Issues

The best leaders always know how to read the room

Corporate culture has a weakness for what can be counted, such as revenue, growth or targets – the things that fit neatly into a spreadsheet. Soft skills can’t. You can’t put a number on the ability to read a room, defuse a tense moment or notice that a colleague has fallen quiet or feels ignored. But those are often what determine whether work gets done or a client signs on the dotted line.

Most organisations eventually discover that being good at the mechanics of business isn’t the same as being good at the business of people. Plenty of executives rise up the ranks because they can analyse a market, build a model or string a few slides together on PowerPoint, only to then find that true leadership demands a set of skills and instincts that are better honed in the canteen than in the classroom.

Bad leaders sometimes confuse silence with support and compliance with commitment. Good leaders, on the other hand, notice things. They sense when energy drops, when someone is being talked over or when a polished presentation is papering over doubt. They don’t just deliver the message; they watch how it lands.

In our leadership programmes at IMD business school, we spend a great deal of time helping executives to develop these instincts. Reading a room isn’t a single skill but a combination: active listening, curiosity, emotional intelligence and adaptability. The best leaders listen for what is being said and left unsaid. They note the hesitation before an answer. Most importantly, they are prepared to change course when those signals tell them that they should.

Humility isn’t weakness or a lack of ambition. It’s the confidence to say, “I might not have the full picture.” Research consistently shows that humble leaders don’t necessarily outperform everyone else on all measures. What they do is enable the people around them to perform better. Teams become more creative, more engaged and more willing to speak up. That creates the trust that allows for better judgement.

Too many companies become prisoners of their own language. They parrot phrases such as “best practice”, “operating model” and “This is how we do things” long after those terms have stopped describing anything useful. Frameworks are valuable but they’re tools, not commandments. Sometimes, the smartest thing that a leader can do is to put the playbook down, make room for judgement and respond to what’s happening in front of them. This comes from time spent with people, not systems.

It matters now because AI has changed the conversation around human skills. The common assumption is that machines will take over technical work, while people focus on the softer parts of business. But this misses the point. People skills, human skills, whatever you want to call them, aren’t optional. They never have been.

Several recent studies, including Danish and US labour data, have found that AI adoption so far has changed what people do, far more than whether they’re needed, shifting workers towards monitoring and judgement calls. It hasn’t eliminated roles outright, as earlier technologies such as power looms or CNC machines did. The tools are getting smarter but the tasks that they’re leaving behind are the human ones.

Ironically, the smarter the tech becomes, the more demanding leadership becomes too. When information is abundant and analysis is instant, competitive advantage moves elsewhere: towards judgement and the ability to cajole people. AI can draft a proposal, analyse data or summarise meetings. It can’t shake a hand, rebuild trust after a mistake or persuade a talented colleague to stay at your company. Business is about relationships. Relationships still depend on attention and empathy. The winners of tomorrow won’t necessarily be the ones with the smartest AI. They’ll be the ones directed by the most humane leaders.

Good impressions: Lisbon’s O Momento combines print and craft in its stationery design space

“The idea was born from the shared pleasure and joy of working with print, design and paper,” says O Momento’s co-founder João Costa. After years of running a print studio in Lisbon’s Baixa neighbourhood, he knew that there was an appetite for something bigger. So when the shop next door became vacant, Costa and his business partner, Cláudia Baeta, saw their chance to take the next step.

O Momento – which combines a shop, a co-working space and a printing house – opened in 2024. Here, customers can find exquisite craft paper, rare journals and high-quality pencils, as well as locally made prints.

“There were so many materials and supplies that we had been using for years and it made sense to share them with the public,” says Baeta. “The best thing in the world is when people ask us what type of paper or binding to use for a certain project.”

In the co-working space, workshops introduce Lisboetas to new printing techniques. Recently, Baeta ran a course alongside Pedro Salgado, the leading scientific illustrator in Portugal. Their gyotaku workshop introduced participants to the 1800s Japanese art form in which you apply ink to a fish before printing onto paper. “We brought these enormous fish into the workshop and a group of very brave people tried to master this technique,” says Costa. “It produced some spectacular works.”

During Monocle’s visit to O Momento, we see its “ephemeral cabinet”, which features Portuguese stationery that you can’t find anywhere else. “We travelled up and down the country in search of old shops or factories that had this stock in a warehouse,” says Costa. “They were very happy to see us pick up these things that they thought no longer had any value.”

While digital reigns supreme in so much of our lives, places such as O Momento remind us of the power of physical media. “Print will never disappear because people have a tactile relationship with the objects that they like,” says Baeta. “Print is irresistible.”
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How beloved neighbourhood restaurant Dez Prá Uma evolved into a 12-shop food business

At Dez Prá Uma, Mafalda Travassos’s restaurant on Lisbon’s Rua Castilho, the lunch rush would always begin at 12.50 – hence its name, which means “Ten to One”. Opened in 2003, the restaurant was “always bursting at the seams”, says Travassos. When regulars increasingly began to request takeaway food, Travassos made the decision in 2015 to turn the restaurant into a business offering fresh and frozen meals. Now Dez Prá Uma has 12 shops across the city.

The packaged servings of bacalhau espiritual, croquettes and arroz de pato that fill the Dez Prá Uma shops are mostly made following family recipes. Everything is prepared in one kitchen in Campo de Ourique, overseen by chef Dinha dos Santos.

The shops, created by interior designer Marta Lucena, have a friendly, distinctly Portuguese feel with their green tiles, old weighing scales and flour tins. Travassos personally sources these decorative pieces at antiques fairs in the historic town of Estremoz.

Over the years, Travassos’s four children have spent summers helping with the business, clearing tables and packing orders at Christmas. Now they have taken over the day-to-day running of Dez Prá Uma, with plans for more outposts in Lisbon and the business’s first in Porto. Travassos’s advice to the next generation draws deeply on her experiences. “Growth has to be built on good roots, not for its own sake,” she says.
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Laying the ground work: How a tiny group of artisans keeps Portugal’s stone pavements intact

In Alverca do Ribatejo, a sleepy suburb 20 minutes outside of Lisbon, Vítor Graça begins his working day at 08.00. Today the former fishmonger is fixing a patch of broken pavement outside his local cemetery. The 59-year-old is one of Portugal’s calçeteiros – the skilled workers responsible for constructing and maintaining calçadas, the traditional stone pavements that cover 290 of the country’s 308 municipalities.

It’s summer and sweat is dripping down Graça’s forehead. Immersed in his art, he hardly seems to notice. “This is more of a hobby than a job,” he tells Monocle. “The repetitive nature of it gives me time to think.”

Graça removes loose stones and fragments of broken limestone by hand, before raking away debris. (Lisbon’s pavements are made with limestone from nearby quarries in the Aire and Candeeiros mountains but cities further north use locally sourced granite.) He then pours powdered stone mixed with water into the gap that this reveals. Next, he takes out a hammer with a blunt face on one side and a long, curved end on the other. His work has a gentler soundtrack than the noisy business of concrete street maintenance: he taps the hammer against the limestone, then scrapes his spade against the rock dust. As he lays each stone, he smiles at the symmetry. Periodically, he rummages through his bag of stones to find the best fit. “This part is like my old job: selecting the best, juiciest fish,” he says.

After losing his job as a fishmonger during the 2008 financial crisis, Graça enrolled on a one-year course at Lisbon’s School of Calçeteiros 10 years ago. He is now contracted with the local parish but self-employed and paid by the hour. In the private sector, workers are under pressure to lay between 20 sq m and 40 sq m of pavement in the time that the calçeteiro might have laid just seven. “The quality of the job doesn’t matter,” says Graça. “They just want it done.”

Outside the cemetery, he has paved the words Passeio de Saudade (“Walkway of the Missing”). In front of a nearby florist, he stencils a heart in pink limestone. Sometimes, Graça leaves a “tag”, like a graffiti artist: a V nestled inside a circular G.

Today there are about a dozen calçeteiros registered with Lisbon’s council. In 1927 there were 400.

In part, the decline is because of the advancing age of those in the profession. The working conditions also make the job unappealing for younger people. “The pay is terrible too,” says Graça. Calçeteiros receive minimum wage – typically €920 a month. Many prospective workers drop out before they even qualify; of the 21 people on Graça’s course, only five completed it.

There are glimmers of hope for the future. A new Unesco campaign supported by the Portuguese government seeks to give calçadas Unesco’s Intangible Cultural Heritage status. Among other things, this would allow the country to apply for World Heritage Fund grants to improve working conditions for the calçeteiros. Graça hopes that the money will help to recruit new calçeteiros who love the work as much as he does. “People need to like what they do,” he says.

How Portuguese band Napa turned a Eurovision flop into 143 million streams

“Deslocado” by Napa, Portugal’s entry for Eurovision 2025, came a lowly 21st place but the story of the gentle ballad didn’t end with the competition. In the weeks that followed, it went on to become the most streamed song of last year’s song contest. The track landed in the charts not only in Europe and the Lusophone market of Brazil but also in Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

With an impressive 143 million plays on Spotify, “Deslocado” was a game-changer for the five-piece Lisbon-based band behind it. “We can now live off making music and doing concerts,” vocalist and guitarist Guilherme Gomes tells Monocle. “We have so many fans in Portugal and around the world. Eurovision changed everything.”

Napa’s members are friends who formed a band in high school in Madeira in 2013. Back then, they were called Men on the Couch and mostly sang in English. “We were what you would call a textbook garage band,” says Gomes. Their rebirth as Napa (the name refers to a fabric used to cover their old sofa) happened in 2019 and, with it, they started to sing in their mother tongue. “When we switched to Portuguese, it opened a lot of doors for us,” adds Gomes. “We could express ourselves more creatively and more organically.”

Before their turn on Eurovision, Napa had released two albums, in 2019 and 2023. Their third is expected this autumn. Its first single, “Sortudo” (“Lucky”), hints at the sunny nature of the upcoming record. The chorus translates as, “I’m so lucky/I have friends around the world/I have a safe haven.” Clearly, the band is feeling upbeat. “It’s optimistic music – we wanted to reflect everything that happened to us last year and all the luck that we had,” says Gomes. “For the new album, expect more of that tropical feeling that we associate with Madeira. There’s a bright side to the island that we wanted to capture in the music.” “You are surrounded by these extremely good musicians everywhere you go in Madeira. I guess that fuelled us”

Madeira is known for its impressive nature, distinctive fortified wine and great hotels but less so for its contribution to Portugal’s thriving pop-music scene. While the influences of the island might be subtle, they can still be heard on Napa’s new record. “We used some instruments that are traditionally from Madeira,” says guitarist Francisco Sousa. “It’s our interpretation of what the Madeiran music scene is today.” Madeira might not have many breakout chart stars but music is everywhere on the island. “Because you have a lot of tourism in Madeira, there are musicians playing at hotels and bars,” says drummer João Rodrigues. “You’re surrounded by these extremely good musicians everywhere you go. I guess that fuelled our love for music.”

The new album also features influences from further afield: the band travelled to Brazil to record parts of it, adding an extra layer of texture to their songs. On some tracks, you can hear the noises of everyday life in the country. “One day it was raining and you can hear a bit of that, as well as some dogs barking in the background,” says Sousa. More generally, though, Napa’s breezy take on rock is reminiscent of beloved Anglophone bands such as American dream-poppers Beach House or Australian group Parcels. There is sometimes a hint of melancholy to Napa’s songs and Gomes’s soulful vocals but it’s always underpinned by punchy, propulsive beats and guitar.

The band’s influences vary depending on which member you ask: The Strokes, Fontaines DC, Geese and Wet Leg are all mentioned when Monocle asks what the group has been listening to as they prepare for their upcoming gigs. In November, the band will tour across Europe, including dates in Frankfurt, London, Madrid and Paris. The new album will take centre stage but fans of the song that made the band stars shouldn’t worry. “I just have a feeling that we will play ‘Deslocado’,” says Rodrigues, with a laugh.

‘We can’t make a newspaper for people with heart problems’: Folha de São Paulo defends independent journalism

As caterers clear the plates from a lunch in a glass-fronted conference room at Folha de São Paulo’s offices, Sérgio Dávila strides across the editorial department. The editor in chief is seeing a guest – Brazil’s attorney general, Jorge Messias – out to the lifts.

Moments later, Dávila reappears, having changed out of a suit and tie into his dad-chic uniform of a dark-navy cardigan and black slacks. He bought the brown Hugo Boss brogues that he’s wearing at an airport 10 years ago, when he realised that he had embarked on a work trip wearing trainers. Pointing to a suitcase next to his desk, he says that he will be back on a plane this evening, flying to the US to watch Brazil play in the World Cup.

Dávila is used to politicians courting him but this year has been busier than usual, with October’s presidential election looming. It promises to be a tense contest. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is seeking a fourth nonconsecutive term. His main opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, is the son of far-right former president Jair, who was jailed for orchestrating a coup attempt in 2022.

The stories dominating Folha’s front pages have recently focused on corruption scandals that have implicated the Bolsonaro family and a politician from Lula’s Workers’ Party. The election could go either way for Dávila, that means scrutinising both sides equally.

“A former minister once told me that if you’re a politician, to be part of a story that Folha is running is like falling from a motorcycle,” he says. “You’ll get hurt. You just have to choose the best angle and hope that you’re not left with too many bruises. It doesn’t matter if the government is left or right wing – we’re independent.”

The editor in chief explains how Brazilians have different nicknames for the newspaper, depending on their political leanings. “If you’re from the right, we are ‘Foice de S Paulo’, a pun on the Soviet hammer and sickle,” he says. “The left calls us ‘Falha de S Paulo’ [‘São Paulo Failing’].”

For the past 64 years, Folha has been owned by the Frias family, a merchant dynasty whose wealth came from property and financial services in the 20th century. Octávio Frias de Oliveira, who died in 2007, shepherded the daily through Brazil’s military dictatorship; the opinion pages disappeared during the regime’s most censorial years. In the 1980s the newspaper became a leading voice in the Diretas J campaign for the re-establishment of democracy.

Before he took the reins, in the early 1950s, Folha moved to its current headquarters in São Paulo’s frenetic downtown, where it shares offices with Datafolha, its sister polling company. The wider brand portfolio of Grupo Folha now includes UOL, the largest Portuguese-language internet portal, and digital-payments company PagBank. Pointing to this corporate diversification, Dávila says that it’s the only viable response to the technological revolutions of the past few decades. “Our profession always responds well to this kind of disruption,” he says. “This has been the case since Gutenberg invented the printing press.”

Over the course of 30 years, Dávila worked his way up the newspaper’s ranks, with roles ranging from editing the arts pages to Washington correspondent. But his true beginnings as a journalist, he says, came at the age of eight, when he was growing up as part of a large Paulistano Hispano-Portuguese-Italian family. “I would walk around parties asking my relatives to tell me gossip,” he says. “Then I’d go to my room, where I had a typewriter that my father had given me, and write up the stories and sell them to the rest of the family.”

His audience these days is a little wider. Folha de São Paulo is Brazil’s largest newspaper, with 875,579 subscribers, of which 10 per cent receive physical copies. Founded in 1921 as an alternative to the conservative coffee-baron press that once dominated the newsstands, today it leads more explicitly right-wing rivals O Estado and O Globo, which have 520,000 and 400,000 readers, respectively.

Dávila oversees a workforce comprising 330 journalists, in the publication’s open-plan office and abroad. Correspondents are based in Buenos Aires, New York, Washington, Berlin, Lisbon, Milan, Paris and Beijing. “We also have stringers in about 20 more places but we have to expand more into Africa and Asia,” says Dávila. On top of that is the pool of opinion writers, with 175 names on whom the editor can call to provide arguments for the columns that sit, rather unusually, at the beginning of the newspaper.

Dávila says that Folha’s team of columnists is the largest in the country. “They go from A to Z in terms of political views,” he says. “Whether the subject is soccer or euthanasia, you will always find an opinion in Folha that you approve of and one that you strongly disagree with.” It’s a formula that he inherited from Frias de Oliveira’s son, Otavio Frias Filho, his predecessor and mentor who died in 2018. “He used to say that we can’t make a newspaper for people with heart problems.”

Running such a publication in one of the world’s most social-media-addicted countries can be challenging, especially against the backdrop of the kind of culture wars that are affecting traditional media companies globally. The newspaper’s 5.5 million followers across Instagram and TikTok regularly watch Folha’s journalists on video; retaining the core values of the print edition on such platforms can be a challenge, says Dávila.

“It’s harder to do journalism for younger readers and with younger reporters, because Gen Z isn’t prepared for the kind of shock that we promote in terms of views and ideas,” he says. Yet he remains optimistic about the future and points to an annual trainee programme that he implemented in 2021, which aims to improve the ethnic diversity of the newspaper’s journalists in a country where more than half the population is black or mixed race. Before that, one survey found that 84 per cent of the stories published by Folha and its two main rivals were by white authors.There were 2,500 applicants in the first round, with 20 accepted.

Today’s edition includes a report on the inner workings of a century-old Afro-Brazilian religious festival, written by one of the former trainees. Dávila also highlights a recent story about the trend of people operating low-key burger restaurants from their homes in São Paulo’s poorer periphery. “That’s something that a journalist with a more traditional profile might never have known about,” he says.

Dávila is also far from pessimistic about AI. He’s rather more sanguine about its creeping use in the newsroom, calling it a “frenemy”. Folha now incorporates a team of 10 journalists in a department overseen by its new head of AI. How to use large language models effectively is one of three proficiencies on which potential new editorial recruits are tested – alongside their ability to ask sources the right questions, write in the newspaper’s formal Portuguese and video-savvy storytelling. “AI is a friend because it makes it far easier to be a journalist than when I started and an enemy because once again big tech is taking everything and doesn’t want to pay for anything,” says Dávila. He believes that as long as journalists keep looking for exclusives and breaking stories, Folha will ride out yet another technology revolution. “There’s no AI agent that can have lunch with a minister who talks about a lot of things off the record,” he says. “That’s journalism.”

Room to grow: Impressive educational architecture in Finland, Austria and beyond

When architect Andrés Jaque was handed the biggest commission of his career to build a school in Madrid his clients had a few unconventional requests. They brought a succession of drawings and models to his office in the Spanish capital, each more fantastical than the next. One patron suggested that the entire building should just be a garden. Another asked for a library in every room. Everyone wanted as many secret passageways as possible. “They wanted magic,” says Jaque.”

The people who had commissioned him were followers of the Reggio Emilia method, an educational philosophy that holds that, alongside parents and instructors, the environment should serve as a third teacher and that children should be active participants in shaping their learning. Accordingly, the future users of the school the children and their parents were given a say in Jaque’s consulting process. They made it clear that they wanted a radical departure from the norm.

“Schools have a culture of painting everything one colour and removing all that’s fragile so they end up looking like jails or factories for education,” says the Spanish architect. “These clients wanted something richer, a place where playing and imagining would be part of the daily experience.”

After two years of planning, with many long, 50-person meetings, and two more of construction, the Reggio School opened in 2022.The five-storey building, which has room for about 750 pupils between the ages of two and 18, has an otherworldly appearance. Jaque was able to fulfil most of the families’ wishes while adding plenty of flourishes. The school bursts with vegetation, both in the central greenhouse atrium and in the building’s closed gardens. The classrooms have nooks containing bookshelves. Jaque dispensed with almost all corridors in favour of meandering connections between rooms. The main entrance runs through an open gym inspired by a Roman ruin; upstairs, there are windows that resemble eyes.

Most people love the Reggio School’s almost extraterrestrial aesthetic, though some might point to it as proof that children shouldn’t get involved in grown-up decisions. However, few would deny that something is wrong in mainstream education. One such warning comes from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, a standardised test for 15-year-olds in reading, science and maths that is taken in more than 90 developed countries. In the mid-2010s, scores started nosediving in many nations; the exceptions are in Asian countries such as South Korea, where a high value is placed on studiousness but too much time staring at homework has left the majority of young people near-sighted. Diagnoses of childhood ADHD, anxiety and depression have become commonplace. Not only are the kids not all right, they also seem less bright. Nowadays, in OECD countries, one in 10 first-year college students is reading at the level of a 10-year-old.

Drive to modernise

It’s no coincidence that, over the past two decades, there have also been historic upheavals in the classroom. In the 2010s there was a widespread drive to modernise education by replacing textbooks with laptops and tablets. The first generation to grow up with smartphones was also the first to be told to learn everything, from maths to essay writing, on a computer. In the US, these changes coincided with a rollback of standardised testing in the belief that it exacerbated inequalities (it turns out that the opposite is true). It’s only in the past few years that policymakers, faced with dismal learning outcomes, have started to admit that mistakes might have been made.

Changes have left their mark on the built environment too. Finland, long a paragon of primary education, has had a boom in school construction to replace buildings from the 1960s and 1970s that had poor indoor air quality. Many of the new schools have been built according to the pedagogical idea of “open learning environments”, dispensing with closed classrooms in favour of open-plan spaces, which are often separated by curtains to control noise levels and aid concentration.

But the architects commissioned to design a new school, library and community centre in the suburbs of Lappeenranta in southeastern Finland chose a different approach. “We looked to older, more traditional schools with individual classrooms, where the priority is a calm learning environment,” says Tuuli Kanerva, co-founder of Nervin Architecture. “It was important to us that every classroom had a window, for example.” Sammontalo, which has space for about 650 pupils, is built in timber and light-red brick, with an open atrium and an inner courtyard that ensures plenty of natural light.

Nervin started working on Sammontalo in 2018. Then came a sharply reduced population forecast, caused by falling birth rates, followed by the coronavirus pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, which led to a spike in construction costs. The municipality first downsized the new building, then debated whether to build it at all. What tipped the scale were letters written by residents, who asked for the project to be completed. “Schools are some of the few truly civic buildings,” says Kanerva. “There’s something beautiful about knowing exactly who will be using your design.”

Return to the classics

In recent years, some have responded to education-reform missteps by returning to trusted, time-tested approaches. In Finland, classrooms are once again built with walls. In New York, phones are banned on school premises and plans for AI-assisted classrooms have been scrapped. Manufacturers of traditional lined notebooks are reporting booming sales. Instead of abandoning the physical world in favour of the digital one, some schools are now leading the drive to reinvest in analogue pleasures, such as pens and paper, playgrounds and tools, as well as high-quality architecture.

Last year, Sam Jacob became the dean of the architecture school at Vienna’s University of Applied Arts (Die Angewandte). “Everything is changing so fast,” he says. “It’s both a terrible and a very exciting time to be a student and for teachers.” He takes inspiration from the university’s history as a school of applied arts a discipline that straddles fine art and serial production, and was a response to the Industrial Revolution. “The mandate from that time is to think very practically about how to change the world,” he says.

Jacob was educated at the Glasgow School of Art and fondly recalls the paint-covered walls and general messiness of the artists’ studios in the university’s historic Mackintosh Building. “It wasn’t treated like a house museum,” he says. “The flip side was that it then caught fire during a degree show.” Jacob now presides over similar creative chaos (minus the pyrotechnics) in the studios at Die Angewandte, where students are welding, woodturning and building one-to-one scale models. “This is something that can’t happen elsewhere,” he says. “One of the resources that universities have is the ability to provide that kind of space.”

Universities are racing to do so and often beyond their architecture schools. One example is the Bloomberg Student Centre, a hub for non-academic activities at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, completed last year by the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) in partnership with the Rockwell Group and landscape architects Van Valkenburgh Associates. The cascading timber pavilions, 29 in all, host a theatre, a dance studio, a chess club, a food court and – by popular demand – a pub. The intention is for the centre to encourage students to take some time away from their studies and pick up a new hobby or just meet new people. “These interstitial spaces are becoming more important,” says Leon Rost, a partner at BIG.

Rost, who oversees the Los Angeles office of BIG, remembers the first time that he walked into the architecture faculty as a student at California Polytechnic in San Luis Obispo. “I wasn’t sure what to do with my life,” he says. “Seeing people drawing and painting, making models – the creative but also the physical side, with the wood shop – I thought, ‘OK, this seems fun.’”

Learning by doing

It’s a philosophy that chimes with the experiential learning approach that shaped the architecture at the Reggio School in Madrid. Around the building, children are free to stage plays, conduct science experiments or start a Scrabble tournament. Projects initiated by students are taken seriously and might continue for weeks.The building is designed so that everything that takes place inside, from science and gym lessons to cooking and maintenance, is given the same visibility. “There is no division between the space given over to philosophical lessons and cleaning the tomatoes for the salad at lunch,” says Jaque, who explains that this only adds to the fantastical atmosphere.

Operating with a similar spirit is a new educational environment that opened this summer at the Technical University in Munich. The Kinderoase, designed by Pritzker Prize-winner Francis Kéré, who is also a professor at the university, is an on-campus daycare centre intended to make life easier for faculty and students with small children. “I was asked to create a fantasy world for kids,” says Kéré. “So I started to dream big.”

The building occupies a small former car park, so Kéré opted to make it five floors high – a skyscraper by kindergarten standards. Children move upwards as they get older: the two-year-olds are on the first floor, while the five-year-olds are in the penthouse. What’s more, they can travel between the floors on wooden slides. “I wanted the kids to touch the soil and see the sky,” says Kéré. From the rooftop Himmelwiese (sky garden), children have an unobstructed view of the horizon. The architect is also working on extending the playground to a neighbouring rooftop.

A brighter future

The Kinderoase is Kéré’s first permanent building in Europe but it is not his first foray into educational architecture. His career began with a school for his home village in Burkina Faso. Everything from the climate to the levels of bureaucracy was markedly different there but he says that there are universal rules for designing schools. “It’s so important to think about the haptic experience, to have materials that children like to touch,” he says. “They have to look light, not too heavy, but also light in terms of brightness. You have to think about little corners that are designed for different purposes too.” These spaces play a huge role in the formative years of a person. Most have lifelong memories of their experience in kindergarten and school – what it was like to walk down the corridors, what the best spot on the playground was. “Education as a typology is easy to relate to because everyone has lived through school,” says Antti Soini, another co-founder of Nervin, the designers of Sammontalo. “We were able to imagine where we would want to sit and how it would feel as a 10-year-old to be on that bench.”

While Kinderoase – which means “children’s oasis” – might be new, the Reggio School has, in just a few years, grown into an actual oasis that is cared for by its students. The word also evokes the ideal experience of being in school: spending years in a kind of cocoon that has its own rhythm and codes of conduct. Instead of children in front of screens in factory-like surroundings, the best new schools create an alternative, more beautiful reality. Children in such environments will eventually graduate into the real world and might just decide to change it for the better.

Best in class

For much of the 2010s, it seemed that educational buildings, from kindergartens to universities, would embrace all things digital. Lecture halls were kitted out so that professors could deliver presentations via video screen and paper workbooks were put aside in favour of iPads. Despite this ambition to deliver a digital education that’s flexible and adaptable, classrooms are now shifting back towards more traditional educational environments. The best new designs have embraced tactile, human experience and been created by listening to the needs of students, ensuring that their preferences are reflected in the spaces that they will use every day. Here, we outline the best design features from five such projects.

1.
Reggio School, Spain

1. Student input: Children worked on the design as active participants.
2. No layout hierarchy: Kitchens are treated with the same ambition as classrooms.
3. Unexpected connections: There are few corridors in the structure. This encourages open-ended movement and cross-pollination.

2.
Sammontalo, Finland

1. Enclosed classrooms: This approach rejects open-plan learning environments in favour of a calmer, more focused atmosphere.
2. Natural light: An open atrium and inner courtyard invite light into the school, boosting alertness and helping to sustain students’ concentration levels.
3. Dual purpose: The school serves both as an educational tool and a centre of community and civic life.

3.
Die Angewandte, Austria

1. Workshop environment: Buildings provide physical space for processes such as welding, which can’t happen in ordinary academic settings.
2. Embracing the chaos: The educational buildings aren’t treated as museums, with students encouraged to try high-intensity hands-on making methods.
3. Varied aesthetics: The school occupies a building that blends classical structures with mid-century modernism and contemporary interventions, showing that the best educational spaces don’t have to conform to a single ideal.

4.
Bloomberg Student Centre, USA

1. Welcoming scale: Entrances on all four levels ensure that the centre doesn’t feel like a hulking, imposing institution.
2. Communal gathering: A central staircase connecting the four levels provides a social heart for the building.
3. Flexible spaces: Rooms and event spaces are flexible, mixing educational disciplines and interest groups rather than siloing them.

5.
Kinderoase, Germany

1. Vertical playground: Slides link the floors, turning movement into play.
2. Open to the environment: A rooftop terrace allows children to engage with nature and visually connect with the city beyond.
3. Made to measure: Every age group occupies its own level, allowing environments to be scaled to size.

New approaches, old foundations: How Kyoto is establishing a fresh creative voice

“The true strength of tradition is in its resilience – evolving with new developments, instead of being broken by them,” says Masataka Hosoo, the 12th-generation president of Kyoto-based textile maker Hosoo. The company’s story of innovation and time-tested skills mirrors that of its home city. The ancient capital remains a popular destination for international visitors seeking a glimpse of Japanese history but there’s also something new stirring here.

Hosoo has long been known for its kimonos. “Today most items are considered to be at their peak when they’re new, then they decrease in value,” says the company’s president. “Kimonos are different.” But now the company has also launched its first menswear line, Hosoo Men, designed by Ryutaro Kishi, formerly of Rainmaker Kyoto. It kicked off in March with a nine-style collection including shirts, double-pleated trousers and a hooded robe. Made from high-quality hemp, every item comes in a limited run of between 10 and 50 pieces, available exclusively from the brand’s new Kyoto flagship.

An expanded collection will arrive in September – part of an initiative to revive the production and use of hemp, a material with links to ancient Japan. “There’s a culture of using things beyond the span of a person’s lifetime,” says Hosoo. “It’s a philosophy that we want to bring to the world of fashion.”

This isn’t the only business in Kyoto that’s turning over a new leaf. Various Japanese and global brands have also been setting up shop here, reimagining the city’s architecture in the process. British label Studio Nicholson has opened its first Kyoto outpost, bringing its signature minimalism to a former workshop, while Tokyo-based A Presse’s new location has the peaceful air of a private home. Even long-standing supermarket Kinokuniya has set up a concept shop featuring selected items from Kyoto and further afield.

With almost 63 million visitors arriving in the city in 2025 and travellers spending more than ever, tourism is driving change. Among a wave of fresh openings is The Imperial Hotel, which launched a 55-guest-room branch in a landmark theatre in the Gion district in March. In neighbouring Miyagawa-cho, Kengo Kuma oversaw the design of Capella Kyoto, drawing inspiration from the city’s townhouses and streets.

On the road to Kenkun shrine in Murasakino, Ryo Suzuki’s vision for his gallery in a machiya (traditional wooden townhouse) is taking shape. A veteran of the architecture, antiques and art scenes of Hiroshima and Paris, he fell in love with the century-old building at first sight. His transformation of the former residence into an exhibition space alongside local carpenters and craftspeople has been an incremental process. It continued last year with the opening of an atelier-like annex filled with objects spanning continents and eras.

“I think of buildings like this as minka [traditional folk houses] – places for ordinary people that possess a local character, born from the land,” says Suzuki. “The use of natural materials makes them feel alive. Earthen walls and tatami mats change in appearance; wooden beams and floorboards grow darker.There’s such a richness to spending time in such spaces.”

Suzuki’s gallery, Kankakari, hosts exhibitions of works ranging from traditional basketry to folk art and washi-paper lighting. “Kankakari isn’t just a gallery in the traditional sense,” he says. “I want to help people cherish not only the smallest objects, such as a ceramic vessel, but the clothes that they wear and the architecture around them.”

Among Suzuki’s other recent projects is 10-seat restaurant Mube. Working with owner-chef Takatomo Izumi, he oversaw the renovation of a 150-year-old former residence, bringing its heritage to the fore with finely detailed craftsmanship. Here, the 41-year-old Izumi merges the food culture of his hometown in Shiga prefecture with techniques honed in some of Kyoto’s finest traditional establishments. “These days, so much washoku [Japanese cuisine] feels quite indulgent,” he says. “I want to return it to its essence: the idea of food as nourishment.”

Sourcing seasonal produce from across Japan, Izumi brings his dishes to life with a variety of ferments and condiments. From narezushi, a predecessor to modern sushi made with salted fish, to a medicinal mushroom soup and Biwa trout pickled in rice bran, he weaves tradition, technique and provenance. Since opening in August 2025, he has quickly found acclaim and has already been awarded a Michelin star.

Back in Nishijin, Masataka Hosoo says that it’s an exciting moment for both his company and the city. “In the past, there was little interaction between different fields; everything was siloed. Kyoto used to be far more conservative but, as the city’s history and culture merge with new forms of creativity, I feel that the future is taking shape.”

Monocle City Guides

For more on the places we return to, the businesses that we recommend and the districts worth getting lost in – including in Kyoto – check out our online City Guides. Written by the people who know the places best, our travel directories, which are exclusive to subscribers, are updated regularly to ensure that you get the finest recommendations.

Back to the basics: Salira brings Indonesian comfort food to Jakarta’s top table

Indonesian restaurateur Winfred Hutabarat and his partners at The Union Group have shaped Jakarta’s drinking-and-dining scene since 2011 by focusing on European and US-style bars and bistros. But their latest opening, Salira, marks the group’s first take on Indonesian cuisine, offering hearty comfort food from across the archipelago.

Salira’s location in upscale neighbourhood Senopati positions it alongside another Union Group venue, Bar Luca, which is helmed by Union Group partner Fernando Sindu. The Spanish-trained Indonesian chef has set aside tapas and chorizo to take the culinary lead at Salira.

He spent the past three years travelling around Indonesia’s islands – including Sulawesi, Sumatra and his native Java – to learn regional recipes and fulfil a request from his late mother to return to his roots. “You don’t really know anything as a chef until you’re able to cook dishes from your own country,” says Sindu. “We wanted to restore our knowledge of, and explore, Indonesian cuisine.”

Some classics are kept traditional, while others are given a playful twist: a pour of kunyit asam – an earthy and piercingly tart drink made with turmeric and tamarind – is a refreshing prelude to salmon asap lodeh, a traditional Javanese white soup. But here, pan-seared salmon – briefly smoked atop charcoal – takes the place of salted mackerel and tempeh. There’s also lidah cabe ijo and pipi sapi tinorangsak – masterfully textured ox tongue and beef cheek that flirt daringly with regional slow-burning chillis. Alongside table service, there’s also a buffet-style counter – an elevated nod to the ubiquitous warteg (roadside food stalls seen across the country).

The rumah makan (or “eating house”) occupies a four-storey townhouse that was designed by Bali-based architect Cheong Yew Kuan, who is a hotel specialist and the protégé of tropical modernist Kerry Hill. The interiors double as a showcase for local craftsmanship, with brilliantly coloured tikar (handwoven mats) and batik fabrics from textile designer Bin House decorating the walls and ceiling.

The building’s top two floors will open later as Tepa. The fine-dining establishment is intended to showcase Sindu’s refined approach to regional cuisine, in which he will explore not only the ingredients but also traditional techniques, alongside his contemporary creations. “What I want to emphasise is the craft and to show how difficult it is to make Indonesian food,” says Sindu.“It’ll be really fun.”
uniongroupjakarta.com

Former food scout Richard Kägi opens up his Zürich home kitchen to share a career’s worth of culinary discovery

Richard Kägi is a hunter. “I went out into the world to find interesting products and interesting people,” he tells Monocle. The former food scout and avowed gourmand spent 29 years bringing home trophies to Zürich department store Globus, which has one of Europe’s best-stocked delicatessens. Since 2021, he has been channelling this flair for discovery into independent culinary endeavours.

His approach to food is equal parts evangelical and educational. “I like to show people what they can do with good products and the right handling,” he says. That ambition is achieved through gastronomic consulting, a homeware shop, a cookbook and a supper club.

Monocle meets Kägi close to his home at produce purveyor Huber. He arrives in a black 1980s convertible Fiat, sunglasses on and canvas grocery tote in tow. Ahead of recipe testing, we’re here to stock up on morels, aubergines and Noirmoutier potatoes, which are grown in the sandy soil of Île de Noirmoutier, of France’s Atlantic coast. “Most of the harvest goes to the top French restaurants,” says Kägi.

Provisioned and back home, Kägi begins preparations in the kitchen. He cooks with a casual ease, explaining the value of using plenty of olive oil to boost the umami flavours of bottarga, garlic and anchovies.

Twenty years ago, Kägi moved into his five-level house in the exclusive Zürichberg area. Designed by Zürich architecture firm Graser Troxler, the house is a curio cabinet of Kägi’s tastes and travels. It’s also the location for his intermittent home supper club, which is open to anyone quick enough to claim one of its 20 places. “I could offer it every weekend and it would be full,” he says.

From the first sip of Soave wine to the last dab of strawberry-cream dessert, Kägi provides more than just a shared meal. He delivers a culinary lesson, sharing deep knowledge of food scrupulously gathered from travelling, tasting and plenty of experimentation. His evolution from food scout to host, chef, author and all-round food authority was developed over decades. But what he has learnt along the way, he shares generously.
richardkaegi.ch; homemade.ch

1.
Roasted aubergine with bottarga

The outstanding, caramelised purple aubergine rounds, green herbs and orange bottarga smell sweet but have savoury depth. “I love this dish for its umami power and simplicity,” says Kägi.

Ingredients

• 100ml roasted garlic oil or olive oil
• A few whole garlic cloves, peeled
• 2 slices aubergine, from the widest part, 3cm to 4cm thick
• Salt and black pepper
• 50g bottarga
• 1 bunch fresh mint, finely chopped
• 1 bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180C.
2. Gently fry the garlic cloves in the roasted garlic oil over low heat for 15 minutes, then remove them. If you don’t have garlic oil, you can use regular olive oil.
3. Turn the aubergine slices well in the oil, place in an ovenproof dish or pan and pour more oil over the top.
4. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes until light golden brown and completely soft.
5. Remove from the oven, drizzle with more fresh oil and season with salt and pepper.
6. Grate the bottarga over the top and scatter with the chopped herbs.

2.
Asparagus and Noirmoutier potatoes with morel sauce

“White and green asparagus play off one another, layered with superb potatoes and a depth that only morels can bring,” says Kägi. To serve as a more substantial main course, accompany each plate with a square of baked puff pastry.

Ingredients

• 1kg fresh white asparagus
• 500g green asparagus
• 500g Noirmoutier potatoes (or other small potatoes)
• 80g butter (50g for vegetables and 30g for finishing)
• 100ml water
• Salt and a pinch of sugar

For the sauce

• 150g fresh morels
• 25g dried morels, soaked in water for 1-2 hours
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 50g butter
• 50ml Noilly Prat (or other dry vermouth)
• 100ml chicken stock
• 250ml double cream
• Sea salt and black pepper
• Fresh wild garlic or chives, finely sliced

Method

1. Trim the ends of all the asparagus and peel. Cut into bite-sized pieces, keeping the tips separate.
2. Halve the unpeeled potatoes and sauté in butter for 10 minutes.
3. Add the white asparagus spears (without tips), along with 100ml water, salt and a pinch of sugar.
4. After 7 minutes, add white asparagus tips and green asparagus spears (without tips). After a further 4 minutes, add green asparagus tips and cook. All should remain firm.
5. Prepare the sauce. Halve larger morels lengthways, leave smaller ones whole and wash carefully. Wash and strain dried morels and keep the soaking water.
6. Finely chop the shallot and sweat in butter, then add the morels. Simmer covered for about 10 minutes.
7. Deglaze with the vermouth, then add the chicken stock and morel soaking water. Remove the morels, add the cream and reduce by half over high heat.
8. Return the morels to the pan and season with sea salt and black pepper.
9. Spoon the asparagus cooking liquid into the sauce.
10. Arrange the vegetables on prewarmed plates, pour the morel sauce over the top and scatter with finely chopped herbs.

3.
Eton mess

For dessert, Kägi whips up his take on a classic British treat.

For the meringues

• 100g egg whites (about 3 eggs)
• Pinch of salt
• 100g caster sugar
• 100g icing sugar, sifted
• 15g cornstarch

Other ingredients

• 750g strawberries, quartered, plus extra for serving
• 100g caster sugar 200ml whipping cream, lightly whipped
• 125g crème fraîche
• 50g icing sugar, sifted
• ½ vanilla pod, seeds scraped
• 125g raspberries

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 120C.
2. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt for 3-4 minutes until stiff peaks form. With the mixer still running, gradually add the caster sugar and beat until firm and glossy, about 2-3 minutes. Sift in the icing sugar and cornstarch, folding in gently.
3. Spoon mounds of about 8cm onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake for 45-50 minutes, until the meringues lift easily from the tray and are crisp but without any colour. Leave to cool completely inside.
4. Wash and prepare the strawberries. Mix with caster sugar in a large bowl. Leave to macerate for 20 minutes.
5. In a large bowl, lightly whip the cream, crème fraîche, icing sugar and vanilla seeds until soft peaks form.
6. Place a quarter of the strawberries in a large glass bowl, spread a quarter of the vanilla cream over them and crumble a quarter of the meringues roughly over the top. Repeat the layering.
7. Top the Eton mess with raspberries and extra strawberries to serve.