Issues

The rise of Rolser: How Spain’s iconic trolley brand is rolling into international hearts

Well-crafted everyday objects often hide their greatness in plain sight. Consider the shopping trolley. Spanish manufacturer Rolser has spent almost 60 years developing sleek, durable designs that make life easier. These fabric-covered, two-wheeled trolleys might be associated with older people doing their weekly shop but you’ll find a Rolser trolley in the homes of 63 per cent of Spaniards, according to the family-run company. Meanwhile, on the streets of Barcelona or Madrid, you’re as likely to spot artists ferrying paint and brushes in their Rolser as you are to see families out for a day at the beach using one to stow umbrellas, chairs and snacks.

Rolser was founded in 1966 as a maker of palm and wicker baskets. That it is now a fixture of life in Spain attests to its durability as a brand and the reliable quality of its products. Some 80 per cent of the company’s manufacturing takes place at its headquarters in Pedreguer, a town roughly halfway between Valencia and Alicante.

Surrounded by lemon orchards and a stone’s throw from the Mediterranean, Pedreguer is the ancestral home town of the Server family. Cousins Mireia and Vicent Server are the co-CEOs of Rolser and the third generation of the family to lead the business. When Monocle visits, the pair guide us through its 21,000 sq m facility, where we see workers busily feeding aluminium tubing into a purpose-built machine, which cuts and folds the metal into the frames that give the trolleys their distinctive shape. More than 100 employees work in the factory, where some 2,500 units roll off the production line every day. Producing an average of half a million trolleys per year, the company pulled in nearly €20m of revenue in 2024.

Rolser has long been the top choice of discerning Spanish matriarchs, who have a nose for high-calibre goods. But the brand now also ships to more than 60 countries and has a second factory in Vietnam, founded in 2018; there it produces textiles, such as William Morris prints, to serve equally selective consumers in Australia, China, Singapore and Japan.

The heart of the business, however, remains in Pedre­guer. “We have very special ties to this land,” says Vicent, over the din of workers snapping wheels onto chassis on a nearby assembly line. “By creating work for the community, we threw our support behind the people of this area and tried to foster an industry that wasn’t tourism. In itself, tourism is good – but over the years local manufacturing has largely been snuffed out.”

On the factory floor, Olivia Fornés Agulles is rhythmically working on the final assembly and packing of Rolser’s signature trolley, the Plegamatic, which folds up like a handbag and can be draped over the shoulder when empty. This year will mark 40 years since Fornés Agulles joined the company, for which her sister, brother-in-law, nephew and ex-husband also work. “At this point, it’s simply love that keeps me here,” she says with a smile. “I love this company. It has given me so much.”

Mireia tells Monocle that Rolser has a deep culture of co-operation, which starts with the family. “In the end, everyone here has the same aim,” she says. “What people want most is to work in service of a shared dream and to make it a success.” To that end, key departments, such as design and sales, are headed by members of the Server clan and the company’s previous generation of leaders is helping to ensure Rolser’s longevity by advising the new guard and passing down time-tested values (Mireia’s father, Joan, is the company’s president). This approach has kept her wheels on and ensured a stable transition in leadership.

Rolser was the first company in Spain to mass-produce a shopping trolley, and its strong visual branding, coupled with a refusal to manufacture items that didn’t carry the Rolser logo, has made it a household name. Supermarket chains such as Carrefour and popular department store El Corte Inglés faithfully stock Rolser merchandise.

While there are imitators, Vicent says that the company is maintaining its edge by making sure to invest in research and development. “Competition is great because it pushes you,” he says. “We always have two or three major projects under way that normally take about two years to fully develop.”

Such innovations have included treble wheels, which make it easier to take your trolley up flights of stairs, and a version made entirely from recycled materials. Rolser also manufactures ladders and ironing boards; a recent model that’s reminiscent of a surfboard incorporated recycled clothes hangers. (About 55 per cent of the plastic materials used in Rolser products are recycled.)

Mireia is determined to show the world the value of choosing a Rolser trolley over bulky carrier bags. “When I joined the company in 2000, we didn’t have a department that was dedicated to exports,” she says. “We were just selling passively to countries such as France, the Netherlands and the UK.” By 2005, the business had launched an exports division and she began attending trade fairs, such as Frankfurt’s Ambiente, where she could demonstrate the benefits of owning a high-quality shopping trolley to those outside Spain. Rolser’s regular presence at such events has spurred its team to innovate. “Every year we must present something fresh and new,” says Mireia. In 2023 the brand made headway into the US market with a chic yet sustainable model sold at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Rolser recognises that an object that makes your life easier should also be pleasing to the eye. But to its design and marketing teams, true beauty lies in customers’ appreciation for their efforts and the ways in which they use the company’s thoughtfully developed wares – whether it’s for a commonplace trip to the mercado or a dash to the beach on a sweltering day.

According to one faithful Rolser user, there is no cargo too precious for these trolleys. One story goes that a jeweller in Valencia was looking to transfer his precious goods to a new shop; rather than attract unwanted attention by hiring an armoured car and guards, he enlisted the help of a group of Rolser-toting grannies. Their shopping trolleys were loaded up with boxes of jewellery, with bunches of leeks placed on top – their green ends innocently poking out from the carts’ uppermost fabric flap. Jewellery in tow, the women walked through Valencia just as they would on any other day, safely delivering their cargo to its new home, with passersby unaware of the treasures held within their Rolsers. It’s a fitting anecdote: there is always more than meets the eye when it comes to an unassuming sets of wheels.

Nacho Martín
Design director, Accenture Song
Barrio de Las Letras

What’s in your Rolser?
Normally food but today I’m moving some heavy design tomes with ease.

Describe you Rolser in a word:
Ferrari.

Heather and Oliver Evans
Specialist guide (toddler still unemployed)
Quinta de Los Molinos Park

What’s in your Rolser?
Groceries, dinosaurs, cars, water bottles, peace of mind – and today, my son.

How long have you had it?
More than three years. I’ve had other carritos but once I had a child, I needed an upgrade.

Javier Pérez-Viu
Creative strategist and coach
Outside Alma Nomad bakery, Chamberí

What’s in your Rolser?
Normally it’s sparkling water, tech cables and survival snacks. Today it’s running shoes, electrolytes and a back-up hard drive.

Describe your Rolser in a word:
Faithful.

Daniel Chalmeta
Strategic partner manager, Meta
Outside Mercado Los Mostenses

What’s in your Rolser?
Some eucalyptus for my flat, groceries and some new summer clothes I just bought for my birthday trip to the Baleares.

How long have you had it?
It came with the flat when I rented it and I use it more than I expected.

Eva Yatsutko
Painter
Walking through Malasaña

How long have you had your Rolser?
I’m a newbie. Until a year ago I was using only backpacks.

What’s in your Rolser?
Food. Today I’m carting vegan empanadas, four types of cheese, kiwi juice and kefir.

Marisa Santamaría
Researcher, design curator and teacher
Plaza de Olavide, Chamberí

Where are you going?
To fully restock my fridge because I’ve been in Milan for two weeks.

How long have you had your Rolser?
There’s been a Rolser in my house since I can remember. They simplify the heavy slog of daily life.

Jenni Dawes
Future visualisation teacher
Walking through Lavapiés

Where are you coming from?
I’m on my way back with all the materials from a workshop I run called How to Remember the Future.

How do you “roll”?
Mindfully.

Yoeri Zavrel
Eyewear designer
Walking through Conde Duque

What’s in your Rolser?
Usually market-fresh groceries but today I’m carrying boxes of eyewear deliveries from my brand (Sample Eyewear, if you’re asking).

How do you “roll”?
Like greased lightning.

Mikolaj Bielski
Artistic director, Réplika Teatro
Barrio de Argüelles

What’s in your Rolser?
Imagination, surprises and uncertainty – props basically.

How do you “roll”?
Slightly overflowing, keeping it together, holding space for small producers.

Fabián Sobrino
Real-estate agent
Leaving Lidl in Malasaña

How long have you had your Rolser?
A few years but I wish I’d had it longer – it’s the best.

What’s in your Rolser?
The heaviest things, whatever fits. It’s a good alternative to plastic bags.

Violeta Dai
Art and project director
Outside Mercado Barceló

What’s in your Rolser?
Today there are plants, a vase of flowers, a bunch of rocks, a bag of earth and tree bark – for a photoshoot, I promise.

Describe your Rolser in a word:
Señora.

Read next: By opting for the trolley bag, young urbanites are proving that granny knows best

Inside Royal Caribbean’s Nordic-built ‘megaship’ that’s making waves in the shipbuilding industry

At 365 metres long and 20 decks high, the scale of the Star of the Seas is more in keeping with a moveable skyscraper than a boat. At its handing-over ceremony at Meyer shipyard in Turku, owners Royal Caribbean confirmed that it was the largest cruise ship ever built – an honour that it shares with its less-than-humbly-named sister vessel, Icon of the Seas.

What’s on board? Eight themed neighbourhoods, a waterslide taller than most office buildings, an ice rink, a surf simulator and room for as many as 7,000 passengers.

The logic of megaships may seem out of sync with the current trend towards smaller hotels and trips rooted in a sense of place and ‘authenticity’ – a term that’s open to scrutiny – but the cruise industry is buoyant and the vessels seem to be getting bigger as the industry grows.

Washington based Cruise Lines International says that almost 40 million people will take a cruise in 2025, with many more considering taking the plunge for the first time. Size brings efficiency, variety and, if you ask the operators, a sense of total escape. These ships are not only a means of seeing the world but also a destination: a hotel, shopping centre, theme park and tropical island all in one.

Shipbuilding is a major force in Finland. It employs 30,000 people and contributes €12bn to the economy every year. In Turku that strength is matched by momentum. Four more vessels of the same class are in the works, ensuring that shipbuilding – and, as brands see it, world-building – remains a modern point of pride for Finland’s oldest city.

Read next:
Turning the tide: The shipbuilding company reviving a small Midwest town

How Bofill’s radical ‘living space’ became one of Europe’s most visionary design headquarters

It’s difficult to visit Barcelona and not experience the work of Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. The design studio, commonly known simply as the Taller (pronounced “tayer”), is responsible for Barcelona Airport’s Terminal 1, whose sweeping, wing-like roof welcomes international travellers to the Catalonian capital. During your descent, you might spot the Taller’s sail-shaped W Hotel at the edge of the Mediterranean, one of the defining features of the city’s new port area. Then, on the drive from the airport into central Barcelona, you may see a surrealist red structure. Named Walden 7, it’s a striking housing project that combines public and private realms. Though the Taller’s founder and namesake designer, Ricardo Bofill, died in 2022, the firm still looms large in Catalonia.

“But we don’t belong to Barcelona,” says Ricardo’s son Pablo, as he welcomes Monocle to the Taller’s headquarters, La Fábrica, which sits beside Walden 7. The practice, which Ricardo founded in 1963, might be based in Barcelona but Pablo is keen to point out that it has always had a global footprint. (Its projects range from Les Arcades du Lac, a social-housing complex near Paris that was completed in 1982, to Tokyo’s Shiseido office building, finished in 2001.) Pablo has been the firm’s CEO since 2010; under his direction, it has grown from about 50 to 250 people and is now working on projects in new regions, such as West Africa and the Gulf.

For many, working for a celebrated father might have felt like a natural step. Pablo, however, initially never gave much thought to the idea of building on his family legacy. “I had an education in France, where they taught us that the worst thing possible was to work with friends or in a family business,” he says. “We learned that if you work with friends, you’ll end up with none – and that if you work with your family, it means that you aren’t able to do anything on your own.”

Pablo took that advice to heart. During his twenties, he worked as director of extension at Mixta Africa, which was developing affordable housing in Senegal, Mauritania, Tunisia and Egypt. One of the shareholders was the International Finance Corporation, a subsidiary of the World Bank Group. Ironically, it was an experience that inadvertently set him up to run the Taller. The wheels were set in motion when project opportunities for his father’s studio began drying up after the financial crisis of 2008. “It got to the stage where they only had two or three months of work in the pipeline,” says Pablo. “That was the worst thing possible because my father was someone who lived through the work that he was doing, rather than through his hobbies. Closing the practice would have been a kind of death.” Family discussions naturally turned to what to do with the firm – as well as La Fábrica, a building that had been a near four-decade labour of love for Ricardo – should it be forced to shut up shop.

Ricardo was born in 1939 to an architect-builder father and an arts patron mother. In 1957, during the authoritarian regime of Francisco Franco, he was expelled from Barcelona’s architecture school as a result of his left-wing beliefs. Undeterred, he completed his education in Geneva before returning to his hometown in 1963. Here, at the age of 23, he established his own practice, radically breaking from tradition by assembling design teams composed of artists, poets, engineers, philosophers and sociologists. Within a few years he had built a reputation as a renegade in his field, creating structures that sought to tackle housing shortages and lift spirits.

By the early 1970s, Ricardo was on the hunt for a live-work space in which to continue edging his architectural vision forward. His planning concept defied Barcelona’s bylaws, so he looked to the metropolis’s periphery. There, he came across a cement factory that was due to close in mid-1973. He quickly acquired the entire complex: 30 silos, subterranean galleries, cavernous engine rooms and some surrounding acreage. Over the next two years, he oversaw its transformation into architectural offices, archives, exhibition spaces and a private residence. The ambitious renovation involved strategic demolition, subtle additions and the extensive planting of eucalyptus, palm and cypress trees. To enhance the monumental feeling of the industrial building, Ricardo cut tall windows into the space, flooding it with Mediterranean light and creating an atmosphere of contemplative calm. The building incorporated elements from his personal and professional lives, and combined the old and the new. It was a kind of architecture and an approach to work that Pablo eventually decided that he wanted to preserve. “I felt that I had the responsibility to give part of my life to my family and transform the Taller and La Fábrica into a new reality,” says Pablo. “My brother Ricardo Jr, an architect, made the decision to join my father in 2010 and so did I.”

With Ricardo, Pablo and Ricardo Jr (who has since left the practice) steering the ship together, things turned around quickly. They won a major project in Morocco: the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Benguérir, which was completed in 2016. This was followed by competition win after competition win and the firm’s workflow improved.

“The most important thing for me during that period was to give life to my father,” says Pablo. “And the only way to do so was to return to the origins of the office. So we started bringing people from different backgrounds and disciplines around the table. At the time, we had no money and not many projects. That actually made things easier because then you can only call on people who are as crazy as you – people who are very passionate about what they want to do and don’t mind some instability.”

In the 15 years since, this motley group has helped the firm to build a portfolio of work that spans continents. When Monocle visits, there’s a meeting for furniture firm BD Barcelona, helmed by its founder, Catalonian furniture designer Oscar Tusquets Blanca. (Pablo is a newly minted shareholder in the venture.) They are gathering in La Fábrica’s El Jardín de las Delicias (Garden of Delights), when artist and architect Guillermo Santomà floats through. An independent creative, Santomà is collaborating with the Taller on a project in Georgia. “I have my own studio but I also work here,” he says. “It’s a place where you share information and grow together.”

Following closely behind Santomà are students from Porto Academy, who are being given a tour of the space (“Students dream of coming here,” says Taller architect Tamar Briones, who is leading the cohort). Meanwhile, a French design practice has joined some of the Taller team in an open-plan meeting room, where the two firms are exchanging ideas for upcoming projects. “We are always trying to bring interesting people in to help us be better,” says Dimitri Davoise, a partner at the Taller, who is helming the meeting. “The Taller’s outlook today comes from its early years. It’s all about bringing people from different origins and disciplines together to build a project. Influences come from philosophy, poetry and art.”

The return to such an outlook is mirrored in the way that La Fábrica is evolving. Despite making the space usable after its initial two-year renovation in the mid-1970s, Ricardo never saw the complex as a finished project. “It’s a living place – not something that you need to preserve or protect,” says Pablo. “This was defined by my father and transmitted to me. It’s a space where we need to have no nostalgia. It needs destruction and reconstruction, demolition and change.”

Hernán Cortés agrees with the sentiment. “La Fábrica has always been a living space,” says the Taller partner. He has been working with the practice for almost 20 years and says that a surge in projects since 2020 has seen the complex’s physical spaces completely revolutionised. “Everything has changed over the past four years. Private living areas and gallery spaces have been turned into offices to accommodate the growing workforce. This has shifted the energy. Before, it could sometimes feel like a museum. But now it’s really living.”

Cortés has been at the helm of some of La Fábrica’s most significant recent renovations. A new exterior staircase, engineered to appear as if it’s floating, leads to a once-abandoned mezzanine area that is now a studio for the Taller’s landscape designers. With no direct access previously, the space had long hovered vacant above La Fábrica’s biggest workspace, which is known as “the Cathedral” and contains four rows of desks furnished with lamps by French manufacturer Jieldé and desk chairs by Denmark’s Engelbrechts. Here, industrial ducts from the mid-20th century have also been given new life as air-conditioning systems. “The factory is active,” says Cortés. “It’s living. Everyone who comes through La Fábrica leaves some of their DNA in the project.”

The kitchen has been completely refinished too, with its original Antoni Gaudí chairs retained, alongside Alessi kettles and cheese graters, as well as bentwood pieces by German firm Thonet. Meanwhile, Ricardo’s private residence has undergone its own transformation. While the bedroom – complete with a bathtub at the foot of the bed – received a simple restoration, other areas were more comprehensively reimagined. The cube hall, which once served as Ricardo’s private space for hosting concerts and dinners, now functions as a full working area with clusters of desks. Above this is a dining space that has been repurposed as a meeting area, while a private rooftop garden has been democratised with a sunken conversation pit, making it the perfect spot for intimate staff lunches beneath the Catalonian sun.

In collaboration with Barcelona-based painter Claudia Valsells, the Taller has developed a new colour palette specifically for its projects, with experiments unfolding across the complex. In one grouping of four interconnected silos, an entire floor has been painted a deep emerald green. The exteriors haven’t been forgotten: the Taller’s resident painter, Panxo Juli, is almost continuously giving the walls a fresh lick, ensuring that La Fábrica’s concrete surfaces continue to experiment with the Mediterranean light. “We painted the façades a few years ago and now we’re trying something different,” says Juli. “So we have been conducting tests to see how we want to reinvent it. The good thing is that at La Fábrica we don’t work as architects with plans but collaborate directly with artisans. We reinvent and destroy until we like it.”

All of these spaces are animated by members of the Taller. Desk assignments don’t necessarily correspond to projects, which means that staff are often on the move between buildings, stopping for lunch beneath a grove of olive trees, practising yoga together on a lush lawn or taking smoking breaks in a central courtyard, balancing cigarettes on the edge of Cubo ashtrays by Danese Milano. It’s a sociable approach to work that leads to chance encounters. In this way, the spirit of the workplace responds to the studio’s ambition that no two days – or, indeed, no two projects – be the same.

“We don’t want to define our approach because then we might end up repeating something that we have previously done,” says Pablo. “We want to work in a way that means that we can give new answers to questions. And La Fábrica embodies this: it’s a laboratory of expression, not a place of conservation or patrimony. On the contrary, it reinvents itself through the reality of what we live through.” By responding to the needs of its users and paying respect to the vision of the practice’s founder in the process, La Fábrica is – like all of Bofill Taller de Arquitectura’s work, from airports to public housing projects – a place to be lived in.
bofill.com

Step inside the Swiss lab where pretend patients find real solutions to hospital design

Every few months in Nidau, a village in central Switzerland, people get together
to play doctors and nurses. They gather in a facility the size of a car park, don lab coats and step into an imaginary ward with lightweight walls. A volunteer is chosen to play the patient, another the anaesthetist. “So, you’re here for your shoulder operation?” says someone who
is playing the receptionist.

These make-believe sessions are orchestrated by the very real Swiss Center for Design and Health (SCDH), a public-private partnership that is using design to help healthcare spaces become more efficient and human-centred. The SCDH enables architects and developers to physically try new hospital spaces before they are built, using a purpose-made “extended-reality simulation space” that projects the architect’s floor plan at a 1:1 scale. The SCDH then invites real doctors,  surgeons and healthcare teams into this facsimile to role-play a day on the ward.

“It’s stress-testing the hospital, avoiding errors in the building,” says SCDH managing director Stefan Sulzer, who co-created the centre. “It soon becomes obvious what works and what doesn’t.” For instance, in a recent simulation, an architect discovered that a standard hospital bed wouldn’t fit down the corridor of an existing floor plan. Catching such problems early, says Sulzer, can save patients down the line.

In the public simulation that Monocle attends, the scenario follows a 75-year-old in a wheelchair (actually a sprightly woman in her mid-thirties) on her journey to the operating theatre. The design faults are soon apparent: the reception-desk counter is too high. “Immediately you have a hierarchy,” says Minou Afzali, the head of research at SCDH. “Also, there are patients within earshot in the waiting room. They can hear everything that’s being said.”

SCDH is also helping companies to innovate in healthcare design, from electric “skylights” offering a sense of daylight to bowls that facilitate one-handed eating. At the core of the centre’s thinking is bringing in the end-user earlier. “A hospital can look fantastic,” says Sulzer. “But let’s test it and ensure that it actually works.”  
scdh.ch

Read next: Zürich children’s hospital shows that thoughtful architecture can help patients to recover

Late summer sun? Stunning new luxury escapes in the French Riviera and Milan

Mogo
Milan

Mogo is the latest opening from Burro Studio and Polifonic, with Yoji Tokuyoshi – the chef known for Milan’s lauded Ristorante Tokuyoshi – as a consulting partner. Designed by Giorgia Longoni Studio, it draws on Japanese listening bars, with global fare by chef Simone Montanaro and a round bar serving cocktails such as the black saffron martini. Its interiors have a terracotta and aquamarine palette, with elements of steel, velvet and washi paper that keep things airy by day and intimate by night. Come for the wagyu burgers with tonkatsu sauce and the udon with pork and seasonal vegetables.
mogomilano.com

Les Roches Rouges
Saint-Raphaël, France

Located between Cannes and Saint-Tropez, 1950s hotel Les Roches Rouges reopened in 2017 after a redesign by Paris-based duo Festen. It quickly became a new Côte d’Azur institution. This summer saw a further expansion and renovation by ASL, including the conversion of a neighbouring building. Each of its 25 guest rooms remains faithful to the originals inspired by Eileen Gray and Le Corbu, featuring yellow awnings, butterfly chairs and sea views. “We designed the structure as simply as possible to let the Mediterranean flow through,” says Antoine Ricardou, co-founder of ASL. “Our aim was to harmonise with the surrounding environment.” The same ethos extends to the expanded outdoor areas, which offer more seafront for lounging on – be it by the rock-hewn seawater pool or at one of the hotel’s three alfresco restaurants.
beaumier.com

Can Penn Station be beautiful again, without becoming a political battleground?

When we’re confronted with someone whose political views differ from our own, we tend to wonder how any sensible person could have come to such conclusions – and so decide that they must be making their arguments in bad faith. This dynamic, known in the social sciences as “affective polarisation”, turns disagreements about policy into moral battles. It also seems to be shaping the debate over the renovation of NewYork’s Penn Station. The busiest rail hub in the western hemisphere is widely regarded as among the worst.

It’s poor by any architectural standard but its inadequacies seem all the more pronounced when you compare it to the beaux-arts masterpiece that it replaced, designed by Manhattan firm McKim, Mead & White. From 1910 to 1963, the original Penn Station was the largest indoor space in New York. Its neoclassical style embodied the American Renaissance, a movement that cast the US as the vanguard of Western civilisation.

Between 1963 and 1966, the station’s main hall was demolished and replaced by the Madison Square Garden entertainment complex, while most of the station’s infrastructure was forced underground.The destruction of the old train hall prompted an outpouring of public opposition and is still viewed as a big misstep. Public architecture across the globe has since converged on a style that could be dubbed “dated international municipal minimalism” (let’s call it DIMM for short): economical, functional and forgettable structures of glass, steel and concrete.

It’s striking, then, that two of the four shortlisted designs for the new Penn Station buck this trend. One proposal, ReThinkPennStationNYC using the design of RWC Atelier & Co, would almost replicate the McKim, Mead & White design. Another, the Grand Penn plan from the Grand Penn Community Alliance (GPCA), would restore the station’s colonnaded façade as the entrance to a modern train hall with a classically inspired ceiling of vaulted glass. The other designs are typical of DIMM architecture; neither would be out of place in any modern city.

Every proposal has its strengths and weaknesses, and there’s a good-faith debate to be had about which would best serve New York and the wider region. But the discussion risks being overshadowed by politics. Some progressives have been spooked by the aesthetic conservatism of the Grand Penn plan. The GPCA aims to restore classical grandeur to US civic architecture and has aligned itself with the broader reactionary movement that has grown around Donald Trump. Its goal is to “make America beautiful again”, according to Justin Shubow, one of its leaders.

Coverage of the Penn Station renovation in non-specialist media outlets has focused heavily on the GPCA’s political ties and ideology. These might be legitimate concerns but the controversy has come at the expense of a proper consideration of the shortlisted designs’ architectural qualities. The fixation on the politics behind the Grand Penn proposal over its urban-design implications seems to be down to affective polarisation: for some people, the design is tainted by association with conservatives, as though choosing it would mark a right-wing victory in one of the US’s most progressive cities. That is misguided. Whichever design is chosen, the new station will hopefully outlast its backers and the immediate political context. New Yorkers should be careful not to let prejudice predicate yet more DIMM architecture and determine the outcome of a decision that will shape the city for generations.

Read next: The Monocle City Guide to New York, featuring the best hotels, restaurants and retail spots

How Škoda is responding to China’s EV boom, and shifting the car-making sector up a gear

Europe’s car-makers are stalling. Germany’s automotive exports fell by a quarter between 2016 and 2023, while Italy’s Stellantis, which owns brands such as Fiat, Peugeot and Jeep, produced about 30 per cent fewer passenger cars in the first six months of 2025 than in the same period in 2024. As the industry struggles with weak demand and, in some cases, fines for not complying with the EU’s carbon-emission targets, China’s share of the continent’s electric-vehicle (EV) market is rising swiftly. European registrations of EVs from Chinese brands soared almost 60 per cent in the year to April 2025.

But for all the gloom, there’s a possible path to redemption, lit by the headlights of an unexpected brand: Škoda. Headquartered in the Czech city of Mladá Boleslav, where it was founded in 1895, the firm has become an unlikely champion of the continent’s car industry. Not long ago, Škoda was the butt of jokes about its cars’ perceived unreliability. (“What do you call a Škoda at the top of a hill? A miracle.” Or, “What do you call a Škoda with a sunroof? A skip.”) Now, though, the brand’s image is improving, releases are edging into the affordable luxury sector and its latest all-electric model, Elroq, is taking on the world’s leading EV-maker BYD’s Seal, undercutting its price by more than €11,000.

At the car-maker’s Mladá Boleslav factory, where all of Škoda’s vehicles destined for the European market are manufactured, CEO Klaus Zellmer compares competing against Asia to “a football season”. “First, we were told that the Japanese would march through us, then the South Koreans and now the Chinese,” he says. “New teams will come with brilliant players and conduct their game in an attractive way. We just need to train, get better and stay lean.”

Part of the Volkswagen Group, Škoda overtook Tesla in European electric-car sales this summer. “We are up in terms of sales and profit, and have doubled our battery-EV sales in the first quarter of 2025 compared to last year,” says Zellmer, as production whirrs around him. “So it’s going well.”

In 2022, Škoda launched a brand-identity redesign that included switching to a colour scheme of two different green hues. This year it exhibited at Milan Design Week for the first time as part of a push to broaden the brand’s appeal and improve its design chops. The move sought to challenge any prejudices about the brand that might still persist, says Zellmer. “At Milan, we showed a vision of Škoda that’s different from what people associate with us,” he says. “We have rejuvenated the brand and repositioned it to target new customers.”

Despite their successes, Zellmer and the Škoda team face tough challenges. Though the Volkswagen Group’s EV sales rose in the first half of 2025, recent years have been bumpy, with falling profits and job cuts. Germany, which hosts many of the group’s brands, has seen its economy shrink for two consecutive years, complicating the outlook for businesses and reducing demand. And then there are the US tariffs, which could redirect Chinese car exports from the US to Europe. “[If the US market closes] to China, the country’s cars will have to go elsewhere – and that will be Europe,” says Zellmer. “So it will be even tighter in terms of competition. We will feel that.”

Some of the strategies to stay ahead can be seen on the Mladá Boleslav factory floor. Uniquely in the Volkswagen Group, the production line can produce both electric and internal-combustion-engine (ICE) vehicles. Here, the Elroq and the Enyaq SUV use the same conveyor belt as the Octavia, an ICE model first made in 1996 and still Škoda’s most popular product. “We’re at an advantage,” says Andreas Dick, Škoda’s board member for production and logistics. “This way of working gives us the flexibility to react to changes in the market and customer demand.”

For Škoda, building resilience means never relying on a single market. “Fully concentrating on Europe isn’t a smart strategy,” says Zellmer. “It’s like standing on one leg. If it gets shaky, you might fall. As a global brand, we need to stand on two legs.” Zellmer and his team know this from experience. In 2022, Russia was Škoda’s second-largest market and it had two factories in the country. But after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Western sanctions, the Czech brand left Russia, taking a hit of almost €700m. Škoda’s entry into the Vietnamese market in 2023 – as well as a focus on India, where it has had a manufacturing presence since 2000 – has helped the company to recoup its losses and diversify. “We’re concentrating on Southeast Asia, the Middle East and India,” says Zellmer. “We can see strong potential for growth in these places.”

Škoda is wisely planning ahead but success sometimes comes down to being in the right place at the right time too: namely in Czechia, which, along with the rest of Central Europe, has GDP growth outpacing some of the EU’s leading economies, including France and Germany. Coupled with lower wages and less bureaucracy, the positive economic outlook is adding buoyancy to Škoda. “We have a pragmatic way of enabling business here,” says Zellmer. Ilia Sokolov, who is in charge of assembly shop maintenance, also points to the Czech approach to manufacturing when he meets us on the production floor. “Part of Czechia’s story is its people’s golden hands. It’s in their mentality.”

Škoda says that it is committed to putting customer experience ahead of gimmicks. “You can speak to real people and have them help you and answer any questions,” says Zellmer. “We need that human touch. Instead of running experiments such as only selling online or in a couple of stores, we have an established organisation representing the brand.”

Meanwhile, Škoda remains a value-for-money proposition. “We want to amplify our brand to attract those who might not be looking for a status symbol and are seeking something that is authentic, credible and intuitive,” says Zellmer. Epiq, a new EV planned for next year, will cost a mere €25,000. It’s a smart move that will keep Czech-made car sales moving, even as the continent’s once-proud marques from Germany and Italy seem to be running out of gas.
skoda-auto.com

Japan’s tiny electric vehicle with very big ambitions

Japan’s unusually narrow residential streets call for smaller-than-average vehicles – which is why pint-sized hatchbacks and boxy mini­vans are ubiquitous in the country. Now a tiny new motor that has yet to reach market is attracting an outsized amount of attention. Mibot, designed and built by KG Motors in Hiroshima, is an electric vehicle for one. It can travel for 100km on a single five-hour charge at speeds of up to 60km/h and comes in several colours (the cheery yellow is fetching but there’s also blue, white, ivory and grey). It can hold 45kg of luggage and be charged at home without special equipment. Where other solo vehicles prioritise compactness over comfort, Mibot has air conditioning, speakers and heated seats. And at little more than a metre wide, it navigates narrow streets with ease.

Kazunari Kusunoki, nicknamed Kussun, started as a mechanic and parts supplier. In 2018 he launched a Youtube channel, Kussun Garage; before long, 200,000 followers were tuning in to watch him take apart and customise electric vehicles and minicars. As his audience grew, requests for advice flooded in and, along with three others, Kusunoki started working on the idea of making a mini-EV from scratch. They formed KG Motors in 2022 with Kusunoki as its CEO and set about making the concept a reality.

The start-up quickly attracted investment. It raised ¥100m (€579,000) in its pre-seed round in March 2023 and a further ¥150m (€869,000) in the next round in October that year. The lead investor is Energy & Environment Investment; another is Keylex, a Hiroshima-based parts manufacturer. A supplier to Mazda, Keylex is a key partner in realising Mibot’s unified monocoque body. By the close of funding in February 2025, KG Motors had ¥1.39bn (€8m) to work with.

Kusunoki had been thinking about compact vehicles for years. “I grew up in the city of Kure in Hiroshima, where there are a lot of narrow streets,” he says. “I always wished that there were smaller options available.” Japanese government figures show that about 70 per cent of car owners drive alone during the week. How many people really need a family saloon or SUV for their daily errands? “With the shift towards electric vehicles, I wondered whether regular-sized EVs were really good for the environment and began to think about developing a more efficient model.” The result is Mibot (short for “Minimum Mobility Robot”), designed to provide just the right level of mobility for short-distance solo travel.

Kusunoki was also spurred by a change in the law in 2020 that allowed single-seat EVs on public roads. Mibot has a price tag of just ¥1.1m (€6,400) and the advantage of sitting in a category of light vehicles that requires fewer inspections and has lower taxes than conventional cars. “With low maintenance costs and excellent energy efficiency, it reduces the burden of ownership and environmental impact,” says Kusunoki. It can also receive the latest software updates wirelessly and the design – all done in-house – is a winner.

Hiroshima was an obvious base for the project. “We chose this place because the founding members originally worked here, as well as for the presence of many automotive-related companies in the area,” says Kusunoki. “Also, Mibot is designed to address the pain point of limited transportation options in rural regions. It’s a product from a regional area that offers solutions to local challenges. By developing it primarily in Hiroshima, we also receive support and co-operation from the local government.”

Kusunoki’s ambition for Mibot goes beyond cars. He seeks nothing less than a revival of the dynamism of Japan’s postwar years. Mibot, he hopes, will recapture that sense of optimism and could even help to “make our society vibrant again”. The era of relentless growth might be over but demographic shifts and social change can still spur innovation.

KG Motors now employs about 60 specialists across design, autonomous driving, software development, business, marketing and more. Everyone who sees a Mibot wants one. And with 2,000 pre-orders on the books, the team is working hard to meet the deadline for the first deliveries in Japan in 2026.

The goal is to increase production capacity to up to 100,000 vehicles per year. Hiroshima will remain the base for body manufacturing and Mibot assembly, while Kusunoki hopes to eventually expand the line-up and enter international markets. The young CEO believes that Mibot has the X-factor that has held other small, low-cost solo vehicles back in the past. Most importantly, it puts the joy back into driving. “No matter how low the maintenance costs and environmental impact are,” he says, “it’s meaningless if it’s not fun to ride.”
mibot.kg-m.jp

Meet the daredevil stunt performers helping Europe’s film-making industry reach new extremes

The driver and her passenger stare ahead as the red Jeep begins to flood. Suddenly the nose of the car dips and the cabin fills up with water. As the vehicle sinks, someone shouts, “Action!” The driver whips into a frenzy, banging on the windows and shaking the steering wheel. She struggles with the door before finally forcing it open. Once outside the Jeep, she swims past the windscreen and frees the passenger. The women rise to the water’s surface.

Monocle watches all of this from a special window at the side of the pool. When the hair-raising sequence ends we exhale and applaud the two students who have just completed an important part of their course in underwater stunts. As the safety divers return to their standby positions, the overhead single-girder crane hoists the vehicle out of the pool to allow the next pair to practise their scene.

This is business as usual at the Water Tank, one of Spain’s largest aquatic soundstages. We are in a former warehouse on an industrial estate about 30 minutes by car from central Barcelona. The tank belongs to In Extremis Film Services, founded in 2011 as a special-effects company. The business has since expanded into the stunts sector through its educational programmes, talent agency and gym. It also runs two soundstages, including the Water Tank. In April, In Extremis launched a 3,200 sq m space called Amor Platónico (a play on plató, the Spanish word for “soundstage”), which was recently used to make an advert for Coca-Cola starring Spanish footballer Lamine Yamal.

The various strands of the business and its 70 employees are part of a cohort of dynamic enterprises that has brought plenty of investment into the area in recent years. In 2023, Spain ranked fifth worldwide for feature-film production; it was Europe’s top movie-making country for the third year running.

The central government has thrown its weight behind the sector with a plan known (somewhat clunkily) as “Spain Audiovisual Hub of Europe”, which in 2021 called for an investment of about €1.6bn in audio-visual production over the next four years. It has been a smart strategy: according to a study by the Spain Film Commission, for every euro that is provided as a fiscal incentive for international shoots, €9 are generated for the country’s economy.

The founder of In Extremis, Lluís Rivera, meets Monocle in the fantastical realm of the company’s special-effects workshop. We walk past missiles hanging from the lofty ceiling and a rain-making truck standing at the ready. We enter the facility’s testing floor just in time to find a team of specialists refining a pyrotechnic effect. A fire ignites and spreads nine metres across the floor, its flames rising to waist height. We are dazzled by the light and heat, as black smoke billows up into the powerful ventilation system. For Rivera, fires and explosions are quotidian.

“I have been training for this all of my life,” he says. When Rivera was a child, his father, an industrial engineer who worked for Sony, would encourage him to construct mechanisms for winching his action figures in the family attic. During his experiments, Rivera would occasionally set fire to his Scalextric racetrack. As an adult, he developed an interest in sports such as rock climbing and motocross that would serve him well as he began to make a name for himself in the film industry. During one of his first on-set experiences as a special-effects supervisor, he performed some of the motorcycle stunts himself and tapped his network of daredevil acquaintances to perform the big falls, adding the title of stunt co-ordinator to his repertoire.

“From then on we have done something that doesn’t usually happen in other firms,” says Rivera. “We brought special-effects and stunt specialists under the same umbrella. If a scene calls for a guy to smash through a pane of glass, we’ll bring the guy and the breakaway glass.”

Despite the added efficiency of having a single company handling all of these moving parts, In Extremis spent more than 10 years as the only company in Spain offering both special effects and stunts. Today the former accounts for 70 per cent of the firm’s earnings, while the latter brings in the rest of its €4m annual revenue. In Extremis’s recent special-effects credits include work on a music video for pop star Dua Lipa, while the company co-ordinated stunts for Marlowe, Neil Jordan’s 2022 film-noir homage starring Liam Neeson and Jessica Lange.

Once the flames on the testing floor have been put out, the team readies a set of parachutes for its next project: a film about Álvaro Bultó, who pioneered the use of wingsuits in Spain. Stunt co-ordinator Oscar Dorta approaches with a stack of folded blue-and-yellow parachutes. Dorta’s skills as a stuntman with aerial expertise are unparalleled in the country. He has worked on 70 films and is currently transitioning to acting roles; he hopes to follow in the footsteps of those such as Jackie Chan, who turned from stuntman into movie star.

Dorta produces a photo of himself that shows him dangling from a helicopter during a shoot. It’s clear that he delights in the thrills of his work. He’s also proud of the role that In Extremis has played in reshaping the industry for the 100 or so professional stunt doubles working in Spain. “Since I began my career, the sector has evolved,” he says. “At In Extremis, we have influenced that change by making things official and starting a school with so many students. As the industry has grown, things have changed for the better.”

The Escac Stunt Academy – a collaboration between In Extremis and the Film and Audiovisual School of Catalonia – is the world’s only university-certified programme for stunt specialists. Opened in 2021, it has an average of 100 students per year. The two-year course teaches skills such as how to fall from great heights, combat with and without weapons, the use of firearms and underwater stunts. The campus is a 20-minute drive from In Extremis Club, the company’s state-of-the-art gym, where students, stunt professionals and members of the public train. It is outfitted with a parkour course, Olympic trampolines and air mattresses for aerial acrobatics.

Aarón Vivar, the gym’s general manager and a former Spanish national parkour champion, guides Monocle through the club. “We designed this space ourselves and built it with our own hands,” says Vivar of the two years that it took to create the training space, complete with a climbing wall, a weights room and a boxing gym. “I know the types of jumps that are required and what stunt specialists need to practise. I wanted to address those needs.”

The gym’s tallest platform is seven metres high. It’s where we join Ivy Björg, a student from Iceland, as she practises a challenging move. Björg sets up for a “face off”, in which she launches herself from the platform while facing the quickly approaching ground – an ideal position for the camera to capture her expression. A moment before impact, she flips herself over so that her back presses evenly into the awaiting airbag. “I’m actually afraid of heights,” says Björg, laughing, as she clambers up unharmed. “The first time I climbed up there, I started shaking uncontrollably.”

The gym is a meeting place for an expanding community of stunt professionals, including those represented by In Extremis’s agency. “It’s important to come here to train every day,” says Álvaro Llagostera, a stuntman with black belts in taekwondo, hapkido and kickboxing, who graduated from the stunt academy three years ago. “The people who are responsible for hiring you for shoots are also here every day. It’s quite motivating.”

In Catalonia alone, 4,192 audio-visual projects (including video games and advertisements) were produced between 2020 and 2024. These brought in investments worth €57.9bn and 44 per cent of the projects were for companies based in the US, UK and France. “When a market leader [such as In Extremis] establishes itself here, it also generates an ecosystem that attracts more companies from the film industry,” says Lluís Matas, the city of Sabadell’s deputy mayor for economic promotion and city projection, who also heads the local Film Commission office. “This plays to our advantage.” Matas says city hall prides itself on being “film-friendly”.

However, as digital technologies continue to improve, there’s growing concern about the future of special effects and stunt performance. The impact of generative artificial intelligence was a central theme of the Sag-Aftra union’s 2023 strike against TV and film studios in Los Angeles. This summer, Netflix announced that it had used generative AI in one of its shows for the first time. A study by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers, which has member societies in 111 countries, has predicted that AI-generated audio-visual output will be worth €48bn by 2028 – an annual growth of 85 per cent since 2023 (though the bulk of this output will be seen on social-media platforms and TV broadcasts, rather than in film).

David Honrubia, In Extremis’s director of studies, acknowledges that technology is advancing at a “dizzying” rate. The academy is developing new courses to keep up with this, such as those involving shooting action with drones and motion-capture for game animation. But Honrubia is keen to distinguish between CGI as a digital tool that complements physical stunts and fully AI-generated content. Computer graphics are often used to heighten an action sequence but audiences still hanker for something that is human. “There’s nothing more real than what is truly real,” he says. As In Extremis shows, there’s a thrill in watching people putting themselves in danger in the service of cinema. That’s how to get audiences to hold their breath.
inextremisfilm.com; escac.com

Why working online might be making you less productive

Perhaps online efficiency isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

After the coronavirus pandemic, many people hoped to establish ways of working that would make us more flexible, more productive and happier. Instead, we now find ourselves in a culture of constant distraction and perpetual availability. Digital collaboration has significantly increased; our calendars are filled with calls and meetings from dawn to dusk. We compulsively check work emails and chat threads after hours and on our supposed holidays. Concentration or contemplation is becoming increasingly impossible. The relentless pace of digital processes robs us of every moment of pause and reflection.

Knowledge workers today spend almost 60 per cent of their time using communication tools. The number of meetings that they must sit through has more than doubled since the period before the pandemic. Most employees report lacking sufficient time and energy to complete tasks, and are finding it more difficult to be innovative or to think strategically. Leaders complain that the lack of innovation or groundbreaking ideas within their teams is a problem too.

We are organising and collaborating more and more but creating less and less. We use the most advanced tools available but the quantity and quality of innovation seem to be declining worldwide. At the same time, the promise that technology and self-organisation would allow us to work more efficiently – and thus less – is not being fulfilled. In 2024, German employees logged approximately 1.2 billion overtime hours, more than half of which were unpaid. Work is becoming more tightly scheduled, while also increasing in volume.

It’s all a bit absurd. One of the very companies whose products distract us, keep us in meeting loops and encourage a permanent state of collaboration seems to have suddenly realised that this way of working might not be such a good idea, after all. Microsoft – whose office tools, such as Outlook, bombard us with emails and whose Teams platform enables endless chats and video calls – has said, in effect, “Sorry. It was an oversight. Things aren’t working out so well.”

The Microsoft Work Trend Index, a global, industry-spanning study on the state of our working world, has come to the conclusion that we are “all carrying digital debt”. “The inflow of data, emails, meetings and notifications has outpaced humans’ ability to process it all,” write its authors. “The pace of work is only intensifying. Everything feels important so we spend our workdays trying to get out of the red.”

The leading provider of productivity software is shocked to realise that its tools are making us less productive. Frankly, this has come a little late, as almost all companies have stocked up on such tools and built their workflows around them. So what now? German health-insurance provider IKK Classic recently wanted to find out which types of work bring happiness and which don’t. This topic is central to its business because, as its CEO, Frank Hippler, explains, “Higher job satisfaction has positive effects on mental and physical health.” Since IKK Classic insures many craftspeople, it focused on this sector and commissioned a representative survey. “The results were quite surprising in a positive way,” says Hippler.

It turns out that craftspeople have significantly higher job-satisfaction levels than the average worker. Some 80 per cent of them say that they are happy with their occupation, compared to only 55 per cent in the general population. One reason for this is that craft produces visible results. At a time when other professions are grappling with crises of meaning – leading to phenomena such as “quiet quitting”, in which employees disengage from their job and fulfil only the minimum requirements – these figures raise fundamental questions.

Gallup consultancy has found that the number of people who lack an emotional connection to their employer is at an all-time high. Many are mentally “checking out” of their jobs. Roofers and plumbers, meanwhile, don’t seem to need team-building trips or lofty purpose statements to enjoy their vocation.

To better understand what craftspeople can teach us about job satisfaction, I spoke to Ricarda Rehwaldt, a psychology professor and leading expert on happiness at work. “In craft, you do something that people need,” she says. Before her academic career, Rehwaldt trained as a carpenter. For knowledge workers, she says, the sheer number of digital tools and the density of meetings lead to alienation. “The calendar dictates our life – in essence, we are back to Taylorism,” she says, referring to a division of labour focused on efficiency, from which knowledge workers thought that they had freed themselves.

From crafts, one can learn that such high levels of scheduling are often unnecessary. “In a workshop, you’re not distracted by constant pinging or notifications,” says Rehwaldt. “At most, the foreman would call to say what needs to be done next and then you’d have a drawing showing what you were building.” This allows for a different type of focus. “Standing at the circular saw for an hour can be quite meditative too.”

Today, Rehwaldt has to work with digital ticket systems in her academic environment and finds this exhausting. She believes that it would be better if more tasks were handled by one person who could take responsibility for completing and owning them. Instead, she says, work often requires additional co-ordination and standardisation, and often lacks real purpose. “It all feels rather Kafkaesque,” she adds. By contrast, she fondly recalls the sense of community that she enjoyed in the past when working with others to create something tangible. “It used to generate an energy that I don’t feel when filling out a Jira ticket.”

Author Seth Godin echoes craftspeople’s secret to job satisfaction with a concept that he calls “shipping”. “If it doesn’t ship, it doesn’t count,” he says. “If it’s not creatively productive, it’s not helpful. And if we’re lucky, this is the heart of our work – the work of creation in our chosen medium.” Increasingly, all knowledge work is subject to the relentless monotony of the digital. There’s no beginning and no end, and hardly any climaxes. A new day brings yet another stand-up meeting, the next asset to move along. That’s why we need a different, better narrative of what successful work can look like. It will not come from technology companies – but it just might from roofers and carpenters.