still feel like a part of their neighbourhood. You don’t need to have windows that people can look into to achieve that.”

Reflecting on his own experience living in Stealth House, Specht says that he has a better connection to his neighbours now than when he lived in a more conventional suburban setting. The architect makes a convincing case that concerns over the antisocial nature of compound architecture are misplaced. But it’s undeniable that a handful of Stealth Houses in an otherwise conventional quarter of a city would feel different to an entire neighbourhood of compound-style residences. It’s difficult to truly guess at what point a change in an area’s architectural vernacular would tip into a shift in social substance.

Illustrator: Nathan Hackett

Do touch that dial: How Sangean is impressively tuning in to success

Sunny Yang remembers the night when Taiwan was hit by a 7.3-magnitude earthquake in 1999. He was staying in the mountains when it struck. “Everything went black,” says Yang, the general manager of Taiwanese radio manufacturer Sangean, which his father founded half a century ago. “The power grid was out. There was no emergency lighting and no neighbours nearby.”

In his drawer was a Sangean hand-crank radio, unused until that night. “From the broadcast that I tuned in to, I found out what was happening,” he says, showing Monocle around Sangean’s office tower in New Taipei City. “I realised that it wasn’t war and that gave me peace of mind.”

Radios will continue working even when your wi-fi goes down or your signal bars vanish. That combination of utility and reassurance in an era of geopolitical tensions and climate-change-related weather events has made Sangean’s emergency radios one of its bestselling products. Other water-, dust- and drop-proof models from its extensive Bluetooth-ready range appeal to the growing number of people who are interested in spending time outdoors. The rugged designs, bright colours and metal cages are a far cry from the wireless gathering dust in grandma’s front room and younger listeners are tuning in.

Yang oversees a global business and Sangean is dialling up its investment in the long-term future of radio. More than half of the staff at its headquarters are dedicated to research, development and testing. Radios are set inside anechoic chambers – cavernous rooms lined with jagged foam that absorb every echo – to measure sound and reception with precision, before being blasted with heat, water and dust to ensure that they can survive real-world extremes.They are also exposed to electromagnetic interference and electrostatic shocks – the invisible jolts and disruptions that can take lesser devices out of action. “It has to work when you most need it,” says Yang, who believes that durability is the baseline and design the differentiator.

Sangean is one of the last family-run independent firms dedicated to radios. Its largest market is Europe, where decades of broadcasting culture sustains demand. Beyond its own label, the firm manufactures for other brands at its factory in southern China. Yang’s son, Kai, is now considering where to take the brand next. “We’ll try to expand,” he says. That means more categories, including models integrated with furniture and outdoor radios for camping. He is also aware of a growing yearning for the past, as younger buyers gravitate towards objects that feel and look simpler. “There’s a trend for a retro style, with tactile analogue dials instead of digital buttons,” he says. For Kai, the task is less about defending radio than redefining it. “Every market has different tastes. Japan wants precision; the US likes bigger radios; Europe expects quality. But radios are still useful everywhere.”

WR-9

Compact and polished, this wooden radio offers 30 hours of play on a full battery charge. An external antenna boosts reception well beyond that of typical pocket sets, while its warm acoustic profile proves that small can still mean substantial.

ATS-909X2

A radio for the globally curious. Beyond AM and FM, it tunes in to short-wave signals that span continents – and even air-traffic chatter in select countries. It’s precise, stable and made for those who still relish radio’s long reach.

U7HD

This robust workhorse is built to handle noise and grit, whether on a construction site or at a backyard barbecue. Waterproof, dustproof and seriously tough, it delivers clear HD broadcasts and can even survive a fall from the second floor of a building.

WR-101

This retro-styled tabletop is set in wood with a woven speaker grille. It features precise analogue tuning, a backlit dial scale and tone controls to shape the sound. Solid and handsome, it holds its own even in spacious contemporary rooms.

The bold redesign that put Austin’s Blanton Museum on the global map

Until 2018, many people in Austin – let alone Texas or, indeed, the world – hadn’t heard of the Blanton Museum of Art. “People couldn’t find our front door,” the museum’s director, Simone Wicha, tells Monocle. “You’d have to spend a lot of time describing where the museum was.” But when “Austin”, Ellsworth Kelly’s otherworldly art chapel, touched down among the science blocks and faculty car parks of the University of Austin at Texas (UT), giving directions became a lot easier. The chapel, which heralded the start of the Blanton’s rebirth, has now been joined by 15 12-metre-tall fibreglass “petals”, part of a $38m (€33m) transformation of the museum by Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta.

Wicha’s tenure began in 2011 and has taken in a number of destabilising challenges – turbulent Texan and national politics, coronavirus and the museum director’s perennial albatross, funding – but last year’s redesign feels like a crowning achievement. Despite being just a kilometre from the Texas Capitol, the fairly nondescript nature of the Blanton’s two buildings and the fact that they faced each other across a tree-filled plaza meant that the museum’s entrance was shrouded until the redesign. The space between the buildings became a short cut for students seeking a quick route on to campus. “Bikes were barrelling through,” says Wicha. “If you were trying to walk from one building to another, it wasn’t the safest environment.”

Wicha collaborated with Snøhetta’s founder, Craig Dykers, a UT alumnus, to reclaim the space with something bold. The resulting petals – works of art in their own right – have created both a shaded piazza (invaluable in the furnace of a Texan summer) and another impossible-to-miss Austin landmark.They are also highly innovative.Their fibreglass stems conduct heat downwards rather than radiating it out, while their hollow shafts feed rainwater into the soil – which will come as no surprise to followers of Snøhetta’s work. Neither should the incorporation of plant life into the museum’s grounds.

About 25,000 new plants – many of them drought-resistant North American species – weave around the museum’s buildings, creating a green oasis in the hot heart of the city. “I grew up in Mexico City,” says Wicha. “That sense of a place where people linger and just watch each other was really important to me. And it’s not necessarily in the fabric of all of our cities in the US. Having the Blanton be a place where art, nature and people come together was really important.”

About that art. Four new permanent installations have been created for the museum, the most eye-catching of which is Mexico-born, Texas-based Gabriel Dawe’s “Plexus No 44”, a gossamer rainbow constructed from hundreds of multicoloured threads. Like two new canary-yellow arched vaults that have replaced the old entrances, the integrated artworks bring an inviting pop of colour to the otherwise monochromatic UT campus. It is a Gesamtkunstwerk that has proven irresistible to locals. “People used to go into the galleries and then come out as quickly as they came and get into their car,” says Wicha. “Yesterday I was at the museum until it closed. The vast majority who walked out did not leave. They were either standing in groups or they went and found a chair.”

A reborn Blanton has been a boon for a city looking to pump its ample cultural muscle. Known primarily as a hub for music, in large part due to the huge success of the homegrown SXSW festival, Austin is becoming more famous for its visual arts. The Texan capital’s second gallery week took place this May and its lower rents and access to nature have become a draw for those leaving the bigger coastal cities; Austin’s metro-area population has doubled to more than two million since 2000.

It is something of a bastion of free expression in a state whose Republican government seems to be turning against the arts. In January, Texas police removed several works by photographer Sally Mann from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth for their depictions of child nudity. A few months later, a bill was introduced to the state legislature that would have penalised museums for displaying material deemed obscene or harmful.This didn’t pass but it was symptomatic of a state and a country whose leaders are seeking to censure institutions, often connected to higher education, that they believe represent the “enemy within”.

This must be a tricky time to be the director of a university art museum. “It hasn’t affected the Blanton’s programme,” says Wicha. “Texas has always been a place that challenges and pushes.There were gun laws that we had to navigate that were different to what was going on in other museums around the country. There was a statewide ban on dei [diversity, equity and inclusion] that came much sooner than nationally. Some of my colleagues across the country are now having to navigate some of the same waters.” Still, while the national scene looks choppy, the people of Austin are still basking in the glow of a refurb that has put their city and its premier art museum firmly on the international map.

From pizza in the Alps to Japanese fine-dining in Helsinki: Where to eat next

1.
Alto Pizza
Bolzano

Parkhotel Mondschein has opened a pizzeria in the former dining hall of the South Tyrol region’s first inn. Brothers Moritz and Klaus Dissertori decided against a Neapolitan concept. Instead, they use a light spelt and wholewheat dough and incorporate locally sourced ingredients: the charcuterie comes from butcher shop Alter Keller in Trentino and the vegetables are from the restaurant’s garden.

The interior design was overseen by Christina Biasi-von Berg, the founder of Merano-based studio Biquadra. She decided to keep the original tiled stove and the belle époque stuccos, and freshened up the wooden counter with a white marble top. Spoilt for choice? Klaus’s favourite item on the menu is the romana with grilled artichokes and pecorino.
Via dei Bottai 25, Bolzano

2.
Keit
Berlin

“Berlin can do everything but bread,” was a fair criticism until a few years ago. That reputation is crumbling thanks to a new crop of sourdough-focused bakeries. Leading the charge is Keit, founded in 2019 by former Adidas creatives Thanos Petalotis and Kolja Orzeszko. “We’re making bread from Berlin, for Berlin,” says Petalotis.

The bakery’s third and latest outpost has just opened in Kreuzberg, created by US designer Michael Burman. At its centre is a granite millstone-turned-counter. Walls are clad in handmade paper, while the benches are made from Douglas fir. The founders’ mantra is less but better – and then better still.
keit.berlin

3.
Belimbing
Singapore

With three successful outposts, The Coconut Club is driving Singapore’s food scene forward with sister restaurant Belimbing. Named after an indigenous fruit still rarely spotted in kitchens, it champions lesser-known aspects of Singaporean food.

Chef Marcus Leow, a veteran of Michelin-starred kitchens such as London’s Ikoyi and Iggy’s in Singapore, gives fresh inflections to familiar flavours. Rojak, a salad tossed with shrimp paste, is amped up with slow-cooked prawn shells, belacan (fermented shrimp paste), shaved ginger flower, Japanese firefly squid, pickled strawberries and powdered dried cuttlefish. It might sound like a tricksy-sounding combo but the result is delicious. Leow shows how far Singaporean cuisine has come and points to the distance that it can still cover.
269a Beach Road, Singapore 199546

Madre Mezcal
Oaxaca

If mezcal is the secret to Mexico’s festive spirit, then Madre Mezcal’s bottles are well worth a toast. Micro batches are made the ancestral way: by roasting agave plants in a pit, fermenting the resulting sugary liquid and distilling it in clay pots. Try the Tequila Blanco, made using blue agave, or the Ensamble Mezcal, a mixture of Espadín and Tobasiche varieties.
madremezcal.com

4.
Shii
Helsinki

Shii doesn’t make much of an impression from the street. But step inside and the atmosphere shifts as your eyes adjust to the low lighting. Here, every detail feels deliberate. “We want people to slow down the moment they walk in,” says chef Nadim “Nadi” Nasser, who opened the space backed by Helsinki’s Financier Group. “There’s a lot of noise in the world. We try to offer something quieter.”

The kitchen’s approach is rooted in Japanese tradition but flexible in its sourcing. Spanish sea bass, Atlantic golden-eye snapper and Japanese hamachi are dry-aged in-house and served alongside locally sourced vegetables. Some ingredients are flown from Japan but the philosophy is about restraint, not purism. “We don’t want to imitate Tokyo,” Nasser says. “This is Helsinki. It should also taste like Helsinki.”
shii.fi

Stuzzi Hot Sauce
South Tyrol

The Alps might not be synonymous with hot sauce but South Tyrol’s aptitude for winemaking translates surprisingly well to condiments. Stuzzi’s creators have plenty of industry experience: US winemakers Carla and Richard Betts have teamed up with Singaporean chef Ethel Hoon and South Tyrolean chef Jakob Zeller of Restaurant Klösterle in Austria’s Zug valley. The result is a streamlined bottle containing dried Calabrian chillies, distilled vinegar and a pinch of salt. Stuzzi also sidesteps brash branding to channel the refinement of Italy’s most elegant province.
stuzzihotsauce.com

Take a tour of The Shelborne, a freshly revamped art deco hotel in South Beach, Florida

The word “iconic” is chronically overused but it is perfectly applicable to the venerable fleet of art deco hotels being relaunched along South Beach’s Collins Avenue. The Raleigh is set to reopen as a Rosewood, while The Shore Club will become part of the Auberge Resorts Collection. And then there is the beautiful Shelborne, built in 1940.

The property underwent its first renovation in the 1950s, when Miami modernism pioneer Morris Lapidus added the pool, cabanas and more guest rooms. Now, Proper Hotels has applied the latest licks of paint and lively finishes to the 251 guest rooms designed by ADC & Tuneu. “Being able to bring it back to life in such a beautiful way was very exciting for the team,” says Guy Chetwynd, the managing director of The Shelborne by Proper. The hotel’s beach club is only steps from the sea but the best place to spend an afternoon is by the pool amid the mint-green daybeds and parasols – ideally with a drink in hand and bossa nova on the breeze.

shelborne.com

Three new hotels worth a reservation: Exploring Villa Pétrusse, The Eve Sydney, and The Telegraph Tbilisi

1.
Villa Pétrusse
Luxembourg

A short stroll from the Adolphe Bridge stands the stately Villa Pétrusse. Despite its scale, the building retains the intimacy of a family retreat. Following a five-year renovation, it’s now a hotel that’s part of the Relais & Châteaux group. The listed 1880 townhouse is in Ville Haute, the oldest district of the grand duchy’s capital.

French interior designer Tristan Auer transformed the 22 guest rooms, aided by artisans from the region: think hand-painted wallpaper, neo-gothic fireplaces and pieces by Luxembourgish painter Sosthène Weis. Chef Kim de Dood – fresh from Michelin-starred kitchens in cities from Kuala Lumpur to Dubai – runs Le Lys restaurant. Highlights on the menu include eel with lait ribot (buttermilk) and monkfish with yuzu kosho (a Japanese seasoning).
villapetrusse.lu

2.
The Eve
Sydney

This 102-key hotel in Redfern’s dining and lifestyle mecca Wunderlich Lane is part of a broader project by SJB design studio’s Adam Haddow, Daniel Baffsky of landscape architecture firm 360 Degrees, Allan Vidor of developer Toga Group and George Livissianis, the interior architect behind Sydney restaurants Olympus and Lottie. Beyond the red-tiled entrance, Bar Julius features ceiling murals by artist Louise Olsen, while leafy gardens pay tribute to a nursery that flourished on the site almost 200 years ago. It’s a place to unwind, with greenery framing its public spaces and the rooftop pool.
theevehotel.com.au

3.
The Telegraph
Tbilisi

In the 1960s the Central Post Office and Telegraph building linked Georgia to the world from Rustaveli Avenue, one of Tbilisi’s main thoroughfares. Now discerning travellers fill the space. Reimagined by Shanghai-based architects Neri&Hu, the building reopened in June – this time as 239-key hotel The Telegraph. “Our aspiration was that it would become a piazza for the city,” says Lyndon Neri, half of the design duo. The Georgian capital is brimming with creativity and culture, and the Telegraph – with its library, courtyard garden by Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf and Thai restaurant by chef Rose Chalalai Singh – is right at the heart of the buzz. Tatuza, the city’s top jazz club, hums into the night downstairs.
telegraphhotel.com

Inside Iittala’s glass factory, where fashion meets fire

On an autumn afternoon, the Iittala glass factory hums with a rhythm that has remained largely unchanged for more than 140 years. The air is heavy with heat from the furnace, which roars at 1,450C as glassblowers – masters of a craft that can’t be learnt at school – pull glowing masses of molten glass from the fire. They blow and shape the material in a way that feels both age-old and modern. “I spend every other week here,” says Janni Vepsäläinen, Iittala’s creative director. “This is the most inspiring place. It’s where the magic happens.”

Vepsäläinen, who took the helm in spring 2023, comes not from the homeware sector but from fashion – knitwear, to be precise. But the pull of Iittala’s heritage, its craft and its factory proved irresistible. “When I was approached about this role I couldn’t say no,” she tells Monocle. “Being Finnish, I grew up with Iittala. It felt like I was joining a family.”

Her background shapes her creative vision. She describes having an “epiphany” as a student when she discovered that she could make her own fabrics: selecting yarns, colours and techniques to create something from scratch. Visiting Iittala’s factory during her interviews for the creative-director role, she felt the same spark. “I was again in front of a material being shaped and formed right there and then,” she says. “I had never done glassware design but I realised that the process was the same. Both knitwear and glassblowing are about craftsmanship and century-old techniques that can be used to create something modern.”

Her conviction that disciplines can inform and enrich one another underpins her philosophy at Iittala. “Creativity should know no boundaries,” she says. “The best projects are always born from conversations between creative fields. When you’re new to something, you ask different questions. You see the possible in the impossible.”

One of Vepsäläinen’s recent projects was a collaboration with London-based musician Damsel Elysium, in which glassblowers crafted glass instruments that were used to compose new pieces. “It was about stretching the material, pushing the boundaries of what glass can do, then bringing in a completely different form of expression – music. That’s the kind of project that excites me.”

She has also introduced a fashion-inspired rhythm to the brand by instituting two seasonal drops every year – concept-driven collections that tell stories beyond individual products. “That’s completely new to Iittala,” she says. “It’s about creating coherence, not just through products but through campaigns and the whole expression of the brand.” The forthcoming autumn collection, for example, includes the company’s first scented candles that draw directly from glassmaking’s essence. The scents are named Sand, Fire and Water – all integral to the process.

Next year, Iittala will celebrate the 90th anniversary of Alvar Aalto’s Savoy vase with a series of collaborations reimagining the avant-garde spirit of the 1930s original. “When it was first presented, journalists hated it so much that they threw it out of taxi windows,” she says. “Now it’s our crown jewel. That story tells you that Iittala has always been about pushing boundaries.”

For Vepsäläinen, keeping the brand relevant is as much about the future as it is heritage. “We can’t just be a museum,” she says. “We love our history, but we have to use it as inspiration to guide us into the future.”

She says that Iittala’s DNA consists of three elements: Finnish identity, craftsmanship and exploring creative frontiers. Vepsäläinen sees untapped potential in allowing disciplines such as fashion and homeware to collide. “There is always something to learn from different parts of culture,” she says. “The best artists are the people who are brave enough to ask those questions.” She points to global design fairs, which she notes are increasingly less about single industries than about cultural conversations that bring together designers, musicians, artists and thinkers.

Asked what she hopes her time at Iittala will be remembered for, Vepsäläinen says, “I would like people to think of our curiosity, the conversations that we started and the opportunities that we gave different creatives to explore glass and design.” Her leap from knitwear is proof of what can be achieved when creative boundaries are crossed.

Can you create an art scene from scratch? Why real art can’t be engineered

“A picture looks so remote when it hangs glassed and framed on the wall,” says E H Gombrich in his 1950 book, The Story of Art. Indeed, when you imagine a lively art scene, it’s unlikely that you would include the white walls of a museum where the work could eventually end up. You might picture Keith Haring in 1980s New York, adding charm to the grotty subway with chalk squiggles before a night out with Madonna and Basquiat. Or maybe you are cast further back to bohemian Montparnasse, where Modigliani and Soutine share studios and art dealers while bemoaning their inability to sell a painting. Collectively, these artists, along with gallerists, collectors, poets, philosophers and hangers-on, banded together to sketch the hazy outlines of their “scene”. And whether in down-at-heel Manhattan or on the buzzy Left Bank, it was the scenes that shaped the artists too.

Today, there’s a steady stream of what press releases call “cultural hubs” popping up around the world. In early September, a refurbished sgraffito-covered Soviet cinema in Almaty opened its doors as Kazakhstan’s first private cultural institution. The Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture aims to provide a new and much-needed platform for artists from the region. Head further along the Silk Road and a 20th-century tram depot and diesel station has just been revived as Tashkent’s shiny new Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA). It will be joined by the Tadao Ando-designed State Art Museum of Uzbekistan next year.

Though the plans are striking, the former Soviet state appears more pleased with building the largest exhibition space in Central Asia than with what will be inside. Building an enormous museum with a famous Japanese architect is a sure-fire way of bringing more visitors to your city, but it’s tourism – rather than culture – that’s the main goal here. 

Art makes for excellent tourist attractions and it lends its destination a new note of prestige. At their best, museums draw on their region’s deep artistic histories and open them up to a new audience, while allowing locals the chance to see world-class work in their home city. But something is lost when these scenes are engineered, marketed and managed rather than given the space to spring up organically. 

No matter where it’s viewed, great art is transportive – but it should also invite conversation. An “art scene” relies on creating the right environment for that dialogue and for the next generation of artists to take risks. Visual art is impossible to separate from other topics such as music, literature and, ultimately, politics. A scene extends beyond museum doors, and community is just as important as curation. A purely top-down approach risks your “scene” being just some good-looking pictures glassed and framed on the wall.

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The Waldorf Astoria’s lavish renovation blends its original splendour with gorgeous modern luxury

There are few hotels as storied as Manhattan’s Waldorf Astoria. In the grand, chandelier-filled ballroom, Albert Einstein gave a speech and Ella Fitzgerald once sang. The hotel was also home to luminaries such as Cole Porter, who lived in a suite that was later taken over by Frank Sinatra. Marilyn Monroe and Herbert Hoover were residents at this grandest of grandes dames too.

Founded in the 1890s, the Waldorf Astoria moved into its art deco building, steps from Grand Central Station, on Park Avenue in 1931. Closed since 2017 for an eight‑year restoration that reportedly cost $2bn (€1.72bn), the hotel has at last reopened. One bold aim was reducing the 1,400 guest rooms. Today it has 375 rooms and suites, and 372 private residences. “You can’t run a 1,400-room luxury hotel [these days],” Dino Michael, senior vice-president and global head for Hilton’s luxury brands, tells Monocle. Conrad Hilton won the managing rights in 1949 with his corporation buying it in 1972 before a sale to China’s Anbang Insurance Group in 2014. “The world has moved on,” he adds, while suggesting that the demand for branded residences has been rising. The rooms are designed by Pierre-Yves Rochon in soft grey with white furnishings and art deco motifs on geometric pendant lamps and patterned doorknobs.

Another addition is the Portes Cochères (discreet porches) on 49th and 50th Streets, where guests, greeted by staff in Nicholas Oakwell-designed uniforms, can slip into a marble-clad lobby on the lower-ground floor. At American brasserie Lex Yard by chef Michael Anthony, there are several takes on – you guessed it – the Waldorf salad: the original features celery, apples, grapes, walnuts and a lemon dressing. As the building was picked apart and layers of paint were peeled back and sandblasted, the team unearthed wonders including original marble pillars, embossed walls and even smoke-stained murals on the ceiling in the Silver Corridor, built to mimic Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors.

The main lobby, known as Peacock Alley, originally linked two separate hotels – the Waldorf and the Astoria were subsequently connected – and in it you’ll spy a walnut-and-copper clock commissioned by Queen Victoria, as well as Cole Porter’s mahogany Steinway piano. “It’s in perfect condition and someone plays it every night,” says the senior vice-president, Michael. “We’re living in a time when people are just overwhelmed with homogenisation,” he adds. “Wherever you go, it’s kind of copy-and-paste. This is real and authentic. They don’t build things like this any more.” By 17.00 on a Thursday, before the first piano note even sounds, the lobby buzzes with energy. Patrons cluster at the bar, sipping martinis, playing their part in a century-old ritual.
waldorfastorianewyork.com

Inside a brutalist US embassy reborn as London’s newest Rosewood hotel

For decades a sculpted golden eagle loomed over London’s Mayfair as the embodiment of US diplomatic might. It still presides over Grosvenor Square – but now as the gilded emblem of the UK capital’s newest luxury hotel.

The brutalist landmark that once served as the US embassy was unveiled in 1960 by Finnish-American industrial designer Eero Saarinen. Its chequerboard stone windows made a disruptive statement amid the Georgian residences that lined the square. Long rumoured to contain a CIA office, it carried all the intrigue of a Cold War stronghold. The sculpted eagle, whose wings span 11 metres, was created in Brooklyn by Theodore Roszak, who cast it from aluminium sourced from B-52 bombers once deployed as a deterrent against the Soviet Union. The hotel group Rosewood won the coveted redevelopment opportunity in 2017, commissioning David Chipperfield Architects to transform the site. With 30 new entrances, the former fortress has literally thrown open the doors to a landmark that was once strictly off-limits.

Redeveloping the embassy presented engineering challenges: a four-storey excavation, delicate heritage preservation and the retention of Saarinen’s striking angular façade. The hotel has almost doubled the footprint of the original embassy. There are 144 houses and suites – each averaging 185 sq m, comparable to a large Mayfair flat. The Eagle Bar on the seventh floor fosters Manhattan-style rooftop culture. Parisian designer Joseph Dirand has layered art deco detailing with mid-century glamour in the interiors. The dining offering is immense, with the first European outpost of New York’s Carbone, alongside the hotly anticipated revival of London institution Le Caprice.

As for the eagle, it was so synonymous with the US embassy that the plan was to relocate it to its new site. But when Saarinen’s building achieved Grade II status in 2009, the sculpture was legally bound to its original perch. So the formidable bird continues to preside over Grosvenor Square, watching on.
rosewoodhotels.com

Read next: The Monocle City Guide to London, featuring the best hotels, restaurants and retail spots in the UK capital