Issues

Why Italian furniture giant Cassina encourages disagreement

“If you want to do this job properly, then you really need to love the product,” says Luca Fuso. “Otherwise, there are so many other roles you can do.” Fuso, the CEO of Italian furniture giant Cassina, welcomes monocle to the company’s headquarters in Meda, a 30-minute drive from Milan, where the firm has been based since 1927. Some of the oldest buildings here date back to the 1940s and received a makeover from Cassina’s art director Patricia Urquiola in 2017.

Seemingly in constant motion, Fuso glides around the near century-old campus. He meets colleagues over lunch in the canteen and talks to clients in a meeting room before coming to rest with key members of his team in an enclosed courtyard at the centre of the property. The space has a verdant green wall and is furnished with pieces from a variety of collections in the Cassina catalogue. “It reflects a new philosophy that we call the ‘Cassina perspective’, which involves combining our latest designs with classic products that we have been making for a long time, such as those designed by Gio Ponti,” says Fuso. “This creates a unique environment that reflects what people do in their own homes. You don’t just have work from one designer.”

The outlook, Fuso says, informs the development of Cassina’s collection (“We’re able to work out what’s missing from a room”) and he credits Urquiola for playing a significant role in developing it. “She’s not only an incredible designer but a great mind,” he says. And while the Spanish art director is essential to his work, Fuso holds the rest of his team in similarly high esteem. “I try to surround myself with the most skilled people possible, so I know that they’re able to do what they’re supposed to do without my support.”

It begs the question, is there a danger to having staff who are strong-willed, opinionated and don’t seem to need their boss? “I hope that every time I say something, somebody raises their hand and says, ‘No, I don’t agree’, because that starts a conversation to take better action.” And, ultimately, it seems, to make products that Fuso loves. — L

Luca Fuso, (far left)
CEO, Cassina

“I had been a customer of Cassina for many years before joining,” says Fuso, who was hired as CEO in 2018. “It’s the reason why I came here.” The Italian businessman – who is also CEO of Zanotta, which Cassina acquired in 2023 – has worked in fashion, furniture and automotive, holding executive roles at the likes of Diesel, b&b Italia and Ferrari. For his day-to-day work, however, he draws inspiration from sport. “You have to make sure that the company works in order to manufacture, deliver, sell and repeat,” he says. “It’s like tennis: hit and repeat.”

1. Patricia Urquiola
Art director
“Plays a key role in shaping Cassina’s visual identity and ensuring that every aesthetic and creative aspect reflects the brand’s values.”

2. Alberto Mandelli
Research and development director
“Gives shape and life to the products, playing an important role in research and development.”

3. Maurizio Fusetti
Chief financial officer
“Manages the company’s financial resources, planning and financial control.”

4. Stefania Sgattoni
Head of legal affairs
“Looks after legal and regulatory matters.”

5. Enrico Raggi
Commercial director
“Leads the wholesale channel’s growth strategy and sales management.”

6. Chiara Gazzola
Sewing department manager
“Manages operations related to the cutting of leather and fabrics.”

7. Louis Cirillo
Upholstery department manager
“Guides the production of upholstered products.”

8. Camilla Dichio
Sewing department manager
“Oversees the sewing process used in the production of the collections.”

9. Mario Apollonio
Operations director
“Oversees the supply chain as well as manufacturing, quality and logistics to ensure high standards across the board.”

10. Beatrice Gobbi
Product manager
“Helps guide product strategy, development, and market positioning to ensure customer satisfaction.”

11. Christian Medulla
Head of HR
“Leads talent acquisition and development, as well as organisational culture, to ensure that everything aligns with our brand values.”

12. Emanuela Malatacca
Executive assistant
“Supports the CEO by managing schedules and co-ordinating meetings to ensure efficient operations.”

13. Lorenzo Penuti
Custom interiors director
“Leads project management, client relations and custom design co-ordination.”

14. Sara Geti
Global retail director
“Drives Cassina’s worldwide sales strategies to ensure a high-quality experience for all of our customers.”

15. Sara Nosrati
Head of communications
“Manages press relations and fosters the luxury furniture brand’s reputation.”

16. Andrea Bocchiola
Marketing director
“Develops brand strategies and manages product development, as well as social media and advertisement campaigns.”

Interview: Danish fashion brand No Nationality 07’s has global aspirations

Anders Rahr has been the CEO of Copenhagen-based menswear brand No Nationality 07 (NN.07) since 2021. The fast-growing label is known for its modern-casual pieces, which include chore jackets, overshirts and relaxed, tailored trousers. You might recognise its signature brown-and-navy checked jackets, favoured by The Bear actor Jeremy Allen White. Since its television cameo, though, the brand has kept up the momentum by expanding its range and investing in physical retail. Working with Dutch design studio Contrair Collective, NN.07 has opened new shops in New York and London this year. Monocle meets Rahr to discuss the brand’s international ambitions.

Why was physical retail such a priority for you this year?
Offline retail has always played an important role in brand-building. Consumers are periodically swayed more towards online and then back towards the physical retail experience, so we believe in building a complete distribution model. NN.07 consumers usually work in the city and we already had communities in New York and London, so [opening shops in those cities] was only natural. We want to show the brand in its own environment.

Is there a common thread between NN.07 customers around the world?
They want to embody a style that is modern-casual, to wear something to work and then throughout the day. There’s an element of daily commuting too that influences the way that we design our clothes to be functional. We’re not a hype brand. We are design and quality-oriented rather than fashion-oriented.

And what’s next?
Five- or 10-year plans don’t work any more. Consumer behaviour is changing all the time. We try to have a vision about where we want to go and how we want to get there but you also need agility in business. [We aim for] sustainable growth but we also have ambition. It’s risky to go into retail in cities such as London or New York – but if there’s no risk, there’s no reward. These won’t be the last NN.07 shops you see either.
nn07.com

Interview: A peace mediation adviser on how to resolve conflict

Senior peace mediation adviser Luxshi Vimalarajah, who has spent years as a practitioner worldwide, from Myanmar to the Basque Country, here sheds light on the minuscule details that need to be taken into consideration when bringing opposing sides to the table.

Many people dream of being astronauts or musicians. How did you get into mediation?
It has a lot to do with my childhood. I grew up partly in Sri Lanka when the civil war between the state and Liberation Tigers of Tamil was in full force. Thousands were displaced and fled the country during that time. Negotiations took place periodically but they were seen as a war by other means: it was all about defeating the other side at the table or a tactical move to gain more time. I grew up watching these negotiations, which were a failure. Both sides were insisting on these maximalist goals and were unwilling to negotiate in good faith. There was also deep mistrust and huge asymmetry between the parties. The Sri Lankan state had access to the international community, to resources and to power. The other side didn’t. How can you resolve a deep-rooted conflict like that? How can you help the parties to make the shift from violent politics to non-violent? So those two questions were key for me and led me to study political science and then specialise in peace mediation. The Sri Lanka conflict helped me to understand the tool of mediation and what assets a third party brings, as a go-between and an honest broker. The third party helps to level the playing field and find common ground.

It must be so hard remaining impartial or neutral given that it is part of human nature to form opinions. How do you do it and foster that skill?
As a mediator, you are expected to be impartial: free from bias and treating all conflicting parties in an even-handed and fair manner. You are equidistant between the parties. You don’t have any stakes in the outcome of the agreement or the negotiations, and you try to provide the space for both parties to negotiate an amicable outcome. Nowadays we insist that we are not neutral third parties; we also bring our ethics, our values and how we see the world into a process. And so it’s not whatever the parties want; there are clear limitations. Some parties enter a mediation process thinking that they can negotiate blanket amnesties for the crimes committed during the war. They sometimes even make it a precondition. However, we are bound by international humanitarian law and UN mediation guidelines that prohibit amnesties for gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity. We try to be as impartial as possible but it’s not always easy. There are moments when it might be better to step out of the process and bring another third party in.

What makes a good mediator?
Sometimes parties want to have a more authoritative mediator who tells them how to manage a conflict. But in other cases, parties just want to have a space where they can explore options and be provided with ideas. For instance, [Finland’s former president] Martti Ahtisaari in the Aceh process [in Indonesia] was seen as a very authoritative figure. He structured the process and provided the space but he also made it clear from the outset that a separate state for the gam militants was off the table. You might have question marks about such an approach but sometimes parties do prefer to have that.

Are there golden rules?
Never seek to embarrass your adversary. You have to create a situation where none of the parties really lose face, particularly in an Asian or African context. It is so important that you set a framework that allows parties to retain their dignity. The golden rule in our field, just like in others, is to treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. So this obviously encompasses respect, fairness and engaging in negotiations in good faith. These are the golden rules that I always apply in mediation processes. Elsewhere, an approach that really helps parties to see how they can make this shift is called the Harvard Principled Negotiation. These are all about moving from positions to interests. It’s not about what you want. Usually parties are stuck with: I want independence; I want a unitary state; I want this and that. But these principles dig a bit deeper and ask the questions of why they need it. This shift from what to why is quite important. Interests lie below positions and that’s a way in which you can accompany the parties to see not just their own interests but also the ones on the other side.

This could lead to agreement through compromise?
Compromise is not a term I use. We tend to think that if parties are in conflict, they have to find a compromise. Both sides will probably not be satisfied but they have to somehow meet in the middle, right? But this isn’t something that I propagate, because neither side gets what it wants. It is a lose-lose situation. There are many ways to deal with conflict and the more prominent one is one side gets what it wants and the other doesn’t – a win-lose paradigm. But what we try to do is to find a way in which both sides may get what they want.

It is hard and it also takes a lot of time to understand how we can find a mutually agreeable solution based on these underlying interests. Do you know the story about a fight over an orange between siblings at home? There’s just one orange left and both children want it. What would a mother normally do? Cut the orange in half and give each child an equal share. That feels fair as it’s half and half. So that’s the classic compromise situation. But both children end up unhappy. And they begrudgingly accept the solution. But what could have made the situation better, do you think?

Tough one. What about giving one child an orange today and the other child another tomorrow?
It’s actually very simple. The mother should have asked why they wanted the orange. We usually assume that both want to eat the orange and so we cut the orange in half. But if she had asked the children, she could have made a better decision. Because it turned out that one wanted the orange to make juice and the other one needed the zest to bake a cake. And both would have got what they really wanted if the mother had asked the right question. 

You must have to be fastidiously aware of every tiny detail when bringing opposing sides together.
Tiny details matter a lot. When you come into a process and the parties have not met you but might have heard a lot, the perceived weaker side always assumes that you will most probably privilege the stronger party, which is usually the state. Without even knowing how you conduct the process, they always assume that you are biased towards the state. And so these assumptions drive the way they behave at the table. The first two or three rounds are always a testing phase. Who does she shake hands with first? Is it the state or us? How does she sit? Does she frown when we speak or just when the other side speaks? Why is she shaking her head? Every minor, non-verbal expression from your side is observed. My formal sessions always start with an informal moment, checking all these details, from seating plans to how I’m going to address them. Do they have a preference to speak first, or can we let the other side speak? So it’s a major drama. One process I was involved with almost broke down because we hadn’t checked all these details. It’s exhausting but I always say that preparation is everything. My rule of thumb is: if you have a two-day session, you need to take four days to prepare for that.

I see you are currently involved in ‘discreet’ mediation in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. Can you shed more light on these processes?
I mean, they’re discreet, so I can’t say anything! Perhaps the most successful mediation processes are those we don’t get to really hear about, because they happen long before any conflict breaks out. We know mediation as a tool to resolve conflict but we hardly pay any attention to its preventive function. It’s not widely covered but it is powerful to really prevent the outbreak of conflict and violence in the first place. A lot of mediation happens behind the scenes and when parties are ready to explore other options, because they know that if they don’t, they’ll end up in a violent conflict.

Do you have a most memorable moment from your time in the field?
One was in 2008 when members of the Basque movement approached the Berghof Foundation and asked whether we could assist eta [an armed separatist group] and the wider Basque movement to transition away from violent politics. eta was banned in those days as a proscribed terrorist organisation, yet it was willing to consider laying down arms – but only in a dignified way. It wanted to have a negotiation process and a plan for demobilisation. The Spanish state insisted that if eta wanted to demobilise, it should lay down arms, and it resisted negotiating with eta. For us, it was a very unusual process accompanying an armed movement but it was an important one, because we were fearing what would happen to the weapons, to the people in exile and on the run, to the active militants and the wider Basque community. How could we encourage more inclusive processes so that the Basque community itself was involved in such a transition and not simply a bystander? How could we prevent further radicalisation and polarisation in a situation where there was no negotiation process with the Spanish state? Over two years, I was engaged in a quiet process with several sections of the Basque movement, facilitating their internal strategy-building process. I brought them together with movements that have undergone a transition process successfully – such as Sinn Féin and South Africa’s African National Congress – to learn from them. We gave negotiation training to the Basque political arm known as Abertzale Left, and helped to provide options for the inclusion of civil society in the peace process. We were involved behind the scenes throughout the whole process, from the initial cessation of hostilities to eta’s eventual demobilisation.

How do you convince two people who don’t want to be in a room together to actually sit down in a room together?
I’m always asked this question these days in relation to Ukraine and Russia. I always say that mediation is a voluntary process. It’s also not a silver bullet. We have to have certain conditions in place for it to work. One of those is a willingness from both sides to settle the conflict and the realisation that continuing the struggle will be more costly than ending the conflict. There often needs to be what we call the mutually hurting stalemate: a situation where neither side can really win the conflict, leading to a situation of lose-lose. Only when parties see that – and want to have a different way of engaging with each other – is the time right for mediation.

Your orange story earlier makes me think about mediation in a domestic setting. What are the lessons that we can apply to avoid arguing with our partners or children this Christmas?
Mediation is all about communication. It’s important to ask the right questions and not jump to assumptions. Avoid “yes” or “no” questions and leading ones such as: “Do you think he was right when he said X or Y?” That puts people off. Instead, be curious and try to understand the other person. So, “Can you tell me more about what triggered this reaction of yours?” Dig deeper, put yourself in the shoes of the other person and try to understand what makes them uncomfortable. My second point is the need to listen actively. We don’t listen and instead are constantly thinking about what we are going to say next while our counterpart is talking. This means we don’t pay attention to what he or she says and that can be detrimental. You have to seek understanding before being understood. So listen attentively and actively to the other side before you start to talk yourself.

Do you find yourself using professional mediation skills that you’ve acquired during your career with your own family? Or do you sometimes throw that orange against the wall?
I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine. I was telling her that all my knowledge about mediation doesn’t work in this context. You also have limitations, particularly when you are a conflict party. You can end up resorting to the sorts of tactics that a conflict party uses in such a situation. So, it’s sometimes difficult to restrain. And then you have to reflect. It’s not easy but you can also learn that way. When I teach mediation to my diplomat students, I always tell them that they can go and practise in their personal life, because we’re constantly negotiating with our children, with ourselves, with our employers or employees. When we use mediation very consciously, it really helps to have a better relationship with the people around us.

Leading photography collectors on what you should buy and keep

Collectors 01
Darnell Moore & Yashua Simmons
Los Angeles

Writer and activist Darnell Moore and his partner, fashion editor and stylist Yashua Simmons, are an established presence on the Los Angeles art scene. The couple have a particular interest in photography that stems, in part, from Simmons’ work in magazines.

Indeed, one of the first pieces that they brought home was an image that Simmons had worked on with photographer and filmmaker Micaiah Carter. Other acquisitions include pieces by the late Herb Ritts, Tyler Mitchell (best known for his cover image of Beyoncé for a 2018 issue of Vogue) and Illinois-based portrait photographer Bryce Batts.

The couple source these works through people they meet, the city’s creative community or gallerists who understand their tastes. “It has been a beautiful experience to develop an eye and a practice together as two black queer men,” says Moore.

Though identity isn’t always the driving force when it comes to the pieces that the couple acquire, it’s important to them that their collection represents black life and culture, and combines their individual tastes. “We’re at a point now where I know what [Simmons] would be moved by,” says Moore.

Simmons agrees that finding art relies on an instant response. “It’s a spirit,” he says. “Nothing is grey or in the middle. They’re all just kind of emotional.”

Collectors 02
Isabelle von Ribbentrop
London

It’s no surprise that Isabelle von Ribbentrop has an impressive photography collection. She is executive director of Prix Pictet, which awards a biannual prize of chf100,000 (€106,000) to a photographer focusing on themes of sustainability and the environment.

Von Ribbentrop’s lifelong relationship with photography began when she helped her grandmother, a professional photographer, in the darkroom. When she later bought her first photograph with her husband, it was a large Wolfgang Tillmans, which hangs above the sofa in their west London living room.

Her fascination with the medium lies in the fact that it’s hard to be a passive observer of a photo. “I find photography so real,” she says. “You could be in this photograph or you could be the photographer.” And when it comes to the work she acquires, be it by Jeremy Deller, Jenny Holzer or Alicja Kwade, Von Ribbentrop buys what she loves. 

To those who want to start collecting, her advice is to learn about what you like, buy photography books, visit galleries when travelling and consider what you would really like to have hanging at home, rather than its prospective value. “You need to love a piece and it doesn’t matter if it’s someone well known or not,” she says. “It’s much more interesting to buy someone who isn’t hanging in every museum.”

Collectors 03
Rafaël Biosse Duplan
Paris & London

For Rafaël Biosse Duplan, whose mother worked as a curator at the Louvre during his childhood in Paris, the question was never whether to hang art on the wall, but rather what. In 2005 he bought his first photograph – by German filmmaker Wim Wenders – and became hooked. “There was this extraordinary medium that produced pieces like nothing I had seen before, in its diversity, formats and techniques,” he says.

One of the merits of collecting photography, he says, is that it is a “democratic medium”, likening it to literature. “You can have a version of a manuscript that also exists in paperback. It doesn’t take anything away from your collection.”

Biosse Duplan divides his collection between his homes in London and Paris, though moving works between them has become harder since Brexit. “These days there are two parts of the collection, as opposed to one full collection,” he says. What unites the two is that each photograph displayed can’t immediately be understood. “It’s not about decorating the house,” he says. “It’s about showing works that challenge and excite you, or sometimes calm you down or create strong emotions.”

How singer-turned-architect Yarinda Bunnag turned a passion project into a thriving studio

Yarinda Bunnag, a Thai architect, actor and singer, swapped the big smoke of Bangkok for the quiet beach town of Hua Hin, a three-hour drive south, during the pandemic. The change of location has been a success but, when it comes to her career, the 44-year-old polymath has by no means settled down. “I enjoy the creative process of making things within a wide range of disciplines, from music to acting and architecture,” Bunnag tells Monocle, while sitting on a plastic patio chair looking out to sea.

In her latest Netflix show, Terror Tuesday, an eight-part horror series released in August 2024, Bunnag plays a haunted single mother. “I’m old enough now to accept the mum roles,” she says with a smile. It was the birth of her first child a decade ago that eventually ended her career as a recording artist: parenthood was incompatible with the songwriting process. Then, in 2018, Bunnag co-founded her own architecture studio, Imaginary Objects.

Bunnag’s varied career can be traced back to a teenage deal she cut with her parents. While doing internships in West End London theatres and submitting a demo tape to Thai record labels, she would also apply to university. If she was accepted by a prestigious name, she would enrol.

“At the time, I had no idea about architecture,” she says. Bunnag credits her father, a retired property developer, for suggesting architecture as a union of her many talents. Signed at 18 by a major label and accepted by an Ivy League university, she completed her first year of studies in upstate New York before taking a year out to go home and record, promote and tour her debut album, Yarinda. After returning to complete her undergraduate studies, she worked at several architecture practices in Bangkok while also releasing albums, lecturing at Thailand’s top university and completing a master’s degree at Harvard.

Six years after co-founding Imaginary Objects with Roberto Requejo Belette – who had just left architectural firm OMA for a teaching job in Hong Kong – the pair can afford to be picky and prefer to take on fun projects over large paychecks. Last year also saw a move into products. A commission from a social enterprise to design a moveable playground for several children’s festivals led to Kitblox, a series of interlocking foam blocks that can be assembled into a variety of structures. The “Made in Thailand” kits have been bought by schools, libraries and daycare centres across Bangkok. Another career to add to the CV? “I’m not a good salesman and we’ve never sold products before, so we are horrible at marketing,” she says. It seems that simply doing what makes her happy is paying off.
imaginaryobjects.co

Want more stories like these in your inbox?

Sign up to Monocle’s email newsletter, The Monocle Minute, to stay on top of news and opinion, plus the latest from the magazine, radio, film and shop.

Keeping press freedom alive in Hungary means saying no to politicians

We are currently celebrating the 10th anniversary of our purchase of Sanoma Media Budapest, which we renamed Central Media, one of the leading magazine and online publishers in Hungary. In 2014, I was a private equity investor and I was motivated by the fact that it seemed like a good deal. Initially we wanted to sell on the assets at a nice price but we understood that if we wanted to keep independent, free media alive on a large scale in Hungary, we had to protect it. So we decided against selling to the government, aware of the effect that it might have on the country’s media landscape.

We realised that, if we were going to survive, we also had to grow beyond Hungary. So that’s why we invested in Slovakia, Czechia and, last year, Poland. In the last of those three countries we became a shareholder in Gremi Media, which is the publisher of the daily Rzeczpospolita, the oldest and most respected newspaper in Poland. Slovakia is interesting for us too, because free speech is also under threat there. It’s a buying opportunity, given that we have spent the past decade learning how to fight against oppression.

It is challenging at times. We have been attacked by investigations and spyware, and also faced character- assassination attempts. On the other hand, it has been good training for my mission to advocate democratic values and freedom of speech throughout the region. We gained ample experience in Hungary through being the underdog yet building a thriving independent media portfolio that informs and helps people to read news and analysis that they would not get elsewhere. We have found a way forward to counter propaganda in countries run by populists and make a free media business flourish.

We have more than 50 titles in Hungary. Our bestseller is Nok Lapja, which is the oldest women’s newspaper in the country. It shifts more than 140,000 copies a week. It’s all about families and family values, and is completely free of politics. But that hasn’t stopped politicians approaching us and hoping to be covered in it. We’ve said no every time.

We get absolutely no revenue from the state, which is a big deal given that the government is the biggest advertising spender. And yet we still survive. We are a profitable company because we have fantastic titles and good colleagues. And we were somehow able to adapt to the circumstances, which makes me think that we can do the same in Slovakia despite the new situation we are facing there under the current government [of populist prime minister Robert Fico].

For me this is not only a business but also a mission. Press freedom, factual news coverage and commentary based on critical thinking ensure that people make informed decisions about their lives and their broader community. We have a duty to inform citizens and give them the right to have the proper information. Simply put, a nation can’t evolve without these principles.

Germany has been lulled into a false sense of security. It must rearm

Germany needs to rearm – but it’s easy to understand our aversion to the idea. We have to explain to people that if they want to live in a free and peaceful Europe, we need a strong military so that nobody thinks about attacking us.

Germany’s current aversion to defence comes from our history. During the 20th century our country was responsible for two huge global conflicts. It has been vital for us as a society to reckon with the past. That was the reason why the Allies dissolved the Wehrmacht, and everything military-related, in Germany after the Second World War ended. But our current predicament is dictated by more recent history. Germany rearmed by the 1950s as the Cold War intensified. In 1955 the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) was founded and what was then West Germany became a member of Nato. After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, the Bundeswehr grew. Germany already had conscription in place and by the end of the 1960s there were about half a million soldiers under arms. In 1964, Germany spent nearly five per cent of its gdp on protecting itself. At the end of the 1980s, the German defence budget was nearly €60bn.

So what happened? The wall came down and, with it, the main threat disappeared overnight. Since the 1990s the number of soldiers under arms has dropped. Today our active-duty army stands at about 180,000 soldiers; we paused conscription in 2011. Germany militarised with the construction of the Berlin Wall and de-militarised when it came down. Now that paradigm needs to be rethought.

Germany, like other European countries, has been lulled into a false sense of security. This was true in the Germany I remember when I was growing up. Many thought that the Cold War was over and the paradise we had been longing for had arrived. There was no place in our collective imagination for the idea that the situation could change and war could return to our continent.

Even if the majority of the Germans alive today weren’t even born at the time, our commitment to peace remains our collective responsibility. An anti-military sentiment has been passed down through generations. Our history means that the military isn’t a popular topic. Whenever previous governments since 1990 needed money, they looked to take it out of the defence budget – and many people didn’t care.

That’s why our Armed Forces are run down today. In 2022, an investigation revealed that Germany only had ammunition to last a few days at war; defence minister Boris Pistorius said that there wasn’t enough money put into the military in the draft 2025 budget. The legacy of the Second World War, the fear that one day Germany might be responsible for another war, has left many people paralysed, afraid to make important defence-related decisions.

The very countries we attacked 80 years ago don’t suffer from the same issues. The best example is Poland. Many friends there now say that they are more afraid of Germany being too weak than too strong. Instead, they’re waiting for Germany to lead Europe’s military recuperation and counter Russia’s aggression. As Europe’s largest economy, it makes sense that Germany should play this role. We have rebuilt trust since the end of the Second World War. But it is also a strange position to be in. Everyone around us seems to believe in us but we still don’t trust ourselves.

So when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and launched a full-scale invasion in 2022, it took Germany time to wake up. But full-blown conflict did prove enough to stir us from our slumber. If you compare the state of our army currently to how it was just a few years ago, we have achieved a lot. A key moment was chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “Zeitenwende” speech on 27 February 2022, three days after Russia invaded Ukraine. He promised a historic turning point in Germany’s defence policy. A €100bn fund was created by finance minister Christian Lindner to increase military spending and we began to send weapons to Ukraine. But, despite this, the situation is incomparable to our army’s strength before the 1990s.

When I started studying political science at university, I had a conversation with a professor. We were focusing on Japan and its territorial dispute with Russia over the Kuril Islands, just above Hokkaido, that have been occupied by Russian troops since 1945. It had been framed as a frozen conflict and we were questioning whether it really is possible to “freeze” a dispute. At the time we were all in disagreement. But I know that if I was having the same conversation now, my answer would be a definitive “no.” It might be the best way to handle a problem for politicians in the moment – pressing pause on an issue and seeing what happens next. But when I was in Japan in March 2023, I met the defence minister and encountered the same questions that I had discussed nearly 45 years earlier as a student. It’s no use freezing a problem and handing it down from one generation to the next. We must solve issues here and now.

Germany’s most recognisable recent leader, Angela Merkel, became infamous for freezing conflicts. When Russia grabbed Ukrainian territory in 2014, instead of leading other European countries in a strong response, Merkel dithered and hid behind the excuse that other European countries had to be consulted. But the hypocrisy couldn’t be more obvious; when it came to taking decisions such as striking a deal with Vladimir Putin over cheap Russian gas through Nord Stream 2, Merkel acted alone and against the interest of our European partners. In the end, the 2014 Minsk agreements suspended Russia’s attack on Ukraine for a little while – and we all know how that turned out. Merkel’s foreign policy was a total failure. She never explained that military problems could arise for Germany as a result of Russia’s actions. Instead, she promised something ambitious yet vague. In fact, her re-election slogan was, “Für ein Deutschland, in dem wir gut und gerne leben.” (For a Germany in which we can live well and like to live.)

Today’s politicians need to be clear with the German public: the situation has changed since the 1990s and will do so again. It’s natural that citizens are more preoccupied with everyday economic issues and their children’s prospects than defence spending. But a government’s job is to explain the risks and demonstrate how they are managing them. With its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has shaken the rules-based international order, which is the foundation of all international relations. That Russia would actually send troops into Ukraine was inconceivable for many before it happened. If Ukraine loses this war, there isn’t only the danger of Putin showing up on our borders next. There’s also the danger of a copycat effect. China might decide to force Taiwan under its control; Iran has already attacked Israel; Serbia might decide that Kosovo has been independent long enough. If the rules-based international order collapses, peace and freedom are at risk. The mere idea of the EU as a civil power would become obsolete.

There is no doubt that we have the chance to live in a positive future. But for that to happen, Germany has to get rid of the fear rooted in our history and show real leadership. Putin knows that most Germans will want to block out terrible stories of war and focus on improving their own lives (“living well”, as Merkel called it). Let’s not forget that Putin lived in Germany, speaks our language and understands our mentality well. But voters here have a choice.

Becoming tolerant of food intolerances is knowing that it’s none of your business

It’s pretty rare, as a restaurant critic, that I become immersed in the niceties of theological debate – but that’s the rabbit hole in which I found myself recently. At an Anglican Eucharist service in Cambridge, I heard the priest issue a warning from the pulpit that anyone intolerant to gluten should not step forward to receive the host.

Some of the greatest schisms in the church have developed around the complexities of transubstantiation – whether, at what point and how the blessed bread and wine transform into the actual body and blood of Christ. There is a gigantic quantity of writing about the practical details. I willingly plunged in to find out.

The Church teaches that to be valid, the Eucharist “must be offered with bread and with wine in which a little water must be mixed”. The Code of Canon Law specifies that bread “must be only wheat, and recently made so that there is no danger of spoiling”. So can you have a “gluten-free host”? Not if it’s made solely from wheat, as prescribed. And so, faced with the awful possibility of having to opine on whether the flesh of the son of God, at the point of transubstantiation, is fully gluten-free, Canon Law has stuck with the marginally less controversial ruling that coeliacs shouldn’t take communion. My point? If you think religious law is confused, take a look at the hospitality sector.

As well as writing about food, I run a café and bakery. In common with many of my colleagues in the hospitality industry, we handled the food-intolerance issue badly at first. We were baffled, incredulous and often angry when a vast surge of allergies and sensitivities presented themselves in our dining rooms. When the hell did everyone start thinking that a bakery was a good place to expect gluten-free food? Nut allergies and anaphylaxis, we could handle, we were trained. Besides, we reasoned to ourselves, people with EpiPens had always known how to handle themselves. But this new stuff was uncharted territory.

And then the law changed. Governments across Europe began legislating for product labelling and new service behaviours across the food industry to meet the problem. The costs of complying were astronomical, the cost of failure unimaginable. For a while, the genuine rage in the industry was palpable. We knew that allergies were a serious issue; they always had been. But now law was being written pandering to the worried, the neurotic and the self-diagnosers. Ask any front-of-house staff and even today they’ll have 100 war stories of customers ordering an egg-white omelette “with no egg” or finishing a diligently prepared gluten-free meal by spontaneously diving into the chocolate cake. And it’s not just a few tales retold; every single person working in hospitality had regular experience of customers “crying wolf”. Then things changed again.

It’s difficult to pinpoint any exact moment. Certainly, as the numbers increased, everyone knew people with intolerances or allergies personally. Allergies and intolerances affected everyone. In supermarkets and food manufacturing, the changes in labelling progressed. You couldn’t miss the aisles of “free-from” food and the increasingly detailed labels wherever you shopped. But hospitality required more nuanced changes in attitudes and behaviour.

Today, the question arrives right at the top of the order of service: “Does anyone at the table have any allergies we should know about? Let me get you some menus.” Your preferences are carefully noted and acted on. Restaurants now talk about “dietaries” in the same way they talk about wine preferences or whether a customer is a decent tipper. There’s no more judgement of an individual customer avoiding hot spices or members of the nightshade family than there would be of avoiding peanuts or pork. We’re geared up for it now, and whether your preference reflects millennia of your culture or something you heard last week from a very thin person on Tiktok – be it a diagnosed medical condition or a complete whim – it’s nobody’s damn business but yours as an individual.

Is this a sign that the hospitality industry has grown up a bit? Well, yes, but customers have changed too. High-maintenance punters still delight in giving staff the run-around with complicated requirements but there have always been people like that. Before they realised that they could request “nothing red on the plate”, they would have been complaining about the noise of the air-conditioning, the proximity of the bathroom or deploring the placement of a side plate. They’ll always be with us. Meanwhile, the eternally fretful “picky eaters” have moved on to part-time veganism, fear of carbohydrates or plant-based dietary demands. There’s still a long way to go but, importantly, a more mutual trust has grown and people with genuine allergies or intolerances are beginning to feel heard.

Perhaps the best indicator of this is the presence on menus, along with a slew of “free-from” options, of the ubiquitous quiet announcement, “While we try to ensure that our products are made without allergens, they may be used in our kitchens. Please ask your server for details.” This isn’t a disclaimer; it’s a discreet invitation to talk. You want to see exactly what allergens are in every dish on the menu, sure. We have a stack of spreadsheets as thick as a loaf of bread. But we can sort this out a lot more comfortably with a 30-second chat, at the end of which everyone feels heard, understood and, above all, safe.

There’s a model in psychoanalytic theory called Transactional Analysis, which posits that both sides in a relationship will occupy one of the three “ego states”: parent, adult or child. If one participant acts like a child, the other is inclined to, or sometimes forced into, acting like a parent, and vice versa. In therapy, the aim is to achieve a simple equilibrium, a grown-up state where I, as an adult, speak to you, also an adult.

For a long time, the hospitality industry, shocked by the pace and manner of change, behaved like children, refusing to take responsibility for the food we served, forcing the customers to do all the grown-up thinking. Sometimes, customers behaved like children, expecting the industry to cater automatically to their every imagined need, forcing us to take control and responsibility.

Today it feels as though we might finally be communicating, talking about a shared responsibility like adults. It’s a more relaxed and hospitable state of affairs. We care about you as guests; you trust us as hosts. It’s how it was always supposed to be. And that should have our blessings.

The first spy I ever met fooled me completely – because she was female

In the early 2000s, after a career as a journalist and editor, I had been offered a job working for the British government as a counter-terrorism communications consultant. It was, in some ways, the traditional tap on the shoulder – an old colleague approached me directly, asking if I would be interested in the work. I found the offer too intriguing to turn down. My job was to explain to people what intelligence agencies were doing and how they worked; to get past the Hollywood myths and make spies real.

Before I could start, I had to get security clearance. This was a mysterious process in which I answered about a dozen questions and then everything went quiet for weeks until my government pass arrived. I was in – or so I thought. But once I was through the secure glass doors of the Westminster office, I had very little to do. Nobody said anything but I got the impression that they were waiting for something.

It was then that I was befriended by a young woman. She was about 28 years old, with wide blue eyes. She said that she had just started working in the legal department. We had a brief conversation while making tea one afternoon. I didn’t think about her again until a few days later, when I ran into her on my bus after work. We sat together during the journey and decided to go for a coffee the next day.

Over the next few weeks, we often had lunch together. She asked about my family and background. I’m a sharer and I chatted away happily, right up until the moment she disappeared. And I mean she really disappeared: her phone number, her email address… everything was gone. When I asked around the office, nobody could remember her. It was as though I had met a ghost.

Almost immediately though, things changed for me. I was invited to meetings that had been closed to me before. My work began in earnest. And gradually I realised that the friendly blue-eyed office worker had been a spy. She was the last step in my background check. Of course, I’d known from the start that I would be working with spies – that was the point – but I had never suspected that she might be one. This was because fiction had never shown me a spy like her.

What little we know about spies we learn from books and films. In fact, most of what we believe comes from just two writers: Ian Fleming, who created the Bond fantasy of the dashing, charming, Etonian spy; and John le Carré, who brought us the realpolitik of bitter, jaded men in rumpled suits and unheated offices, undermining each other while duelling with Soviet agents.

There have been other successful spy novelists, of course, but our collective vision of spies still largely comes from the work of those two British men and, to a lesser extent, the books of Len Deighton and Graham Greene. Their novels form the accepted canon of the genre against which all modern spy novels are still judged. And yet all those authors failed to write believable women characters.

Fleming’s women were blow-up sex dolls with ludicrous names such as Pussy Galore and Holly Goodhead. The women in Le Carré novels were absurd in a different way, presented as either the “mothers” – his word for secretaries in mi6 offices – or Connie Sachs, an ageing, sex-mad alcoholic. Aside from an occasional minor character or traitorous wife, we don’t see other women in the books lauded as the greatest spy novels. They simply aren’t there.

I believe this is why I am constantly asked whether there really are female spies like the ones I write into my novels – normal women doing extraordinary jobs. Over and over again, I tell people they exist. I explain that the actual Q (the technical genius in the Bond novels whose job exists in real life) is a woman. And that three of the four current division heads at mi6 are female. I can’t blame them for being surprised. After all, I was surprised to meet so many women spies.

Naturally, mi6 is aware of this. Recently, it has been recruiting more women, and one of the biggest blocks it finds is that women don’t realise they could be good at spying or that they would be welcome in intelligence. One advertisement that the service ran a few years ago showed a mother with a small child and the words, “Secretly, we’re just like you.” And they are. The women I met during those years were of all backgrounds and classes. Some were approachable and open, others incredibly intimidating and formidable. I met a lot of male spies too, of course, but the scariest spy I ever met was a woman.

She had a freezing stare that seemed to stab into the most shallow and insignificant parts of my soul. I was certain she could see all my faults through my skin. She was in her sixties, weathered and disdainful. I might never have met her, but she was invited to a meeting about a major forthcoming event. Everyone else in the room – all male intelligence officers – deferred to her. She was, I suspect, the most senior person I met in intelligence during my career, although her rank was never revealed to me. All I knew for certain was that she had no time for someone like me telling her that spies should talk publicly about their work. I’m not easily intimidated but in that meeting I found myself fumbling my words and saying inane things. I couldn’t wait to get out of the room.

She was entirely different from the first female spy I encountered. In that case, it was her sheer ordinariness that made me never question her. She was so normal in her brown skirt and slightly scuffed boots, with her hair pulled back. She had a vicious sense of humour and was so convincing that I believed everything she told me. And yet every word she said was a lie. I’ve wondered for years how she could have been so smoothly deceptive at such a young age.

If I had known my history then I wouldn’t have been surprised. Female spies, especially young women, have been critical to intelligence for decades. Consider Nancy Wake, nicknamed “White Mouse” by the Germans during the Second World War. Wake was a British spy who joined the French Resistance aged 29. Working first as a courier and then as a member of the Escape Network, she helped numerous Allied airmen slip out of occupied France to safety in Spain. After fleeing France in 1943, she later parachuted back in to help British intelligence organise French guerilla groups. She was never captured and died in 2011 at the ripe old age of 98.

Then there was Virginia Hall, an American socialite who lost a leg in a hunting accident before the Second World War but still travelled to France to offer her services to the Resistance. Fiercely intelligent and utterly without fear, she eluded the Nazis throughout the war, carrying critical messages for British intelligence and uniting rebel groups, running operations that changed history. The Germans knew her only as die hinkende Frau (“the limping woman”). She became their most wanted Allied spy but was never caught.

Authors Ian Fleming and Graham Greene both served in intelligence alongside Virginia Hall during the war. They would have known about her and Nancy Wake, and the other female spies who risked – and often lost – their lives. Even though he came into the firm later, a scholar such as Le Carré would certainly have heard of them.

They knew about these female spies. Some even met them. And then they wrote those women out of their books. It was so consistent across all the male espionage writers that it couldn’t be an accident. But why would men who knew about these fascinating women choose not to represent them in novels about spies? Of course, we will never know the full truth, but I believe it was fear.

Consider that Graham Greene was born in 1904; Ian Fleming in 1908; Len Deighton in 1929; John le Carré in 1931. They lived at a time when women were in no way equal, for most of their lives unable to buy a home without a man’s permission and unable to have a bank account of their own. Often they were fired as soon as they were married. Then the war came along and everything changed.

Everyone was needed and it turned out that, among many other things, women were very good at spying. How intimidating that must have been for someone like Fleming, a writer with minimal ambition who got a job in intelligence thanks to his mother’s connections. Imagine him in a room with Virginia Hall. She must have had an icy stare like that older female spy I once met. Ruthless, brilliant, unforgiving.

When Fleming and his generation penned their novels years later, the women they wrote weren’t brave or intelligent. They were sex toys or traitors. Because these writers had worked in intelligence, people assumed they wrote what they knew. But they didn’t; they wrote what they wanted us to believe. But there’s an oddly positive twist. By ensuring nobody knew that female spies existed, those authors unintentionally made life considerably easier for the women who really hold those jobs. Yes, it’s galling to be written out of fiction but if people don’t know you exist, they never see you coming. You can slip in and out of their lives unnoticed. Like a ghost. And that’s the best gift you could give a spy.

Cities are bad for us. Here’s how to fix them

Like many Danes of my generation, much of my childhood was spent immersed in the world of Lego. The “City” universe was my absolute favourite. I got to play the role of urban god, carefully piecing together my dream metropolis from the ground up. I had a fire station and an assortment of other buildings but most of my constructions came from my imagination. Gardens were essential, with tiny flowers and soft plastic trees filling the spaces between my buildings. Even back then, I was obsessed with trees – both in my Lego world and the real one.

What I didn’t realise at the time was how much the layout of my pretend city – like so many real ones – was governed by roads. The foundation was always a grid of grey plates directing the flow of traffic and determining how everything else would fit together. If the roads didn’t connect seamlessly, the city simply wouldn’t work. They dictated everything. That’s how I formed my earliest, unconscious definition of a “real city”.

A few decades have passed since then and I now spend most of my time, in my work as an urban designer, rethinking and challenging what a real city could and should be. Despite all the energy and creativity they hold, urban environments are also responsible for making us sick. They pollute the air with heavy metals, trap heat in concrete jungles and surround us with so much noise that our brains and hearts struggle to find peace. Despite being home to much of the world’s population, cities often isolate us more than they connect us.

Let me be clear about one thing: I love cities. I grew up in Copenhagen, and today I live in the heart of the city with my family, right next to a busy road. I thrive on the energy that cities provide – the inspiration, the communities, the culture and the innovation. Cities are where ideas take root and where diverse people come together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. I want my children to experience this richness of life, which is why we’ve chosen to stay in the urban core. But there are aspects I don’t love: the unrelenting traffic just outside our door and the sheer amount of space dominated by black asphalt, covering about 80 per cent of the public area between buildings where I live.

That’s why I began to construct my own little slice of urban life – my garden. When we bought the house, this garden seemed like no more than a parking space. But slowly it evolved into a green oasis. My goal was to create a haven for my family; a place where we could escape the noise and heat of the city. We planted as many trees as we could afford, transforming the area into a biodiversity hub, providing shade, lowering temperatures and absorbing rainwater. More importantly, we created a sanctuary filled with birds whose songs drown out the cacophony of urban life (city birds sing louder than their rural counterparts; nature’s own way of adapting to urban noise). Our garden isn’t just about greenery, though. We also installed a noise-reducing fence made from poplar bark, a sustainable by-product of the furniture industry. The bark absorbs airborne pollutants from car exhausts, which improves air quality around our home and provides a natural, tactile material that passers-by can’t help but touch.

The poplar fence panels came from an exhibition by sla – the studio where I’m design principal – at Copenhagen’s Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Our exhibition focused on the power of trees and nature in cities. Our fence, like trees, represents a small but effective act of resistance against the problems that urban life can create. Noise pollution, in particular, is a silent killer. It causes stress, disturbs our sleep and contributes to chronic health issues. The simple act of planting trees and installing noise-reducing materials can transform a space and dramatically improve our quality of life. Cities should not be places where we merely survive; they should be places that we truly love.

At the heart of all my work is a desire to improve quality of life – for all life. Our team includes biologists, architects, landscape architects, planners, lighting designers and anthropologists, working together to design cities that don’t just look beautiful but function in a way that makes life better for everyone. We’re also challenging the traditional hierarchy of cities, where roads and cars have always taken precedence. We’re not advocating for their removal but we believe that it’s time they stop ruling the urban landscape. City design needs to change urgently.

One of the most eye-opening experiences I’ve had was working closely with indigenous designers in Canada, whose traditional knowledge, stretching back thousands of years, offers an invaluable perspective. Their principle of considering how every decision will affect the next seven generations forces us to think beyond the short-termism that dominates most modern urban planning. How many recent developments in the city where you live have been designed for two generations after you, let alone seven?

One specific conversation with an indigenous designer left a lasting impression. We were discussing the rather technical term “storm-water management” when he interrupted to suggest we just call it “rain” or “the flow of water that falls from the sky”. This simple reframing, from technical to nature-based, shifted my perspective. Everything in nature is about flow, he reminded me: wind, water, energy, even people. Yet for the past century or so our cities have been built to disrupt these flows. This is why Copenhagen was hit so hard by flooding in 2011 (my own basement was one of thousands filled with water). And now even desert cities such as Dubai, which once laughed off our rainwater-management proposals, are asking for help as they face big water challenges of their own.

Unfortunately, meaningful change in cities only seems to happen when insurance companies and municipalities are forced to act after suffering massive financial losses. But you can’t put a price tag on quality of life. Feeling safe, connected and good are invaluable concepts. Cities should be designed to provide them.

Planting trees is perhaps the simplest and most effective way to improve urban life. Trees change not only the physical environment but also the way people feel and behave in public spaces. Think about where you would rather spend your day – in a park under a tree or in an asphalt car park under a lamppost? Nature has been proven to lower stress levels, make people feel more at ease and encourage social interaction. When we feel connected to nature, we feel more connected to ourselves and to others.

My best memory of this is our collaboration with 1,500 Copenhagen students, helping them to transform their 1960s concrete outdoor space into a social and biological corridor. The composition of their dorm was changed to include 10 per cent set aside for socially disadvantaged individuals. The students took clear social responsibility by inviting their less fortunate peers into their home. They intuitively understood the connection between biological diversity and social equity.

The path forward may be challenging but it’s exciting. We can change the way cities are built and experienced. As someone who started life literally playing with the concept of how a city should look, I now find myself working on how to grow them, for us and for future generations. Cities are often bad for us – but it doesn’t have to be that way.