Issues

A historic neighbourhood that’ll show you the slower side of Sydney

The Crows Nest neighbourhood might be just 5km from the skyscrapers of Sydney’s financial centre but it has its own distinct identity. The 19th-century property that gave the area its moniker is long gone; instead, you’ll find a low-rise neighbourhood huddled around Willoughby Road, a bustling high street.

If things are livelier here than elsewhere on the Lower North Shore, it’s probably because of its youthful population: the median age is 36. You’ll see young professionals (and those who are well heeled enough to snap up the remaining Federation-era cottages) making the most of independent businesses such as gourmet grocer The Essential Ingredient and thrift shops stocking designer hand-me-downs. When it comes to food, you’ll find it all, from cheap-and-cheerful Italian restaurants to Vietnamese joints and superb Japanese and Chinese options. The best watering holes include The Hayberry, The Captain’s Balcony and wine bar Knird. Our pick of the cafés is Only Coffee Project. Let’s take a swoop.

1. To read
Pick up a copy of quarterly magazine Northsider at Italian barber shop Antica Barberia and read it over a flat white at Double Cross Dining Room.

2. To stay
You’ll find the Crows Nest Hotel (or “The Crowie”) at the top of Willoughby Road. Its rooftop bistro is the place to go for a chicken parmigiana and a drink or two. Then head down to its venue space for a dance later on.

3. To see
Amble along Burlington and Alexander Streets to take in their charming Federation-style cottages and terraces. Tempted to buy one? These properties sell like hotcakes when they become available and even a two-bedroom cottage will set you back about AU$2.3m (€1.29m).

4. To taste
Chef Josh Niland has made a name for himself as a seafood specialist. Sample his abalone-schnitzel sandwich at his restaurant, Petermen.

5. …and to buy
Your meal will inspire you to raise your fish-cooking game. Pick up a pair of bone pliers at Petermen – they’re essential for any kitchen arsenal.

6. To read
The Constant Reader bookshop is well stocked with Aussie titles. Buy Possabilities by Victoria Alexander, the late Bill Granger’s Australian Food and children’s classic Alphabetical Sydney by Hilary Bell and Antonia Pesenti.

7. Book this
Opened in 1973 by brothers Rudi and Max Dietz, who still run the floor, German restaurant Stuyvesant’s House is a Sydney institution. Expect old-school service, hearty dishes including pork knuckle and a stein. Sehr gut!

8. Perch here
Picnic under the fig trees at St Leonards Park, a popular jogging spot. It hosts a sunset cinema in summer and there are cricket and football matches at the oval year-round.

9. To meet
Peter and Kathy Xenos started Xenos Cafe in 1969 as a milk bar. Order the spanakopita (savoury spinach pastry) or the slow-cooked Greek lamb. You can still spot Peter, who is now 80, on the floor every day. “I love it,” he tells Monocle. “Regulars are now friends. They have come here for 30 or 40 years.”

10. Don’t miss
The brutalist Oxley Business Centre was designed by architect Geoff Malone shortly after he graduated from the University of Sydney and completed in 1972. It is now expected to be refurbished, with the possible addition of apartments. One to watch.

The French guide to summer style

HAIR & MAKE UP: Yoana TG

Inside The Luxembourg Freeport that’s part fortress, part transit lounge

On the far periphery of Luxembourg Airport, among a collection of low-slung lorry depots is The Luxembourg Freeport, one of Europe’s busiest air-cargo handlers. Its large, angular, grey brutalist base is clad with stone-filled gabion fencing punctuated by thin window slits. It resembles a modernist fortress, or perhaps a contemporary art museum. In truth, this strange building is somewhere in between.

Designed by Swiss architects 3BM3 Atelier d’Architecture, the 22,000 sq m building opened a decade ago as the Luxembourg Freeport, a place where high-net-worth individuals could store anything from precious works of art to rare bottles of wine, behind myriad layers of security, within walking distance of a runway and immune from taxation. Though a freeport is discreet by nature, the world got a glimpse, of sorts, of the concept in Christopher Nolan’s 2020 film Tenet, in which a similar, albeit fictionalised place (the “Oslo Freeport”) played a central role. “Sort of a transit lounge for art?” asks one character, when hearing of the place.

Freeports are nothing new. As early as the 1500s, ports such as Livorno and Marseille were granting tax benefits and less-onerous customs controls to merchants, believing that it helped to boost trade. In 2012 the UK announced the rollout of eight new freeports, at locations including Plymouth and East Midlands Airport. (The country’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, wrote a pro-freeport paper while a backbench MP.) Opinion is divided on whether they are economic spurs or simply tax havens.

The Luxembourg Freeport, along with sister properties in Geneva and Singapore, also designed by 3BM3, was the brainchild of Yves Bouvier, the now-notorious Swiss art dealer who last year reached an out-of-court settlement with Dmitry Rybolovlev over a decade-long case in which the Russian billionaire alleged that he had been the victim of a billion-dollar overcharge on art purchases. For Bouvier, whose family owned Natural le Coutre, a 160-year-old Swiss firm specialising in the transport and storage of fine art, the freeport was a sort of natural extension: not just somewhere to store art but a marketplace where art could change hands in a “suspensive VAT regime” (ie, tax-free). It was a site tailor-made for art’s increasing status as a global investment vehicle.

But as Bouvier’s reputation began to suffer, so, seemingly, did the Freeport’s. A member of the European Parliament’s Special Committee on Finance Crimes, Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance demanded an investigation into the Freeport, noting that it had “been alleged to be a fertile ground for money laundering and tax evasion” (a claim rebuffed by the European Commission’s former president Jean-Claude Juncker, who, as it happens, used to be prime minister of Luxembourg). Amid a more general anti-money-laundering campaign in the country (often viewed as a European tax haven), the Freeport reported a loss of €730,000 in 2022, according to the Luxembourg Times. Bouvier had pulled out, new management had come in, and various changes were afoot. Monocle travelled to the Freeport at Findel Airport to learn more.

The first sign of change comes via Google Maps. Though locals might still refer to “Le Freeport”, the facility is listed on the map as the “Luxembourg High Security Hub”, the result of a 2020 rebranding. It is not the easiest place to get to. What looks like a 1km walk on the map actually requires a taxi ride (albeit a ridiculously short one); when the driver drops Monocle off at a security entrance for the larger airport cargo facility, the guards explain that Le Freeport is actually further along, requiring another short taxi ride.

At the facility’s rear, entry is through a rotating steel door, set into a high fence topped with razor wire. The push of a button summons a security guard, who leads us to an interior room equipped with an airport-style security gate. Once through (after removing belt and watch), we meet Philippe Dauvergne, CEO of the High Security Hub, as well as Olivier Thomas, a French investor (he has backed start-ups including Zenly, which was recently sold to Snapchat), who last year became the property’s “unique” shareholder, after buying out Bouvier, his one-time partner. They wear stylish suits and long coats, which they keep on, owing to the fact that the facility is kept at a constant cool temperature.

Speaking in an austere lobby, with poured concrete walls that have been dyed ivory and patterned to resemble wood, Dauvergne has the world-weary, mordant air of the lead inspector in a European detective drama. As well as an anti-money-laundering consultant for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, he’s a lieutenant colonel in the réserve citoyenne of France’s Gendarmerie Nationale. He stresses that the Hub has nothing to do with Bouvier these days. “We do not mix,” he says. Art is still a focus but the Hub is trying to market itself as also attractive for the storage of precious metals, such as rhodium, which are used in both industry and jewellery. “You have two legs on the ground and it’s very stable.”

There are myriad vaults, ranging from 100 sq m to 400 sq m – numbered randomly as a security measure to confuse those who don’t belong there – which tend to be leased in three- to seven-year blocks. Dauvergne can’t divulge precisely what is in those vaults, because he does not know. The Hub cannot enter the vaults; nor does it even handle the incoming and outgoing goods. Instead, the Hub has a handful of “licensed operators” (companies such as Brinks), that work with Luxembourg customs, which has a small office on-site.

This opacity would seem catnip for illicit activity but Dauvergne notes that the national customs office inspects 100 per cent of incoming and outgoing goods (in typical warehouse environments, he says, the figure is closer to 1 per cent). The fact that more than €200m of Russian assets were seized from the Freeport in 2022 is, he says, proof that the process is working. Goods are not free from inspection and laws, they are exempt from taxation: if a painting stored here were to be sold, say, to the US, no VAT would be assessed because the good never technically entered the EU. “We are based in the territory but we are not in the tax territory,” says Dauvergne.

He leads Monocle to an adjacent room, a garage-like space where trucks enter to unload. “Before being granted access, the licensed operator has to inform us 24 hours in advance, without giving us any information about what is inside,” he says.

He ticks off the Hub’s security features with the well-practised patter of an estate agent. The garage door, he says, is “not anti-missile but anti-ballistic” (good “up to .50 cal”). Retractable bollards will resist up to 44 tonnes of force. There are thermal detection and X-ray cameras, explosives detectors and a ceiling-mounted mirror. A magnetic sensor is used to detect vibration; it’s sensitive to the point where the heartbeat of a stowaway mouse was once detected (and triggered a police call-out). The Hub, monitored by some 300 security cameras, state-of-the-art cooling and nitrogen fire-suppression systems, has a secure rating of 99.85 per cent from the firm Axa, up from 97 per cent a few years ago.

This security, says Dauvergne, leads to reductions in insurance costs, which is one of the Hub’s common sales pitches. Another is that unlike the freeport in Geneva, the Hub is distinct in that products can enter directly from the tarmac. Another garage door, towards the rear of the building, opens onto the airside environment of Luxembourg International, but requires various clearances, from security to air-traffic control, to be opened. From a small rooftop terrace, there is a direct view over a fleet of CargoLux jets; a high-pitched whine and the smell of jet fuel fills the air.

Touring the Hub is a bit like walking through a Delphic riddle. Dauvergne notes that the massive elevators can accommodate cars; when he’s then asked if there are any cars currently in the Hub, he exclaims: “Good try!” Walking down a seemingly blank corridor, Monocle asks Dauvergne if photography is accepted. He shakes his head with a vaguely mournful smile. But what’s the risk in taking a picture of such banality? “There is always something when you know what you are looking for,” he says, his words echoing in the emptiness. One of the few concrete details that Dauvergne reveals while leading Monocle around the Hub’s art-restoration facilities is that a painting by Frank Stella – “Karpathenburg II” – was stored and worked on at the Hub. The work was acquired at a Bonhams auction in 2016 for $277,500 (€258,000) and shown in a nearby exhibition in 2022.

The tour concludes in the Hub’s “ballroom,” a soaring atrium with polished concrete floors, a few minimalist furniture arrangements, a small bar and, dominating the space, a looming fresco in raised cement by the Portuguese artist Vhils (whose work, ironically, typically adorns outdoor public walls). Occasionally the Hub will host security-minded events. One of these was a new BMW car launch in which visitors’ phones were confiscated. Off to the side, behind a slanted, opaque wall of glass, are a series of small “showrooms” in which dealers might tempt purchasers, or insurers might value works. While goods could theoretically linger forever in the Hub, “this is not a cemetery”, says Dauvergne. “Tenants prefer to have a lot of movement for merchandise, because movement is money.”

Lausanne’s Capitole cinema shines once again

Lausanne’s Capitole cinema has reopened after being renovated for the third time since it was built at the end of the 1920s. Switzerland’s largest movie theatre owes its longevity to its longtime owner, Lucienne Schnegg, who died at the age of 90 in 2015. An ardent cinephile from the Jura region, Schnegg was hired as the cinema’s secretary in 1949, before being appointed as its manager seven years later. When its former owner, Luxembourgian confectioner Matthias Köhn, died in 1981, he left the business to Schnegg but his children successfully challenged the bequest in court. Undeterred, Schnegg bought the lausannois institution in 1996.

Affectionately known as “la petite dame du Capitole” (“the little lady of the Capitole”), Schnegg ran the cinema for almost 60 years. She also worked there as a cashier, usherette and ice-cream seller. As the era of online streaming platforms took hold, she was determined to ensure that the Capitole would remain a dedicated movie theatre, rather than being redeveloped for other commercial purposes. That’s why, when she decided to sell the building in 2010, she made a deal with the city authorities to safeguard its future. The Cinémathèque Suisse, the national film archives, was brought in to manage the venture, with the mission of protecting works that are considered part of Switzerland’s film heritage, as well as the buildings in which they were shown.

The renovation has been carried out by Montreux-based practice Architecum at a cost of CHF21.6m (€22.5m). “Today most of Lausanne’s 18 historic cinemas have been repurposed as bars or supermarkets,” says Marion Zahnd, one of the project’s lead architects, when Monocle meets her in the Capitole’s sumptuous foyer. “We had the opportunity not only to salvage the historic building but to restore it for its original purpose.”

At first glance, beyond a 500 sq m extension, little seems to have changed. Many of the original art deco features, as well as those added during a smaller-scale renovation in 1959, have been painstakingly restored. But behind the scenes, the Capitole has received a significant upgrade. “We wanted to make the demands of modern technology work around the restored structure, rather than compromising the architecture,” says Zahnd, pointing to the state-of-the-art projection room above.

Architecum has added an intimate subterranean screening room named after Schnegg that seats an audience of 144. This complements the original 731-seat auditorium whose vast theatrical structure has remained largely unchanged since its inception. The additional room will show the works of emerging film-makers and the main screen will focus on international blockbusters.

The Capitole was originally designed by Swiss architect Charles Thévenaz and inaugurated in 1928, towards the tail end of the silent-film era. At the time, it featured a glitzy melange of gilded marble columns and pink-velvet sofas. Between the 1930s and 1940s, however, it developed into a more versatile ciné-concert and conference venue, incorporating an orchestra pit, organ and dressing rooms. These features broadened the scope of the Capitole’s offering and the venue welcomed the likes of Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova and Geneva’s Orchestre de la Suisse Romande for performances. In 1946, Jean-Paul Sartre declared his existentialist manifesto inside the cinema’s packed auditorium. Then, in 1953, Switzerland’s first panoramic screen was installed here.

In 1959, architect Gérald Pauchard was brought in to update the Capitole’s architecture, partly in a bid to lure audiences back to the big screen as domestic television sets soared in popularity. Pauchard made several significant decorative alterations: he emblazoned the cinema’s name in neon on the façade, for example, and introduced red upholstery, fabric-lined ochre walls and Murano-glass lighting fixtures.

Fast-forward to the cinema’s third renovation, which began in 2021. Zahnd’s team restored the evocative art deco features with Schnegg in mind. Every intricate 1950s chandelier was painstakingly cleaned to eliminate ancient stains caused by cigarette smoke. When the panoramic screen was removed, Zahnd found a frayed sample of the original 1950s blue-grey carpet, allowing her to replicate its precise shade. The new corrugated-aluminium walls in the foyer imitate the folds of the velvet screen curtains that Pauchard installed in the grand auditorium.

The screening room, which was luxuriously lined with crimson velvet in 1959 to improve its acoustics, has been left untouched. “Removing it all would have spoilt its lustre, so we brought in a consortium of textile restorers to maintain the humidity of the auditorium during the works,” says Zahnd. “We wanted to preserve the texture as much as possible because velvet is synonymous with the opulence of art deco cinema. Heritage and art form had to cohabit.” A media library belonging to the Cinémathèque Suisse replaces what was once the building’s barbershop, while a specialist bookshop and a café-cum-bar have also been added.

The restoration, which draws deeply on Switzerland’s artistic, architectural and technical capabilities, is evidence that the country’s appetite for the silver screen remains healthy. “There has been a noticeable shift in the way in which we consume movies,” says Christophe Bolli, the Cinémathèque Suisse’s communications director. “But in this country we have also seen an increased demand for our heritage pictures, many of which are found exclusively in our film library.”

Though Schnegg passed away before she could witness the renewed splendour of her beloved picture house, the new screen honours both her name and her legacy as a champion of the art form’s timelessness and power to entertain. “The magnificence of the Capitole’s interior helps to re-establish Schnegg’s idea that a trip to the cinema should be a celebratory experience,” says Bolli. “I like to think that she would have been satisfied with the job that we have done here.”
cinematheque.ch

10 must-see exhibitions at the 2024 Venice Biennale

Curated by Adriano Pedrosa and entitled “Foreigners Everywhere”, this edition of the Venice Biennale is wrapped up in identity. If that doesn’t sound like fun, let us point out that it’s less “my truth” and more “hey, look at what we get up to down here!” – and it is mostly “down here”, with many of Pedrosa’s selected artists coming from the Global South. Their works invite you into worlds full of joy, colour, history, vivid folklore, vim and vigour. Look at Dalton Paula’s life-size portraits of black Brazilian heroes and Pakistani-American Salman Toor’s physical figurative paintings and you’ll see what we mean.

The national pavilions are not required to follow the curator’s lead. However, many chose to reflect the art world’s current curatorial concerns. Our picks follow but we should also mention the Arsenale’s Ukrainian pavilion, which is rich, poignant, funny and a ringing endorsement of artists’ survival instincts. At other “news agenda” pavilions, Russia has lent its prominent Giardini plot to Bolivia, while Israel’s empty pavilion displays a sign explaining that no art will be displayed until “a ceasefire and hostage-release agreement is reached”. This sheet of paper seemed to be photographed as much anything else on opening week. 

Ethiopia
Pallazzo Bollani, Castello

With its debut at this year’s Biennale, Ethiopia has shown that good things come to those who wait. Carrying the inaugural torch for the East African country is Tesfaye Urgessa, with his striking figurative paintings on show at the Palazzo Bollani. Curated by British poet and writer Lemn Sissay, Urgessa’s bold artworks skilfully combine Ethiopian iconography with German neo-expressionist influences – clear evidence of his studies in Stuttgart – to address themes of domesticity and human fragility. Viewers move between large-scale works and smaller portraits, which Urgessa compares to watching a film that cuts between wide-angle shots and close-ups. “One of the things that fascinates me about painting is that I am able to learn about myself,” says Urgessa. “It’s a medium to go beyond what you know and into a greater dimension. You just have to trust the process. As long as the painting is in the studio, it’s a conversation between the painting and me, and with the ones that take a long time, you build up an intimate relationship”.

South Korea
Giardini

Koo Jeong A’s scent-based work, which celebrates 30 years since the South Korean pavilion’s inauguration, is subtle yet imaginative. “Odorama Cities” is the result of hundreds of people submitting their memories of Korean fragrance to inform a space submersed in olfactory meaning, alongside infinity symbols and a scent-breathing bronze mega-baby.

Spain
Giardini

Sandra Gamarra Heshiki was born in Peru and is the first non-Spaniard to represent the nation in whose capital she works. In “Pinacoteca Migrante”, she presents her original works as if in a historical museum that merges themes and elements by Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán and Frans Hals to look at the paths of migration and colonialism – what is taken and what is left behind. Heshiki demonstrates an uncanny eye for the brutality behind an “innocent” 17th-century family portrait, for example. 

Denmark
Giardini

Photographer Inuuteq Storch of Greenland takes over Denmark’s pavilion this year, demonstrating the knotty relationship between the two countries. Storch’s photographs show intimate moments of his daily life, as well as the natural beauty of the region. Take a break in one of the hammocks behind the pavilion to admire an unexpected recreation of the breathtaking view from Storch’s house.

UK
Giardini

The grand staircase of the imposing 19th-century British pavilion is this year shunned in favour of a backdoor that leads to “Listening All Night to the Rain”, artist John Akomfrah’s commission. “We were tracking the ghost of listening,” Akomfrah says of his multi-screen video installations, which investigate ideas of memory, migration and racial injustice. The exhibition’s eight interlocking works create surprising echoes between sound and visuals.

Willem de Kooning
Gallerie dell’Accademia

This show explores Dutch-American abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning’s affinity for Italy in big bold canvases and priapic sculptures, examining how classical Italian masterpieces – and torrid love affairs – influenced his work.

‘Breasts’
ACP Palazzo Franchetti

Curated by Carolina Pasti, this show brings together works from around the world that explore the symbolism of breasts in art. Expect uplifting works by Cindy Sherman, Laura Panno and Louise Bourgeois.

Jean Cocteau
‘The Juggler’s Revenge’, Peggy Guggenheim Collection

The French trickster is celebrated in a sprightly show that swoons at his skills: poetry, music, film-making, textiles, jewellery and visual art. It’s easy to see here how his endless invention ensured he was seen as an enfant terrible until his death at the age of 74.

Peter Hujar
Chiesa di Santa Maria della Pietà

The late, great US photographer Peter Hujar’s 1976 book Portraits in Life and Death has been turned into a beguiling and atmospheric show, combining the creative outsiders of New York’s Lower East Side scene – John Waters, Susan Sontag, artist Paul Thek – with the human remains of Palermo’s Capuchin Catacombs. Hujar’s lens seems to animate the dead while preserving the living.

Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari
San Polo

One of Venice’s largest churches, the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari is home to as much artistic greatness as godliness. No less an artist than Titian’s tomb sits below his own vast, stunning Madonna di Ca’ Pesaro, while his Assumption of the Virgin beams down from the altar above. Meanwhile, a Donatello sculpture of John the Baptist keeps a monolithic marble pyramid by Canova in very good company. This is a palate-cleansing dip into the pious.

Editor’s letter: Andrew Tuck on leaps of faith

We’ll come to the pole-vaulting in a moment (it’s amazing what skills you can effortlessly attain at the hands of an illustrator). But we’re going to start at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, the topic of this issue’s Expo.

The hotel gained fame when it was used as the setting for Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film Lost in Translation, starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. Coppola knew the Park Hyatt well as she had stayed there while promoting an earlier movie, The Virgin Suicides. Its casting as the background to her melancholic and funny tale of failing marriages, jet lag and cultural confusion was perfect. On screen, the hotel looked like a secret world and its views across Tokyo were beguiling. Few could have left the cinema without wondering when the next jal flight was departing.

In real life the hotel, on the top floors of the Shinjuku Park Tower, has mesmerised guests since it opened in 1994. So the news of an 18-month closure for a makeover panicked many regulars who had come to feel that the Park Hyatt was somehow theirs. The hotel has been at pains to stress that the changes planned will not undermine its spirit of calm grandeur – but change is coming. That’s why we asked Fiona Wilson, our Tokyo bureau chief and Asia editor, to capture the hotel’s final days in its current form.

Over the years, Monocle staff have often stayed at the Park Hyatt (it felt at times as though our editorial director Tyler Brûle had taken up residence). I too have woken up there many times (sometimes at 03.00, Bill Murray-style, jet-lagged), dined in the New York Grill, swam in that pool and sat in the bar marvelling at the vastness of Tokyo, so I am keen to see what’s in store.

That theme of managing change also comes to the fore in our fashion director Natalie Theodosi’s interview with Bruno Pavlovsky, president of fashion at Chanel. Fashion is often regarded by outsiders as a business that’s dependent on navigating consumers’ ephemeral tastes. But behind the beauty and the clothes, the best fashion houses are run with a view to the long term, with a depth of consideration that is often remarkable. Pavlovsky shares his take on the industry and explains how going against perceived wisdom has paid dividends for Chanel.

And the theme is there again in Claudia Jacob’s report on the refurbishment of Lausanne’s 1920s Capitole cinema, Switzerland’s largest historic movie theatre. The cinema has survived because of the foresight of its longtime owner, Lucienne Schnegg, who sold the building to the city in 2010 to secure its future. Schnegg died in 2015 but surely would have been amazed at how the technology has been upgraded while leaving the best of the architecture intact, including a vast neon sign that’s more LA than Lausanne.

There are more restorations in our Culture pages, as we report on the Venice Art Biennale and preview Art Basel. But the makeovers come in the form of a series of new arts institutions. Perhaps the most extraordinary is Kunstsilo, in Norway. It’s a former grain-storage facility that has been reshaped into a home for a collection of modernist Nordic art. The project hasn’t always had local support but the outcome is a building that, like Lost in Translation, has the power to change travel plans as people work out how to get to the town of Kristiansand. (Though if you want to see how design and politics can collide to deadening effect, read our Agenda story on Portugal and how an ambitious plan for a national branding exercise was derailed.)

Back to the pole-vaulting. The Paris Olympics are fast approaching and, in our Affairs pages, we meet some of the sportsmen and women who will carry the hopes of their nations and look at how Paris prepared for the Games. It’s a contentious topic for many French people who have opposed hosting the Olympics (too costly, too disruptive). But you get the sense that, as opening day approaches, the mood even among critics will soften. And if you’ll allow me a metaphorical muscle stretch, pole-vaulting also sums up what many of the people, cities and brands in this issue are trying to do – leap ahead with grace and precision.

If you have any thoughts or feedback, feel free to drop me an email at at@monocle.com

Paris plans for a green transformation

Despite their brevity, the Olympic Games cast a long shadow. For every successful 21st-century iteration – Sydney 2000, London 2012 – there have been Games that have seemed to confirm all negative stereotypes, not just about the host city but the country it is in (Athens 2004, Tokyo 2020, we’re looking at you). It is perhaps because of the relatively short duration that critics are always so concerned with the legacy of each Olympics, even though governments spend more on things that last a much shorter time and are far less entertaining.

Paris 2024 arrives at a combustible juncture. A fractious geopolitical landscape is not exactly conducive to carefree enjoyment, while inflation and climate change potentially make the decision to spend a vast amount of public money on unnecessary construction a vexed issue. It is a sign of the times that its organisers have sought to make the lack of new buildings a defining feature of this year’s Games. The main action will take place at the Stade de France, which was built for the 1998 football World Cup. Other landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the river Seine and the Place de la Concorde will provide dramatic backdrops to other events.

Anne Hidalgo, Paris’s mayor, has been criticised for her confrontational politics but she has seized the opportunity provided by the Olympics with admirable zeal. Much of her efforts have been directed towards the goal of making Paris “the greenest big city in Europe” and, while that is hyperbolic, Hidalgo has enacted policies that have already made the city cleaner, greener and more pleasant without the usual attendant hubristic grand projects. Not all of the following urban fixes are the mayor’s own but together they represent an inspiring collection of policies that other cities, especially those hosting future Olympic Games, would do well to emulate.

1.
First stop
Checked luggage

The job of being a good host begins as soon as your guests arrive. Paris’s main airport, Charles de Gaulle, has unveiled a new baggage-handling set-up to cope with the Olympian influx of spectators, athletes and members of the media. The airport’s baggage handlers are expected to process more than 114,000 items of luggage from national delegations and members of the press, with an additional 47,000 pieces of sporting equipment from the athletes themselves. To assist them in this bicep-busting endeavour, the airport has constructed a 10,000 sq m “baggage factory”, a bespoke luggage-processing zone, which should ensure that travellers receive their possessions in record time. The airport has also taken delivery of a new scanner system that will provide a more detailed look at passengers’ luggage – and should mean they don’t need to remove electronics and liquids from their bags before security.

2.
Cleaning up the Seine
Water sports

The awarding of the Olympics and Paralympics to Paris galvanised the city’s authorities into moving forward with a long-discussed plan baignade (“bathing plan”), dedicated to cleaning up the polluted river Seine in order to make it swimmable. As with most things in life, this was easier said than done. In the end, the €1.4bn scheme – which involved disinfecting wastewater discharges near treatment plants, eliminating the direct discharge of wastewater into the river from boats and treating sources of pollution upstream of Paris – looks set to deliver a clean Seine in time for it to host the Games’ opening ceremony: a flotilla of boats on the river in the centre of the city. It will also provide the setting for the triathlon and marathon-swimming contests. Taking a dip in the capital’s river was outlawed in 1923 due to safety concerns; 101 years later, Parisians will be able to bathe in it once again. When the Games are over, that is.

3.
Urban forestry
Seeds of change

The motto for Paris 2024 is Ouvrons Grand les Jeux (“Games wide open”) but it could just as easily have been “soil wide open”. As part of its bid to become the greenest capital city in Europe, Paris has embarked on a gargantuan tree-planting programme, including 8,876 in and around the Olympic Village, part of a larger plan to put 170,000 in the ground by 2026. A large portion of this effort has been focused on cultivating several urban forests that will feel welcoming to the wider community. This has resulted in small city sites metamorphosing from neglected, cold spaces to ones in which biodiversity thrives. One such setting is Place de Catalogne, a large roundabout near the Gare Montparnasse, which is now home to an urban forest of 478 trees. There is also a much more ambitious, though not yet confirmed, idea to turn the Champs-Élysées into a pedestrian-friendly “extraordinary garden”. Watch this space.

4.
School-friendly streets
Paved with gold

Hundreds of rues aux écoles (“school streets”) have been created since 2020. These roads outside nurseries and primary schools have been pedestrianised and had their traffic furniture replaced with trees and planters. Where possible, removable barriers have been installed, making these spaces flexible for parents and children to gather and play in. The programme is not only meant to deliver safer public spaces around schools but also to tackle pollution and help create islands of fresh air in the heart of the urban environment. More school streets are expected by the end of this year. Paris is a relatively small city, at least its older centre, so getting around by foot or bicycle need not be an impossibility. Many Parisians have already ditched their cars (car use in the city has fallen consistently since 2012 and in 2020 it fell in the Greater Paris region for the first time) and these school streets aim to nudge that down even further.

5.
Au revoir, les SUV
Traffic jam

Mayor Anne Hidalgo has been putting further pressure on drivers by increasing parking costs, phasing out diesel vehicles and creating no-traffic zones. But perhaps no move has been as well-publicised as the tripling of parking charges for suvs. Officials claim that the number of suvs in the city has increased by 60 per cent since 2020, meaning that they now make up 15 per cent of the private vehicles in Paris. Following a referendum earlier this year, the city has decreed a special parking rate for “heavy and polluting” vehicles. The cost of on-street parking for such cars is now set at €18 an hour in the centre and €12 in the rest of the city, with exemptions for taxi drivers, delivery vehicles, health workers, people with disabilities and residents. The aim is not only to reduce the environmental impact that SUVs have but also to discourage people from driving into the city when coming from the suburbs or further afield.

6.
Park it
Getaway, cars

As part of her re-election campaign in 2020, Anne Hidalgo pledged to remove almost half of Paris’s 140,000 on-street car-parking spaces by the end of her second term in 2026, with a focus on those in narrow and residential streets. Many attribute this pledge to Hidalgo’s advisor, Carlos Moreno, a Franco-Colombian academic known for his contributions to the 15-minute city concept. All over Paris, former spaces have been filled with planters, trees and other street furniture. Priority for those spaces that remain will be given to locals and businesses. As these green spaces become more established, there is a plan to diversify them – proposals include installing vegetable allotments, food-composting areas, playgrounds and eco-toilets. Much of this is happening in areas that are limited to traffic for the Games (only permit-holders can drive through), though the mayor hopes that these low-traffic areas will become permanent after the Olympics have left town.

7.
Take a bike
Easy rides

Paris has seen unprecedented investment in and expansion of its bike lanes. The plan is to eventually increase their total length (the city already has more than 1,000km cycle lane) in time for the Games. These new routes (dubbed “Olympilanes”) have been built to link the main venues, which have also seen the addition of some 10,000 new bike racks. At the same time, there has also been an expansion of the famous Velib bike-hire scheme, which, when it was launched in 2007, was one of the world’s first citywide programmes. City Hall has added 3,000 units to its inventory in an attempt to encourage Games attendees to cycle to events. For those who prefer to travel on two legs rather than two wheels, a long-distance hiking trail built in the Auteuil district in support of Paris’s 2024 Olympic bid has been a big hit, proving that long urban walks need not go near busy roads.

8.
Upgrading Le Métro
Track record

The Régie autonome des transports parisiens (RATP), the body that operates Paris’s public transport system, has had a busy 2024. In February it began replacing its old Siemens automatic control software with a new system to increase capacity during peak periods. Whereas the old system could handle 35 trains at once, with an interval of 105 seconds between them, the new one will be able to handle 65 at a time with an interval of 80 seconds. But perhaps the centrepiece of RATP’s Olympian transformation is the extension of the M14 Métro line. It will be lengthened by 1.5km to the north, terminating at the new Saint-Denis Pleyel station, and by 14km to the south, where it will connect with Orly Airport, linking the Olympic Village to three major train stations (Saint-Lazare, Gare de Lyon and Bercy) as well as the Stade de France and the new Aquatics Centre. Seven new stations will be opening across the line.

9.
Inner-city redevelopment
Designs for life

In 2014, Anne Hidalgo launched Réinventer Paris, a design competition looking for proposals for redeveloping 23 inner-city sites. Of the winners, Morland Mixité Capitale, designed by David Chipperfield Architects Berlin with Parisian practice BRS and Calq, is perhaps the most eye-catching. An imposing former administrative building on the banks of the Seine in the 4th arrondissement has been converted into a “lively campus”, featuring a panoply of public and retail spaces. There is a combination of high-end and subsidised housing, youth hostel, offices, a food market, kindergarten, nightclub and a luxury hotel and restaurant. The pièce de résistance is the top two floors, which feature a bar, restaurant and roof garden (with cutting-edge phyto-purification system). This space is open free-of-charge to the public who can enjoy stunning views over the city.

10.
Gold-standard centrepiece
The main event

The piece of infrastructure that will likely come to symbolise the Games this summer is something that was there all along. The Stade de France, the country’s 80,000-capacity national stadium, which was built for the 1998 Fifa World Cup, has been adapted to be the main event stadium for the Games. Six new bars have been added, while lighting and electronics have been fully modernised – two new high-definition screens have been positioned in the north and south stands to replay footage. French phone operator Orange has also installed a number of large 5G transmitters in the roof. But the most dazzling addition is the stadium’s new 14,000 sq m purple running track. Traditionalists might balk at its radical hue but at least the Games’ organisers won’t be derided for going against another Olympic tradition: building an expensive new stadium that becomes a white elephant as soon as the event leaves town.

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

Paris 2024 Olympics: Athlete profiles

The International Olympic Committee often points out that it isn’t countries competing at its events but National Olympic Committees (NOCS). And it probably still likes to think of the Games as a competition for gifted amateurs rather than professionals – admirable, perhaps, but not entirely true.

In Paris this summer, about 10,500 athletes from 206 NOCS will test their skills in 32 sports across 329 events, aiming to bag one (or more) of the 5,084 medals that are up for grabs. To assist them, their countries (sorry, NOCS) employ the full might of their sporting-industrial complexes – for example, Canada spent about €1.6m for every swimming medal that it won in Tokyo. They do this because victory at the Olympics proves that you’re the best in the world – and that’s an invaluable soft-power tool.

Here are seven athletes vying to bring home something shiny for their compatriots this summer. 

1
The Fencer
Alexandra Ndolo
Kenya

Heavy rain has left the running track at Nairobi’s Nyayo National Stadium unusable and marabous stalk the wet lawn. The athletics qualifiers are delayed and people are huddling with tea and mandazi, a sort of cardamom-spiced doughnut. Among them is 37-year-old fencer Alexandra Ndolo. Neither the grey sky nor the long wait has dampened her mood. After all, she has already secured her ticket to Paris and will be the first Olympian to represent Kenya in the sport.

Ndolo was born to a Kenyan father and a Polish mother, and raised in northern Bavaria. She took up modern pentathlon at school, where her agility was quickly recognised. When she was 14 she was offered a place at a fencing boarding school, though her parents had to turn it down for financial reasons. But Ndolo persevered and became a professional fencer at the age of 21. She then enlisted in the Bundeswehr to become a “sports soldier” (nearly a third of Germany’s Olympic athletes are in the army) a few years later. “Basic training was interesting,” she says. “I realised that I could push my physical limits further than I thought.” This stood her in good stead. In 2017 she won silver at the European Fencing Championship, then another silver at the Fencing World Championships in 2022.

After competing for Germany for 15 years, Ndolo decided to represent Kenya instead. The move was partly born of her emotional connection to her late father but she also felt that she could make a bigger difference by representing a nation that had almost no fencing tradition. In 2019 she co-founded the Kenya Fencing Federation. “What I love about this country is that people will appreciate anyone who is representing them, no matter what the sport is,” she says. “And now that I have qualified for the Paris Olympics, they are really excited.”

What Kenyan fans might lack in fencing expertise, they make up for in enthusiasm. At the stadium, the crowd gives Ndolo a warm welcome. “I am so proud that Kenya can take a fencer to the Olympics,” says the compere, former 400m hurdler Rose Tata-Muya. As she leaves, the receptionist at Ndolo’s gym calls out, “Make us shine over there.”

2
The Kite Foiler
Max Maeder
Singapore

Max Maeder grew up on the water. The 17-year-old was born in Singapore to a mixed-heritage family – his father is Swiss, while his mother is Singaporean – but he spent much of his childhood on Sulawesi, an Indonesian island east of Borneo. There, at the diving resort that his family owns, Maeder tried kitesurfing for the first time at the age of six. Just five years later he was ready to start competing. By then, however, he had switched to kite foiling, a slightly different, more advanced form of the sailing sport, which, along with Maeder, will be making its Olympic debut this summer in France.

As in kitesurfing, the foil kite harnesses wind power but the sailor stands on a board that glides like a magic carpet as high as a metre above the water, with a hydrofoil (a structure comprising a mast and two wings) below. This allows for even greater speeds than kitesurfing. Maeder compares the hydrofoil mechanism to an “underwater aeroplane”. With enough wind power from the kite, it pushes the board high, helping it to glide. In the right conditions, sailors can reach speeds of up to 80km/h.

“As soon as I got up on the hydrofoil and started floating above the surface of the water, I was immediately infatuated,” says Maeder, recalling his first few years in the sport. “I enjoyed it more and more.”

Maeder was home-schooled, which gave him a schedule that was flexible enough to let him fit in some training around studying. He spent his formative years glued to the board and, like a foil kite in a gusty harbour, his career soon began to soar. In August 2023 he claimed the Formula Kite gold medal at the World Sailing Championships in the Netherlands; the following month he clinched Singapore’s first gold at the quadrennial Asian Games. And he capped off the year by winning the Youth Sailing World Championships, held in the Brazilian resort of Armação dos Búzios.

When Monocle meets Maeder, he is in Hyères in the south of France, training for the Formula Kite World Championships in May – an important lead-up event to Paris 2024. “It’s a great privilege and I’m excited to compete,” he says. “I feel pride for the nation and all of the things that come with being an athlete preparing for his debut at the Olympics. In other words, I’m no different from the other competitors.”

Maeder is one of a small number of athletes who Singapore will be sending to the Olympics this summer. Since the country began participating in the Games in 1948, it has won a total of five medals: two bronze, two silver and one gold. For much of his athletic career, Maeder didn’t even consider the Olympics as a possibility because kite foiling hadn’t yet been accepted as an official discipline. Now he is preparing to compete in races off the coast of Marseille, where many of the water-based sports will be hosted this summer. Despite his youth, he is already a seasoned professional. “In terms of experience, I am no longer a rookie,” he says, laughing.

3
The Long Jumper
Ivana Spanovic
Serbia

Ivana Spanovic is used to racking up firsts. In 2013 she became the first Serbian to win a medal at the World Athletics Championships. Then she became the first to win gold at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in 2018. Last year, in Budapest, she became the world champion in the women’s long jump – and, naturally, the first Serbian track-and-field athlete to win an outdoor world title. This summer, Spanovic will be Serbia’s best hope for another first: a gold medal in an Olympic athletics event. The stakes are high. She will be 34 by the start of the Games so Paris is likely to be her last tilt at the title.

But as she prepares for her fifth Olympics, Spanovic insists that she isn’t feeling the pressure. “I’m enjoying competing more than ever,” she tells Monocle from a training camp in Dubai. “I became the world long-jump champion at the age of 33 with a new personal best and a national record. That was a validation of smart, dedicated work. I’m looking forward to bringing the same energy to Paris in the race for the only gold medal that I’m missing.”

Spanovic considers her two decades of experience to be her “greatest ally”, though she has endured plenty of misfortune along the way. In 2017, for example, she narrowly missed gold at the World Championships when what could have been a winning jump was foiled by the number on her vest coming loose and marking the sand. Such mishaps have taught her to “control emotions and be calm until the next chance comes along”. Adopting this approach, she says, helped her to claim her first world indoor title six months later.

Spanovic is Serbia’s biggest athletics star but she remains a member of her local club in Novi Sad. She tells Monocle that she wants to “stay and live in the country, and involve Serbian people, making them feel proud and inspired”. She has certainly achieved that – and never more so than on those electric nights at Belgrade Arena in 2017 and 2022, when she won gold medals at the European and then world indoor championships, respectively. “Those were my favourite and most emotional competitions,” she says. Spanovic might have to add to that list if she manages to see out her career with a final gold medal in Paris.

4
The Archer
Satsuki Noda
Japan

Under grey skies at her first world championships, Japanese archer Satsuki Noda faced the ultimate challenge. Locked in a tight quarterfinal against South Korean Olympic medallist Kang Chae-young, she found herself in a single-arrow tie-breaker with Olympic qualification on the line. When Kang shot true, Noda not only had to match her 10 points (a bull’s eye) but produce a better score. Drawing her bow, she delivered her arrow with precision: it traversed the 70-metre distance to land centimetres closer to the centre than her opponent’s, securing her a ticket to Paris. “To win that shoot-off on a double 10 filled me with happiness and gave me a huge confidence boost,” says Noda, who took home a bronze medal.

A little more than six months since that day in Berlin, Monocle visits Noda at the Ajinomoto National Training Centre in Tokyo’s Kita ward. In the open-air shooting range, the 23-year-old practises alongside her fellow national team members. She exudes calm from one arrow to the next. “In competitions, I try to keep a smile on my face,” says Noda. “It helps me to remain calm. A frown or strained look can pull you down. In archery, mistakes happen. There’s no such thing as the perfect match, so you can’t let an error hold you back.”

This focus has helped her to remain grounded after an impressive rise through the ranks. Having taken up the sport in high school, Noda enrolled on the archery programme at Kindai University in Osaka. There, she developed the strength, form and technique that yielded her a national title while she was still a student. “The aim is to avoid even the slightest deviations,” she says. “Once you lose your form, it begins to affect your scores.”

Her footwear of choice is Nike’s Air Force 1. The bestselling streetwear staple, originally designed as a basketball shoe, has been her competition trainer since university. “The sole is firm and almost completely flat, which provides a stable base,” she says. Three years after watching the Tokyo Olympics as a university student, Noda will stand shoulder to shoulder with the world’s best archers. “Paris will be my first Olympics but, regardless of that, I aim to have a challenger mindset.”

5
The Judoka
Leonardo Gonçalves
Brazil

In common with many Brazilians, Leonardo Gonçalves’s first sporting passion was football but it was judo that made him a star. In Paris, the 28-year-old martial artist will make his Olympic debut competing in a sport that has brought his country 24 medals – the most of any discipline – since 1964, when it was first introduced to the Games. While sports such as football or volleyball are more commonly associated with Brazil, it’s likely that most of the nation’s spectators will have their eyes trained on the 15 separate events on the judo mat this summer.

Gonçalves, who will be competing in the 100kg category, hails from Iguape, a municipality with a population of about 31,000 in the countryside outside São Paulo. In 2016 he moved to the southern city of Porto Alegre to train at the Sogipa Club, one of the nation’s most celebrated judo centres. When Monocle asks Gonçalves why Brazil excels at the sport, he explains that the country also does well in other martial arts, such as jiu-jitsu – a phenomenon that he attributes to large-scale Japanese immigration in the first half of the 20th century. “Our judo is similar to the version in Japan,” he says. “The people who came to Brazil influenced the sport heavily. In my city, for example, there’s a significant Japanese community. We learnt judo from them, adding a special Brazilian touch.”

Gonçalves’s pre-Paris schedule is intense. Monocle meets him at a training session in the city of Pindamonhangaba as he prepares for the World Judo Championships in Abu Dhabi in May. “We will train hard for these championships,” he says. “But our main focus is the Olympics.”

Though Gonçalves will be part of a large and promising Brazilian contingent in Paris this summer, he says that it’s not easy being an athlete in his country. “We go through a lot to become professionals,” he says. “Not everyone manages to get support.” While the country needs to do better when it comes to grass-roots funding, especially among poorer communities, there will be no lack of enthusiasm when the 185cm-tall judoka takes to the mat in the French capital, hoping to secure his country’s 25th medal in the sport.

6
The Wrestler
Zhan Beleniuk
Ukraine

Zhan Beleniuk is a Ukrainian Greco-Roman wrestler, Olympic gold medallist and member of parliament. He isn’t the only one mixing sport and politics in his country: former heavyweight champion boxer Vitali Klitschko is currently the mayor of Kyiv, while footballer Andriy Shevchenko, winner of the 2004 Ballon d’Or, ran for parliament after retiring.

“When a country goes through such difficult, heart-breaking moments, it’s natural for people to become involved in politics,” says Beleniuk. This summer in Paris, three years after winning gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, he will carry the expectations of his war-torn nation on his shoulders.

Born to a Ukrainian mother and Rwandan father in Kyiv shortly before the collapse of the ussr in 1991, Beleniuk’s childhood was marked by the economic turmoil that faced the newly independent former Soviet states. Further shock came when his father died during the Rwandan civil war. “But my childhood was filled with love,” he says. “I didn’t feel those responsibilities weighing down on me. Instead, my mother and grandmother shielded me and gave me the space to grow and develop.”

The pivotal moment that changed Beleniuk’s life came almost by chance. “When I was nine years old, my friend took me along to his sports club, where I tried out Greco-Roman wrestling,” he says. “From then on, I haven’t looked back.” Beleniuk began winning medals at international championships in 2009. Nine years later, he won his first Olympic medal: a silver at the Rio Games.

After the pro-European revolution that shook Ukraine’s politics in 2014, Beleniuk became a high-profile advocate for the pro-democracy movement. “As a representative of this country and a black Ukrainian, I understand my responsibility to counter Russia’s disinformation,” he says. “They are seeking to paint my country as a racist, fascist place and discredit it on the international stage.”

Ukraine’s first black MP has been a member of delegations travelling to Africa, a continent where pro-Russian sentiment remains relatively strong. “Many there still see us as Russia’s younger brother,” says Beleniuk. “They don’t understand what Ukraine is or who Ukrainians are.”

Another place where Beleniuk is seeking a shift in attitudes is at the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The body recently ruled that Russians could compete at Paris 2024 as neutral athletes, undoing a ban on their participation that was put in place in 2022. “If the reason for the ban hasn’t gone away, why has the IOC gone back on it?” asks Beleniuk. “Many of those athletes are involved in Russia’s propaganda machine. There is no place for them at international competitions.”

Beleniuk tells Monocle that, like any athlete, he is dreaming of winning a gold medal this year in Paris. “But more importantly, I want to represent my country with dignity,” he says. “I’m proud of what I have achieved for Ukraine. It’s thanks to the country and its people that I’m here.”

7
The Surfer
Sanoa Olin
Canada

The Seine isn’t exactly known for its world-class waves so a village in French Polynesia will host the surfing heats at this year’s Games. Riding the swell at Teahupo’o, Tahiti, will be Sanoa Olin, the first Canadian surfer to compete at an Olympic level. “If it’s big and bombing, you can’t think about tactics,” she says, referring to the area’s unforgiving waves. “It’s more about focusing on what’s within my control, making it as simple as possible and connecting with the ocean.”

When the Olympics added surfing to its roster in 2020, Canada failed to make the cut. The sport remains rather niche in the country but the town of Tofino, on the western coast of Vancouver Island, has become a somewhat unlikely surfing hub over the past few decades. About a fifth of residents of the small fishing community regularly paddle out. Olin learned to surf against the backdrop of Tofino’s mossy pine forests and snow-capped mountains. That might sound idyllic but the water there is deathly cold, hovering at about 8c – rubber boots, a hood and a thick wetsuit are essential parts of Olin’s training armoury. “Still, we get waves every day of the year,” says the surfer.

Olin will have little need for her wetsuit in Tahiti. She qualified for the Olympics at a competition in Chile last October, posting a higher wave score than that of the reigning gold medallist, US surfer Carissa Moore. There’s an appealing urgency in Olin’s style. She tends to cut her board back and forth against the lip of the wave, trailed by a spit of sea spray. It’s as if, even in the more clement waters of the Tropics, she is trying to keep herself moving, to stay warm.

Team Canada might only have one surfer participating in this Olympics but Olin’s presence could help to bring new momentum to the sport at home. “It underscores the fact that surfers can also be professional athletes,” she says. The waves in Tofino lack the height or temperature of those in California but Olin’s efforts to get the most out of them taught her a thing or two about resilience. “It’s about always trying to see the positives,” she says. “And finding the excitement in everything, whatever the conditions.”

British singer-songwriter Jacob Collier on defying the boundaries of genre

Jacob Collier springs through an assault course of cameras, lights, speakers and a dragnet of cables to alight at the grand piano, jolting it into life with the strutting chords of “Wherever I Go”, a choice cut from his new record. The photographer snaps away, sensing an instant win, as Collier drops his quiff to the keys and allows the riff to dissolve into some romantic Ravel, some dramatic Debussy – like a slight Liberace, pantomiming emotion, just for fun, in his trademark technicolour clobber.

It’s a press day for the release of Djesse Vol. 4, the latest in a run of albums, each an exquisite exercise in the young Londoner’s voyage through genres of pop music and beyond: self-written and self-produced but bedecked with dream duets and star collaborators. So do you just text Chris Martin or John Legend? “Oh, well, everyone’s busy,” says Collier with a chuckle. “Some are my friends, or became friends making these records. But I really seek to learn and want to jam with people who light me up.”

Thinking of Collier’s journey through the music world – often seen as loaded with more booby-traps and snake pits than an Indiana Jones adventure – calls to mind, say, a line of cartoon dynamite fizzing inexorably towards a comedy explosion that spells “genius”. Collier, not yet 30 years old, has won six Grammys and, at this year’s ceremony, played with Joni Mitchell in a celebration of the great Canadian artist’s 80th birthday. Collier has also worked with singers such as Shawn Mendes, John Mayer and Oumou Sangaré, film tsar Hans Zimmer and music’s Zeus, Quincy Jones.

Of course, people want to search for the source of such prodigious talent. “My earliest memory is sitting on my mother’s lap, looking up and seeing the violin above me being played,” says Collier. His mother, Suzie, is a violinist, conductor and teacher, and, naturally, took her micro-Mozart to concerts as she brought up her three children. “I was probably about two years old when I’d watch my mother conduct. That feeling of someone jumping off the ground and raising their arms – and then the music would begin. Part of it is about process, accuracy, dictation, yes, but you’re also throwing around permission, joy, questions and answers,” adds Collier, conducting his own memories with sweeping hands.

Collier is kinetic when he talks music. He won’t be drawn on genre (“I hadn’t really heard of genre until I was 16”) or musical terminology. Instead, Collier talks in colours, textures, weights, materials. “Yeah, I love telling an orchestra that it needs a bit more wool.” He also loves playing live – surely a good way of keeping such an insatiable musical mind limber. He’ll break off a number to improvise a piano solo or guitar riff and is now famous for his “audience choirs”, in which tens of thousands of fans, after being divided into musical parts, will provide gigantic, self-affirming choruses to the songs that they love. At least 77 dates, stretching from São Paulo to Seoul, await on Collier’s current monster world tour. No wonder he likes someone else to do the singing now and again.

So how do you make a record with artists as musically diverse as your highly classically trained mum, with her arpeggios and descending minor sevenths, and the groundbreaking grime artist Stormzy? “Well, it depends,” says Collier with a shrug. “But really, as you know, they’re both legends.” Just like that. A world of grand pianos, and more Grammys, surely awaits.

The World Meteorological Organization’s secretary-general brings a new way of leadership

Whenever a thunderstorm breaks out over Lake Geneva, Celeste Saulo is happy. The Argentinian, who has led the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) since the beginning of the year, is the first woman to hold the position. She researched and taught at the University of Buenos Aires, where she headed the meteorology department. “I love weather forecasting, where I can combine mathematics, physics and modelling,” says Saulo. But she realised that something was missing. “We published studies but there was no connection between the research and the weather service.” At that time, the Argentinian National Meteorological Service was under the control of the country’s air force. Together with a group of colleagues, Saulo pushed for its independence from the military, which they achieved in 2007. Soon afterwards, she was offered the position of director. “I thought, this is how I can bring these two communities together, research and weather forecasting,” she says.

Scientists are sometimes reluctant to move into the field of management and finance but Saulo felt comfortable. As director of Argentina’s National Meteorological Service, she became the country’s permanent representative to the WMO and began to understand how, as a member state, Argentina could influence the organisation’s decisions. She quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a member of the executive council and, later, vice-president. In June 2023, Saulo won a landslide victory to become secretary-general, receiving 71 more votes than the runner-up, Wenjian Zhang of China.

Everyone says that, since her victory, the organisation has been gripped by a spirit of optimism. She is the first person from the Americas to lead the WMO. “Argentina is a middle-income country,” says Saulo. “This means that we can speak to both industrialised and developing countries on an equal footing.” She comes from a weather service where she always had to fight for budget and that experience gives her the ability to help countries in a similar situation. One of the things that many poor countries need help with is building efficient warning systems for extreme weather events. The WMO wants to see such systems installed in all member states by the end of 2027.

“You can only build a system like this if you work with stakeholders who don’t come from the meteorological world,” says Saulo. In addition to the weather service and the hydrological service, civil defence, television and the Red Cross also play an important role. Saulo wants to strengthen the role of the national weather services and the hydrological services. There are still many countries where governments do not pay much attention to these. “We want to increase their visibility because they are key to the development of countries,” she says. In order to increase economic productivity, for health and for a secure food supply, reliable information on weather, climate and water is vitally important.

In her role as secretary-general, Saulo often comments on climate change. When it comes to the subject, she chooses every word carefully. Saulo recalls the early research of Japanese-American meteorologist and Nobel Prize winner Syukuro Manabe into climate change, which he published in 1969. “And nothing happened because economic power has so much more influence than science,” she says. The WMO has been contributing to climate research for a long time, and the organisation’s research programmes measure emissions of greenhouse gases, especially CO2 and methane. But there are still gaps in their knowledge. “To be honest, we don’t yet understand very well how forests store carbon,” says Saulo. “We have to measure it.” The forests in the Amazon region, for example, store carbon in a different way to those in Canada or Africa.

The scientist does not want to interfere in the politics of individual countries but she does want to clearly warn about the dangers of climate change. On a cold spring day, she looks out at snowy peaks from the window of her Geneva office. The meteorologist says that she felt overwhelmed by the way Switzerland welcomed her. Geneva is great in many ways: everything works so well. “But it’s important not to forget that the world isn’t all like that,” she adds.

This article was syndicated from ‘Neue Zürcher Zeitung’.