Issues

The Portuguese proprietor who turns his culinary fantasies into mouthwatering reality

Deli Comporta
Portugal 

Every once in a while, Miguel Guedes de Sousa’s ideas about food and hospitality come to him in his dreams. In those moments, the man behind peerless Portuguese hospitality group JNCQuoi phones his executive chef and announces that he’s hungry. “It doesn’t matter if it’s six in the morning – Miguel describes in detail the dish he dreamed of, I prepare it, then he tastes it,” says Jerónimo Ferreira, who was the chef at Lisbon’s Ritz before joining the group. He is now leading Deli Comporta, which opened this summer.

Maximalism has become a hallmark at JNCQuoi properties, which include a hospitality complex and club in Lisbon, and a hotel and beach club in Comporta. For the new deli, Guedes de Sousa says that he and his wife, Paula Amorim, wanted to launch something “different from anything ever created”. He says that it is a pop interpretation of the traditional working-class tasca restaurants of the Alentejo region mixed with an irreverent touch of “elitism for everybody”. In practice, it’s a fine place to sit on a bar stool and enjoy a gazpacho with spider crab or a beef carpaccio among a vibrant crowd, colourful textiles and vases painted by artist Susa Monteiro.

Whether it’s in Lisbon, or a 90-minute drive in Comporta, nothing ends up on a menu without Guedes de Sousa’s say so. “This is what I live for,” Guedes de Sousa tells Monocle, sitting at the breezy terrace of the new restaurant, drinking the “fifth or sixth” of his many daily espressos. His most recent dream is what he calls “pijama do mar”, a seafood take on the classic pijama dessert, a plateful of small portions of assorted sweets. This version combines clams, razor clams, chips, cream, white wine, chilli sauce and an egg. “It’s a bit like huevos rotos,” he says. “You’ll backflip when you try it.”

Belgian antiques-dealer-turned-designer Jean-Phillipe Demeyer of JP Demeyer & Co helped with the interiors, including several types of Viúva Lamego tiles, a handpainted plaster ceiling and colourful curtains from A Avó Veio Trabalhar. There’s also a Marshall jukebox and regular evening DJ sets.

Guedes de Sousa tells us that two other projects next to the Deli should be finished by 2028. “People have no idea that there are only a few restaurants and hotels in Comporta,” he says of the myth that the area is developing too quickly. “All we have to do is develop it in the right way.”
jncquoi.com

Perrystead Dairy
Philadelphia

Perrystead Dairy, an “urban creamery” in Philadelphia, has a vending machine in the garden of its cheesemaking facility, which offers an excellent cheese board at the push of a button. “As a child, I would ripen camembert on top of my parents’ fridge,” says founder Yoav Perry, a former an art director who went on to indulge a passion for fromage in 2021. Initially he imported rare cheesemaking ingredients from Europe but found that he was spending too much time chasing packages through customs, so decided to churn the cheese himself. “I set out to make an original American cheese,” he says.

Seven seasonal varieties are made in Perrystead’s creamery in a converted stables. On the day when Monocle visits, the makers are laying out trays of cheese for a competition in Buffalo. The Atlantis, for instance, is washed in seawater from the North Atlantic and its skin is speckled with seaweed. These alpine-style wheels bagged a silver at the World Cheese Awards in Norway.
perrystead.com

Tramo
Madrid

An inconspicuous façade in the Spanish capital’s Prosperidad district welcomes visitors to this remarkable restaurant run by co-founders Felipe Turell and Javier Antequera. Tramo is based in a 1950s former garage. Its open-plan kitchen gives way to a dining hall with a restructured floor that scales upwards via a series of smartly designed tiers that conceal the ceramic ventilation system.

Every element has a story to tell. The custom furniture by Catalan designer Andreu Carulla is created from repurposed industrial materials. On the rear wall, an installation of ceramic diamond shapes mists the dry Madrid air. Meanwhile, bathroom washbasins funnel water into toilet cisterns and, every night, as the natural light from the skylight fades and evening bookings begin to flow, staff appoint tables using specially designed solar-charged lamps, creating a gradual, expansive spectacle of illumination.

The fare is Madrileño at heart – fresh, seasonal and wholesome. Dishes include grilled artichokes (from autumn to spring) served with egg yolk and guajillo chillies, lacon (pork shoulder) croquettes and a succulent flat-iron-pressed sea bass. For dessert, try the sweet goat’s-milk flan.

Carulla worked with architects from SelgasCano (best known for the 2015 iteration of London’s Serpentine Pavilion) and praises the freedom that the design team were given. “This was our way of going against the homogenisation of design, which fuels the uniformity of travel and hospitality,” he says. “Our remit was to create Tramo’s character, to make people feel better than when they enter – gastronomically, ergonomically and emotionally.”
espaciotramo.com

Waterworks Food Hall
Toronto

When Toronto’s city authorities mulled over what to do with one of its grand disused 1930s water-maintenance facilities, it turned to Eve Lewis. The Canadian property developer’s firm, Woodcliffe, has a reputation for revitalising historic buildings whose best days appear to be behind them.

“This is a magnificent heritage building,” says Lewis. It was the site’s previous incarnation, as a popular neighbourhood grocery market in the mid-1800s, that inspired her proposal for its renovation. “We envisioned it as more like a European food hall rather than, say, an event space or supermarket that we didn’t think would feel as open to the community. It makes a difference if you restore, repurpose and rejuvenate a building and add it back to the fabric of a neighbourhood.”

Waterworks opened in July in King West, one of the city’s exciting up-and-coming areas. The food hall is populated by offshoots of some of Toronto’s most beloved independent restaurants, bars and food-and-drink vendors, all arrayed around the 5,110 sq m premises. “There are not very many authentic food halls in Toronto,” says Lewis. So it is her visits to markets and food halls in the likes of Lisbon, Madrid and Copenhagen, where traditional flavours are as free to commingle as the customers, that have helped to hone the Waterworks offering.

Susafa
Sicily

Susafa is a 17-room hotel and sprawling agricultural estate in the heart of Sicily near the Madonie regional park. It belongs to the Rizzuto family from Palermo, who have cultivated wheat here for five generations, at elevations of up to 850 metres above sea level.

Upon arrival, guests are greeted by golden fields of grain fanning out across the valley – it’s a scene one could easily mistake for Tuscany (cue Hans Zimmer’s theme from Gladiator). At the centre is a small green oasis where Susafa’s owner, Manfredi Rizzuto, has converted buildings previously home to sharecroppers and livestock into tasteful accommodation. “My idea was to capture the authentic spirit I remember when visiting as a child, without forgetting the importance agriculture has here,” he says.

At reception, visitors are taken to the terrace once used to dry nuts and offered a glass of almond milk sweetened with wild black cherries that grow in the nearby hills. Before dinner, Manfredi enjoys giving tours of the farm aboard a vintage Land Rover Defender with his weimaraner, Bruno. On the drive, he stops to show off some of the traditional wheat varieties he started planting in 2018, such as perciasacchi, a fragrant grain that gives more aroma to bread.

Another wheat variety, maiorca, is used to make cakes and pastries such as cannoli. You’ll find it in the Susafa kitchen, where chef Rita leads cooking courses on how to prepare Sicilian specialities such as arancini. In addition, guests can purchase a selection of dried pasta, tomato sauce and jam from the hotel, or go a step further and adopt a portion of a field to help promote Manfredi’s efforts towards sustainable agriculture. “Every year those who support us receive 25kg of flour or 10 litres of olive oil and become active participants in our attempts to maintain ethical practices in the field,” he says.

One of the property’s key selling points is the sunset aperitivo, which Manfredi and his sister Sara organise on a simple platform in the middle of a field, offering sweeping views of the landscape. “It’s hard to imagine another place as enchanting where the phrase ‘back to nature’ really fits,” says Sara, bathed in golden-hour light as she wanders into the thigh-high wheat in search of Bruno.

The family’s farmhouse dates to 1870 and the siblings were keen to keep key architectural elements intact, such as the sturdy stone walls and wooden ceiling beams. Meals are taken in the former granary and a bar has been erected in a room where the wine press once operated and where Manfredi only serves wines produced on the island. Subtle additions include Sicilian terracotta flooring, while modern accoutrements are present in the form of a minimalist pool area.

“I wanted to create a mood where things move more slowly, almost as if time has stopped; to go back to a time when people went to bed and the only light was a candle,” says Manfredi. “At Susafa you should feel the rhythms of nature and farm life.”
susafa.com

Design round up: The new Finnair lounge at Helsinki Airport, Japanese townhouses and more

Finnair commissioned Helsinki-based designer Joanna Laajisto to create a new 440-seat Finnair lounge at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport. The recently opened space, which is located on the Schengen side, is influenced by Finnish nature and features local wood, stone, leather and woollen fabrics. “I wanted to create an environment that gives your senses a moment of rest from the hectic world of travel, the type of positive feeling you get when you collapse in your own bed,” Laajisto tells Monocle. 

The materials are complemented by Finnish furniture, including Artek’s Domus chairs, Made by Choice’s Goma bar stool by Thomas Sandell and Centenniale coffee tables designed by Laajisto for Finnish furniture maker Nikari. “I used round shapes as a nod to the cabin experience and to create a cosy atmosphere in what is a busy environment,” says Laajisto (pictured).

The lounge features separate yet subtly demarcated areas for a range of uses. “A great lounge caters to various use cases,” says Meri Järvinen, Finnair’s head of airport customer experience, as she walks Monocle through the lounge’s quiet zone, where dark blue seats reminiscent of Finnair’s award-winning AirLounge Business Class seat have been laid out in a two-by-two configuration. “Some people want to freshen up and relax; others want to celebrate and socialise, while we also have a lot of commuting passengers who need a space to work before or after their flight.” Järvinen adds that Finnair also went to great lengths to address acoustics. Laajisto’s team soundproofed spaces for conference calls and meetings, to ensure that those taking a short nap after their 13-hour inbound flight from Haneda are not woken by a cacophony of voices from someone’s laptop. The only downside is the potential that one might snooze past their departure time – they will, at least, wake up comfortable and well fed.

Little and large in Zürich

Passengers looking out onto Zürich airport’s runways might well be intrigued by a new sight: small, bubble-like cars zipping between aircraft. Three of these two-seater electric vehicles, made by Swiss brand Microlino, are now ferrying the staff of Switzerland’s flag carrier, Swiss, between tasks on the tarmac. A partnership was signed between the two brands this summer. “Bigger cars can do other jobs, such as transporting maintenance teams, luggage and tools around the grounds,” says Swiss’s project manager Marcus di Laurenzio. “But Microlino offered us exactly what we needed for other members of our team: the car is designed to travel short distances with a maximum of two people, which is perfect for our staff moving between meetings at our headquarters, a 10-minute drive away, and logistics operations at the airport hangars.”

Di Laurenzio explains that the decision to work with Microlino was in part about kick-starting a collaboration that speaks to the power of a country’s best transport brands coming together. “We want to promote Swissness and send a message to Zürich Airport passengers looking on,” he says. “It has a bit of Beauty and the Beast about it – the biggest people-mover in Switzerland meets the smallest people-mover in Switzerland.”

Character revival

There is an abundance of older building stock in Japan’s rural prefectures and smaller cities, from traditional folk houses to machiya townhouses – and many of them are ripe for renovation. The restoration of such structures is essential to protecting the country’s distinct architectural character – work that has become a key focus for architect Yoshihiro Yamamoto and his Kansai-based firm Yoshihiro Yamamoto Architects Atelier (YYAA). “Working throughout Nara, Kyoto and Osaka, there is such an abundance of historic architecture,” says the 47-year-old architect. “While new buildings are great, I also want to play a role in cherishing the old ones.”

When it comes to these renovation, restoration and repair projects, Yamamoto believes in the value of not imposing himself too heavily on the design. Instead, he develops uniqueness by listening to the client’s needs and finding optimal solutions. Case in point is his work on Mederu House, which has been home to the Kimura family for more than 30 years. As Noriko and husband Keisuke Kimura approached retirement, they enlisted YYAA to rework their beloved residence for their next chapter.

The couple’s affection for their home saw Yamamoto focus on ways to improve their quality of life. The first step was a reconfiguration that saw the dining room relocated so it is adjacent to the kitchen, which was redesigned to make the preparation and enjoyment of food an experience to share and savour. With garden views and ample natural light, aided by the addition of two skylights, the space was soon at the centre of daily life.

The architect also countered a lack of storage by creating built-in shelves, which are used for the display of art and antiques dating back to the eighth century. “I spent time showing Yamamoto-san every single piece I wanted to have on show,” says Noriko, with a laugh. “He measured them one by one, then designed the space and fixtures to fit them perfectly.”

Yamamoto’s focus on balancing practical measures with charming touches extended to the traditional tearoom and gallery, where functional issues were addressed alongside additions including Yoshino cedar floors and Makoto Kagoshima-designed paper on the sliding fusuma panels. The renewal inspired Noriko to restart tea-ceremony lessons. “Since the renovation, my mood has brightened and we can enjoy a more relaxed way of life.” The project shows the power of a renovation to not only preserve the architectural character of a place but also to support the ambitions of its residents. 

Yves Béhar
Chief designer, Fuseproject

Swiss-American designer and entrepreneur Béhar is founder and chief designer of San Francisco-based Fuseproject. His practice is guided by the belief that design is a tool for not only showing us the future, but bringing us to it. 

What is design to you?
Design has always been about the opportunities to be diverse, to try new things, to learn. I’m currently working on a truck for US electric vehicle manufacturer Telo. We’re hoping to present full-size, functioning versions by the end of the year.

How do your Swiss roots influence your work?
I have a Swiss inclination for engineering and precise realisation. An idea might initially seem impossible but it requires good thinking, good manufacturing and good engineering. So I’m never afraid of taking risks – it’s part of the thrill of design.

What’s next?
There’s a lot in the works. The past three years have been interesting because I have an office in Lisbon [after buying Portuguese digital design agency Mindshaker] and my office in San Francisco. I reacquired Fuseproject in 2023, so it’s an exciting time. And there is a forthcoming boom in San Francisco. A lot of people are surprised when I say that but a lot of human-centric technologies are being developed there that we, as designers, will have access to, which I find very exciting.

Gear up for autumn in the best activewear for work and travel

Goldwin
Japan

Japan’s Goldwin has a reputation as one of the world’s finest skiwear manufacturers and is the Swedish national ski team’s brand of choice. Recently the label has been translating its technical know-how into urban wardrobe staples, from parkas to sporty tailoring. We have our eye on the label’s new beige parka for autumn, designed in collaboration with Italian ready-to-wear label OAMC. 
goldwin-global.com

Q&A
Todd Snyder
Creative director, Woolrich

US label Woolrich has been writing a fresh chapter under new creative director Todd Snyder, the menswear maverick who also runs his eponymous label from New York. Snyder is working with Woolrich’s design teams in Milan, New York and Tokyo to create the label’s heritage and technical collections (Woolrich Black Label) and add a stronger luxury flavour to the range. Here he tells Monocle how performance wear is infiltrating urban wardrobes and discusses Woolrich’s potential to lead the sector.

Why are you working with Woolrich?
I was excited to work with a brand that has a heritage of almost 200 years and pretty much invented outdoors apparel. My idea is about fusing this heritage with modernity, with street, with luxury. I also saw an opportunity to use nature as a muse and design garments for all seasons. It’s about an active lifestyle, whether you’re in the countryside, the mountains or the city. 

Have people been engaging with technical clothing in new ways?
It used to be all about athleisure but now outdoors wear is the new streetwear – people are wearing technical clothing to the office, maybe even to go to dinner. Recently, many people have embraced hiking, camping, fishing; activities that were left unexplored in the past. It’s a natural evolution and that’s what inspires me. We need to keep telling new stories. 

Tell us about your new collection.
It was all about the Pacific Northwest and embodying the outdoors lifestyle. Woolrich is known for heavy parkas, so I’ve also been thinking about how to lighten things up. You’ll find a lot of track shorts, as well as lightweight cashmere shirts. My aim is to take classic silhouettes and rework them by using innovative fabrics or adding new details.
woolrich.com

Man-tle
Australia

Aida Kim and Larz Harry, co-founders of Perth-based Man-tle, met in Tokyo while working for Japanese label Comme des Garçons. They still tap into their network of Japanese makers to produce daily staples such as slub denim hats, gabardine pants and durable canvas bags. Man-tle’s signature waterproof fabrics have been designed to get better with wear, due to an intricate hand-dyeing process. 
man-tle.com

On X Beams
Switzerland & Japan

Tennis-inspired style has risen in popularity this year. It’s why Swiss performance brand On and Japanese label Beams have joined forces to offer their own take on the look. Informed by the green in the Wimbledon logo, the new capsule includes T-shirts, shorts, windbreakers and trainers that feature the Swiss and Japanese flags, perforated panels and thick white soles.
on.com; beams.co.jp

Belstaff
UK

Belstaff is marking 100 years of kitting out Brits with sturdy outdoors wear by looking back to its beginnings, when UK manufacturing was enjoying better days. Established in Stoke-on-Trent, the first Belstaff factory was awarded contracts by British armed forces and Antarctica research expeditions. During peacetime, the brand shifted focus to motor racing and designed its renowned Trialmaster jacket. 

Belstaff’s current offering of elegant parkas and quilted jackets reflects its outdoors roots. UK mills remain the primary source of waxed cotton fabric, while some of its knitwear is still produced locally. “I want to refocus on Britishness,” says chief brand officer Jodie Harrison. “There are pockets of expertise remaining here, including textile brands and Northampton shoemakers such as Grenson.” 

Belstaff CEO Fran Millar echoes this. “The biggest obstacle to our operation in the UK is a lack of factories, skills and talent,” she says. “There is a need for government investment; we all need to take responsibility.”
belstaff.com

Montblanc
Germany

For weekends and short trips, a compact duffel bag is a far more elegant choice than a rolling suitcase. Montblanc offers a great variety of roomy weekender bags, including the 149 travel series. The totes, which are made from shiny calfskin leather, feature multiple pocket compartments for extra ease while packing, as well as an external lock and key closure for additional security. We recommend the burgundy hue, featuring a striking sfumato (shaded) effect that has been manually applied to the leather.
montblanc.com

Mykita
Germany

Mykita captures the German flair for technical innovation by engineering fashionable frames, manufactured in-house, with high-quality optics. We have our eye on the brown Gia model that features a retro geometric frame and a patented spiral hinge – so your shades won’t snap in your suitcase, no matter how full it is.
mykita.com

Comme Si
USA

Open any fashion stylist’s top drawer and you’ll likely find socks by Comme Si, the New York-based label by Jenni Lee, who’s introducing luxury into the everyday ritual of getting dressed. If you’re an active type, opt for the Cycling socks, crafted using a high-performance yarn.
commesi.com

Baracuta
UK

Outerwear specialist Baracuta is probably best known for its classic G9 Harrington jackets, created in the late 1930s, but this autumn the brand will debut its first dedicated womenswear line. The range features elegant trench coats and new iterations of the original G9 silhouette. Our pick is this vibrant checked coat, made from winter-ready wool. It’s a hardwearing yet elegant choice.
baracuta.com

The best technology for your travels

1.
Pocket Cable
Native Union

The new cable from Native Union is superbly pocketable and designed to avoid tangling. It has USB-C connectors at each end of its 17cm cable, with both able to fold back into the case for tidiness. It’s capable of supporting strong charge levels, so it’s compatible with laptops as well as phones. Get it in one of five colours, including an eye-catching bright orange.
nativeunion.com

2.
Soundlink Max
Bose

The new Bose speaker is small enough to pack in your carry-on but sounds huge. Rugged enough to resist shocks, water and dust, it boasts a rope handle that can be swapped out for a shoulder-length strap for further versatility. The battery lasts for 20 hours and the speaker can even charge your phone while playing audio.
bose.com

3.
Galaxy Fold 6
Samsung

Leave your tablet at home and take this instead. The new Samsung folds out to a bright and attractive 7.6-inch display with a centre crease that’s now near-invisible in use. An improved camera system, fast processor and larger external display add to the appeal, even if it’s still a little thick when folded.
samsung.com

4.
Tracking Card
Nomad

The new Nomad tracker will help should you ever lose your wallet or have it stolen. It uses Apple’s Find My system, which means it sends a silent message to any passing Apple device when marked as lost, with its location then securely relayed to your own chosen device. Barely bigger than a bank card, it can be charged via any MagSafe charging pad, making its integration into daily life a breeze.
nomadgoods.com

Illustrations: Yusuke Saitoh

Tuned in

The traditional commute may have taken a hit from flexible working, parking restrictions and people eschewing car-ownership but drive-time radio is still speaking up around the world – even if some audience members are listening on their laptops at home. Station bosses want engaged listeners, while advertisers want to connect with everyone, especially people humming along as they edge along in traffic jams. It’s a coveted slot for those behind the mic too – hosts get here only by having spent years honing their craft, perfecting a welcoming tone that’s both authoritative and relaxed. 

Here, we celebrate the drive-time hosts who drum up engagement and continue to reel in remarkable audience numbers. Whether in Amman, Mexico City, Singapore, Seattle or Berlin, these presenters have fine-tuned their shows to match the time of day and mood of their city – not to mention the relaying of those all-important traffic updates. It’s this spontaneity that instils drive-time radio with a unique charm that can’t be replicated by podcasts or music-streaming services, despite the rhetoric that these mediums continue an unassailable rise. 

These six presenters might play music, broadcast news or engage listeners with games and competitions but each has mastered how to accompany their audience at a crucial part of the day – while making breakfast, during the commute, post-pick-up with a car full of children or easing into the evening at home. What unites them all is the relationship with listeners (something that isn’t necessarily shared by podcast hosts and music makers) and a clear understanding that what they do isn’t one-sided. Instead, it’s a collaborative endeavour that’s all about bringing people along for the ride.

Singapore

The hallway that leads to the CNA938 recording studio gives guests a tour of Singapore’s radio landscape. You’ll see door after door adorned with the logos of popular English, Tamil, Malay and Chinese-language stations, while their diverse music and chatter is safely soundproofed as they broadcast live to listeners across the city-state. 

CNA938 is the radio station of Singapore’s multimedia news channel CNA. Its studio has large windows that overlook the open-plan newsroom. It’s relatively quiet when Andrea Heng and Hairianto Diman, hosts of the flagship English-language morning drive-time show Asia First, take to the air at 07.00. By mid-morning, though, the newsroom is bustling. 

“Growing up, drive-time was always on – when you’re sitting in the car with your dad as he takes you to school, that kind of stuff,” says Heng. “It’s the time when you catch up with everything that’s happened overnight around the world.” 

As the station’s opening show, Asia First sets the tone for the day. Despite its news focus, the spirit is conversational and often fun – in part due to Heng and Hairianto, whose friendly banter and natural rapport belie the fact that Hairianto only joined as a co-host in May. He and Heng are adept at handling the range of issues that come across their desk – be they wars and elections or extra legroom on aeroplanes – and flit seamlessly between the gravitas required for serious topics and the humour better suited to lighthearted ones.

The duo also enlivens commutes with an interactive “Question of the Day” segment, where they ask a question on air and listeners send in responses via Whatsapp. The pair solicit opinions on everything from at-home work policies to Taylor Swift.

Knowing that many listeners are alone in their cars and could be stuck in traffic, Heng and Hairianto see themselves as hosting a chatty dialogue with the audience rather than simply acting as newsreaders or staid presenters. Which is to say: they welcome dissent. 

“We have comments that come in saying, ‘No, we don’t agree with what you’re saying’ – and then that becomes a conversation as well,” says Hairianto. 

The listener submissions channel is always open and Heng and Hairianto occasionally share random messages. This spontaneity gives Asia First an endearing intimacy and can reveal the surprising topics that the audience want to give their two-cents on: a recent news item about dental hygiene prompted a listener to chime in with toothbrush recommendations. Fresh take.

“It’s direct and personal, and we keep it that way,” says Heng. “That’s something only radio can do.”

Amman

“Getting you home and playing your favourite music” is the simple promise that rings out from Play 99.5, in between pop tunes, lively ads and the mellifluous voice of Dana Darwish. The host has been accompanying Amman on the afternoon commute on Jordan’s top English-language radio station for the past five years. It’s a demanding four-hour shift every Sunday to Thursday from 15.00 to 19.00. During that time, Darwish expects to have multiple audiences, as the average car journey in Amman lasts just 20 minutes. 

The journeys might be short but Darwish understands that her listeners are impatient to get home. “That’s Jordanians,” she says. “If we’re kept at a stop sign for two minutes we lose our minds.” As a result, Darwish tries to keep her tone relaxed: “I try to be as soothing as possible. Maybe one day I will shift careers and start doing sleep podcasts.” 

As well as playing the hits – Darwish is aware of her young audience, made up mostly of 16 to 25-years-olds – the host is keen to use her show as a force for good. “I’ve revolved my entire show around bringing other people’s stories to light,” she says. Segments such as “Under the Spotlight” call attention to the talents of ordinary people, while “Play with the Athletes” showcases the Jordanian sports stars that, according to Darwish, don’t get their dues in the country, such as the taekwondo athlete Julyana Al-Sadeq. 

Play 99.5 has also built a reputation for its “out-of-the-box” competitions. One in particular – sponsored by the vehicle brand Jaguar Land Rover – is “forever etched” in Darwish’s mind. “The competition was getting people to roar like a jaguar,” she says. “I sat in the studio for hours just listening to voice notes of people roaring.” The partnership isn’t just an example of the programme’s proclivity for mood-boosting silliness either. It’s one of the many brand collaborations that kept the DriveBack Show going as a commercial success. Similarly, Jordan Kuwait Bank has sponsored the show for almost five years. 

Darwish is aware that the live radio landscape is changing but she remains confident in the continued appetite for shows like hers. The live element, she posits makes every show unique and can’t be replicated. “If you think about football, whether you’re watching today or tomorrow, the game isn’t going to change,” she says. “But why do you want to watch it live? Because it’s happening now, everyone’s together and you see people’s reactions. Radio is the same. We’re in the traffic together, listening together, chatting together – it creates a community.”

Berlin

“I’m probably the only early morning presenter who doesn’t drink coffee,” says Marco Seiffert. Instead, the host drinks plenty of water at the break of dawn, during his drive into the Potsdam studio of Radioeins, a channel from Berlin-Brandenburg public broadcaster RBB.

Der Schöne Morgen (“The Beautiful Morning”) is steered by Seiffert along with his colleague Tom Böttcher every weekday, with the pair alternating with a female duo every other week. Since Seiffert joined in 2006, it has become the most listened to morning show in Berlin, Germany’s most competitive radio market. 

Seiffert sees the presenter’s role as catching his audience up with what’s happened during the night and what’s going on in Berlin and Brandenburg that day – as well as playing great music, of course. Instead of prank calls and prize draws, you’ll find witty jokes from the hosts and political analysis from leading journalists on all sides of the political spectrum. There’s also economics, arts, culture and sports coverage, and listeners can ask the kind of unusual questions that they’ve always wanted answered. 

Listeners are also encouraged to request songs that have somehow disappeared into the ether. Rather than being a Tiktok playback station too, music on Der Schöne Morgen serves as an exploration into new and unfamiliar realms. “Our selection requires a certain tolerance,” says Seiffert. “You’re going to find gems but you’re probably not going to like every single song. In my opinion, our listeners want to be reliably informed but they also want to be constantly surprised in terms of topics and music. Spotify and podcasts can hardly offer that.”

For the many listeners who tune in on their way to work – stuck in traffic or waiting at the train station – Seiffert sees the programme as a “familiar companion”. And despite serving listeners at rush hour, no one at the show is in a hurry. Live interviews often last up to four minutes, more than double the average of the show’s competitors. Der Schöne Morgen also doesn’t shy away from an argument. “Politicians can handle it,” says Seiffert. “You have to poke them a little, otherwise it gets boring.”

Overall, Seiffert puts the show’s success down to its authenticity: its hosts are allowed to be themselves, whatever their mood. “We don’t feel this inner pressure to be artificially cheerful,” he says. “I’m no different on and off air. If my favourite football team has just lost, I can be despondent. If I’ve been to a concert the night before, I might be a bit tired. It’s OK.”

The Der Schöne Morgen style is so unique in Germany that the show has developed a cult following far beyond the broadcasting area – and Seiffert, in particular, appreciates when listeners continue to tune in on holiday or after moving away from Berlin. “It’s always exciting for me when people take us with them wherever they go.”

Seattle

When the weekday clock strikes 16.00 on the US’s West Coast, a pre-recorded voice announces, “You’re listening to Drive Time with Evie Stokes on KEXP.” To avid listeners of the Seattle-based independent radio station, the name still takes some getting used to. For over 20 years, music-industry veteran Kevin Cole – who cut his teeth as a DJ at Minneapolis club First Avenue, where he counted Prince among his fans –commanded the afternoon slot.

Stokes took over the prime-time post in July, having worked her way up over 17 years from pulling records as an unpaid assistant to grinding out five-hour overnight shifts and, most recently, hosting Sunday afternoons. Now she peers out of the broadcast booth’s window while the station’s popular café and record store hums with customers. 

Drive Time reaches 75,000 listeners weekly, according to Nielsen Media Research. While those figures are relatively modest, KEXP’s outsized influence comes from its tastemaker reputation for breaking up-and-coming artists. Touring musicians detour to Seattle so they can record one of the station’s highly coveted “Live on KEXP” sessions. Stokes has hosted the likes of psychedelic rockers Crumb, southern gothic singer-songwriter Ethel Cain and London-based Afro-electronic outfit Ibibio Sound Machine.

Stokes’ promotion comes at a propitious time for KEXP, which acquired a new frequency and began broadcasting on FM radio across the San Francisco Bay Area in March. The expanded range has led to a double-digit percentage growth in listenership. Broadcasting until 19.00, Stokes soundtracks the afternoon commute on the West Coast, while remaining mindful of KEXP’s global listeners who tune in digitally. “A lot of people are winding down and settling in at home,” says Stokes. “I’ll ask them what they’re cooking for dinner. But then I have listeners in Australia going out for their morning run.”

She starts each show with a rough outline but allows the day’s mood to lead her. She’s also receptive to listener requests, even oddball ones. “A listener might request a song about horses and, before you know it, I’ve played seven songs on that theme,” she says.

Her empathetic voice also reaches her audience in their hour of need. A listener once requested comforting songs while lying in bed with a partner in the final moments of hospice care. “I looked for songs to bring them some peace,” she says, such as “Love is Stronger than Death” by The The.

These examples reflect Stokes’ attitude to radio and its uniquely live values. While she won’t shy away from solemnity when necessary, Stokes sees the afternoon peak as an ideal time to deploy her on-air philosophy, “Radio is best when it’s unexpected, thoughtful, fun to listen to and laugh-out-loud funny.” We couldn’t agree more.

Mexico City 

Eight years ago, when Mexican radio presenter Gabriela Warkentin launched W Radio’s morning news show, the drive-time slot in Mexico City was tired and saturated. “We didn’t want to recreate the same hard-hitting product as other stations,” says Warkentin, who also works as a columnist for Spanish newspaper El País and Mexican title Reforma. Así las Cosas (“That’s the way it is”) was the result: a grounded show that delivers the news without over-dramatising the region’s political events. 

“The city is characterised by a tense and often violent social landscape: W Radio wants to offer clarity about complex subjects,” says Warkentin, sitting behind her mic, surrounded by broadsheet newspapers as she readies herself to read the day’s headlines.

On air between 07.00 and 10.00 every weekday, Así las Cosas sets listeners up for the working day. “Morning radio is a window for real-time interaction,” says Warkentin, who gets feedback from her listeners through call-ins and the station’s Whatsapp and social media channels. “There’s a tradition of cultivating a relationship with an audience via the radio in a way that cannot be achieved with television.”

On occasion, Warkentin’s excitable tone rises like that of a football commentator but it’s always tempered by her sharp insights. Loyal listeners engage in a dialogue with the presenter, offering feedback that has shaped the show. “Initially, there was criticism when we opened the broadcast with tense news stories. It’s not that listeners don’t want to know; they just don’t want to hear it as soon as they get out of bed,” says Warkentin. To create a smoother wake-up call that doesn’t demand so much of listeners, she now holds off until the second hour to cover tough topics. The programme now opens with an eight-minute news summary before Warkentin is joined by an economic or political correspondent for an in-depth conversation about the most pertinent story of the day. Warkentin wraps up the third hour with sports and science news. In between news and discussion segments, she plays upbeat Latin American music. 

Being one of the first voices to break domestic and international news has made Warkentin resilient. “During Mexico City’s large-scale earthquake in September 2017, W Radio kept broadcasting past midnight to try to spread information as effectively as possible. Listeners were scared – and so was I.”

Warkentin’s morning programme remains a welcome daily comfort, not only for residents of Mexico but also for the nation’s expats in Dubai, Tokyo, Sydney and beyond. “The morning slot provides a cathartic social moment,” says Warkentin. As the clock strikes 09.00 and W Radio’s countdown reverberates around the studio, Warkentin has a final scan of her script to prepare to go back on air for the closing hour of the show. “The real power of radio lies in its collective companionship.”

Chain reaction

When it comes to cities, first impressions are often damning. Despite its plentiful baroque and neo-gothic architecture, Brussels isn’t deemed one of Europe’s great cities. If you were visiting the Belgian capital just five years ago, you would have had to do a lot of waiting at pedestrian crossings. Perhaps you wouldn’t have thought this very strange. Most large European cities, even those that are thousands of years old, adapted fairly frictionlessly to the advent of the car.

Indeed, Brussels worked particularly hard to transition from hooves and feet to four wheels. From the 1950s and 1970s, as part of an ominously named policy called the Manhattan Project, it built flyovers in downtown neighbourhoods, bulldozed large swaths of the city centre to connect its main northern and southern railway stations, placed metro stops beneath office buildings so that commuters could make a swift entry and exit, and constructed a new central rail terminus. The intention was to create a city that was utopian in its embrace of mechanised travel. The result was a city that literally became a byword for traffic, pollution and poor urban planning: “Brusselisation” means haphazard and ineffective redevelopment.

On a magnificently sunny July afternoon, monocle arrives in a city that is almost unrecognisable from that description. Brussels’ main thoroughfare, Boulevard Anspach, is full of people sauntering, strolling, strutting or simply standing still. There are many bicycles but not a car in sight. Then we hear a phrase that will be repeated to us many times over the next 36 hours: “This place used to be horrible.”

Brussels’ transformation from car-choked hellhole to walker’s paradise is largely the result of a series of highly interventionist regional mobility plans. The most famous of these, the Good Move Initiative, was launched in 2022 with the aim of – among other things, such as improving public transport and cycling infrastructure – reducing automotive traffic by 24 per cent by 2030.

Down a side street on the sun-drenched terrace of an Italian restaurant, we meet Pascal Smet, self-described “father of Good Move”. This soubriquet is not hyperbolic. Smet was the minister of mobility and public works in the Brussels-Capital Region government when Good Move was in the planning phase and secretary of state for urbanism and heritage when it was implemented. He is a disciple of Jan Gehl, the Danish architect and urban designer whose career has focused on re­orienting cities away from cars towards pedestrians and cyclists. “The core function of a city is interaction between people – and people cannot interact in their cars,” says Smet, leaning over his spaghetti amatriciana.

In a white linen shirt and natty wire-framed glasses, the 57-year-old, who represents the Dutch-speaking Socialist Party, Vooruit (“Onward”), is more fashionable than you might expect of a politician but he has the irrepressible energy of the soapbox campaigner. Despite having recently undergone hip-replacement surgery after a cycling accident, Smet doesn’t stop either talking or moving the whole time he is with monocle.

His limp seems to be an appropriate physical manifestation of the recent slings and arrows that his brainchild has endured. To say that Good Move has been polarising would be understating the effect that the initiative has had on Brussels’ politics. Its car policies were arguably the defining issue in the region’s parliamentary elections in June, elections that returned a majority of votes for parties that actively campaigned on an anti-Good Move platform. Though the byzantine nature of the Belgian electoral system makes analysing the results, let alone forming a government, difficult, even the father of Good Move concedes that it faces an uncertain future. “The overall majority of the people voted Good Move out,” says Smet. But this does not mean that Brussels’ car-free revolution is over or that it has failed.

A strange thing happened in June’s election. In Brussels, a French-speaking-majority city in a Dutch-speaking region, candidates and parties are split into lists based on language. In theory, voters can put their “X” next to someone who does not speak the same language as them but, in reality, this is rare. However, this year, despite there being only 50,000 registered Dutch-speaking voters in Brussels, the region’s Dutch-speaking parties received about 80,000 votes, meaning that 30,000 French speakers (out of about 200,000) voted on non-linguistic lines. The main beneficiaries of this were the Dutch-speaking Greens, who many believe were lent votes by French speakers who are pro-Good Move.

Good movers and headshakers: key figures in Brussels’ car debate

We meet the leader of Brussels’ Greens in Parc de Bruxelles, a large 18th-century royal park opposite the Belgian parliament building. Elke van den Brandt is also the incumbent minister of mobility. Even though Good Move was launched by Smet and the Socialists, today it is more associated with Van den Brandt and the Greens, who have greater representation in the Brussels parliament and have made the initiative the cornerstone of their agenda. Naturally, Van den Brandt arrives for our meeting on a bicycle, which she has ridden directly from negotiations to form a new government. She has a warm smile and manner but is bullish about the policy. “The future of Good Move is the future of Brussels,” she says. Is a scrapping or at least scaling-back of the plan on the agenda in the talks? She admits it is but shoots back: “Remember, the most expensive infrastructure is not cycling or walking. If you look at Copenhagen, they made all those cycling changes when the city was nearly bankrupt. They asked themselves, ‘What’s the cheapest way for people to get around?’ And they invested what money they had in cycling infrastructure.”

These are salient points. The first concerns what a city can afford to do. After all, politics is the art of the possible and, during financially straitened times, it is important to focus on what can be achieved with the means at your disposal. The second point concerns what a city wants to be. The Danish capital, with its plentiful bike lanes, excellent public transport and pedestrianised centre, is seen as a model for progressive urban leaders around the world but its transformation into a mobility mecca came after decades of debate and protest.

Indeed, Brussels’ metamorphosis has been achieved in a far shorter period of time. Beyond the politics, the data is astounding. Between 2022 and 2023, after a year of Good Move, 20 per cent fewer cars were counted in the city centre, with these numbers dropping as much as 50 per cent during rush hour. There was a 21 per cent drop in road accidents, and a 69 per cent drop in related fatalities, while levels of toxic nitrogen dioxide (no2) dropped by as much as 35 per cent at some particularly busy intersections – significant in a region that was estimated to suffer 900 premature deaths a year related to air pollution. But hard data, though important, is perhaps not as influential as that difficult-to-quantify thing: emotion. How people travel around the place in which they live is a highly charged issue; in Brussels tempers have frayed on several occasions since Good Move was rolled out. Whereas in the city centre, known as the Pentagon, cars have been almost completely banished, in neighbourhoods beyond its boundaries, implementation has been trickier.

Two months after the closure of large roads in the centre, concrete blocks and works barriers started appearing in working-class neighbourhoods such as Schaerbeek and Cureghem, which also have large immigrant populations. In both areas, after construction vehicles were set ablaze and police were attacked, the roadblocks were removed. 

Pro-Good Move politicians believe that this was largely a problem of communication. Van den Brandt blames the mode of delivery. “The participation phase was during coronavirus, so we had a lot of online meetings,” she says. But Smet blames the message itself. “I learned that you cannot go to the people and tell them, ‘We are going to get rid of the cars,’” he says. “You say, ‘We want to have a car-free square because we want your kids to play, we want you to sit on a terrace and have something to eat.’”

A five-minute cycle from the Pentagon, Cureghem is a largely African and Maghrebi neighbourhood. On a blazing Friday afternoon, large groups of men congregate in the shade outside the mosque and around the area’s many garages and secondhand car dealerships – it is immediately obvious that the automotive industry is a large employer here. monocle’s guides, Damiaan and Alessio, usually so voluble, seem a little subdued. It is difficult to get people to speak to us, much less to give their full name or have their photograph taken. But 46-year-old Boubacar does explain that the roadblocks just “appeared, with no warning,” after which, “you felt like you were in a labyrinth, like you were stuck in your neighbourhood”.

This is a common charge levelled at Good Move by black and Arab Bruxellois – that it’s designed to keep them away from the rest of the city’s largely white population. Indeed, an Arab parliamentarian from Vooruit, Fouad Ahidar, left the party and campaigned on an independent ticket, focusing primarily on two issues: Palestine and Good Move. His new Team Fouad Ahidar party won three seats to Vooruit’s two. While Ahidar was a vocal presence during the campaign, residents say that the city’s political leaders abandoned them in the immediate aftermath of Good Move’s introduction to Cureghem. “We didn’t understand who we had to talk to, which politician this had come from,” says 46-year-old Mamadou, leaning against a vintage Mercedes.

Two years later, however, during the election campaign, they had many championing their cause. These included the Workers’ Party of Belgium (pvda), a far-left group that won 15 out of 89 seats in the Brussels parliament. monocle meets one of its MPs, Jan Busselen, in a hotel bar. A lot of what we have heard and seen in Brussels seems to align with the view that, though the way that Good Move has been implemented can be contentious, the means justify the ends. Busselen disagrees. “It’s a very paternalistic way of looking at people – that we’re going to put measures in place and people aren’t smart enough to comprehend that it is better for them,” he says. “And it is dangerous because it pushes naturally left-wing voters into the arms of the right and conspiracy theorists.”

As Smet says, private car ownership also has another dimension in immigrant communities. “They’re a symbol of success, freedom, a ticket to a girlfriend and an extension of your living room,” he says. Ans Persoons, an ally of Smet’s who assumed the role of secretary of state for urbanism and heritage after he resigned following a scandal involving the mayor of Tehran, says, “It’s not about mobility and public space. More than anything, it’s about identity and gentrification.”

She’s right – mobility and public space are ineluctably political and as such have been sucked into the wider culture war concerning identity that has subsumed European politics in recent years. Cities around the world – but especially in Europe, where the transition away from cars is happening more quickly – have seen the issue lead to violence. “If you change things, there’s a lot of reaction,” says Van den Brandt. “It’s no different in Paris or Berlin.”

But unlike those places, Brussels’ politics is now defined by whether you are pro- or anti-car. Smet is unequivocal. “People will say that the biggest mistake that humanity ever made was introducing the privately owned car to an urban environment,” he says. But while his future, for now, looks to be away from frontline politics, Van den Brandt and Persoons will have to continue the battle of persuading people that getting rid of cars is a good move. Arriving in Brussels on a sunny afternoon, it is difficult not to get a favourable impression of the changes that the city has made in this regard. And if its leaders can continue to make improvements to people’s mobility, in years to come, Brusselisation might start to be seen as a positive thing.

Inside Canyon’s quest to revolutionise city cycling with high-performance e-bikes

“This is a do-everything bike,” says Arthur Janzen, Canyon’s global category director for urban and recreation, suitably dressed for a ride in shorts and a T-shirt. “No matter where you go, the bike supports you.” We’re on a two-wheeled tour of the bike brand’s global HQ in Koblenz. In the hills above us is German wine country and the sun is shining as we ride down a path next to the Rhine, testing the bike that Janzen is referring to, the Pathlite:On SUV, as well as the Roadlite:On CF. These are two of the latest e-bikes in this category.

Canyon, with its huge number of pedal and e-bikes – from road to mountain – on offer via its website, is clearly ambitious. It’s determined to be at the forefront of a bicycle industry that’s continuing to develop at almost the same lick as the automotive trade.

The Roadlite has wireless gear changing, lights integrated with its battery and a motor by Porsche-owned company Fazua. The Pathlite, a trekking bike with fat tyres, comes with the option of abs (the anti-lock braking system pioneered by car designers) to stop from you going over the handlebars, as well as a belt-drive system that lets the rider change gears with a twist of the right handlebar rather than a click shift. Both offer graded levels of pedal assist – and cost several thousand euros.

The company’s new HQ – a collection of box-shaped, black-and-white buildings comprising offices, a showroom and an e-bike centre – opened last year. When Monocle meets the company’s CEO, Nicolas de Ros Wallace, he is sitting in a Vitra armchair in an office filled with high-performance bikes and cycling paraphernalia. De Ros Wallace, who has Spanish, Italian and British roots, is sporting one of the brand’s black T-shirts and, though we’re assured that dressing in company kit isn’t compulsory, most people here are embracing the look. De Ros Wallace came onboard in 2021, after leadership roles at Zara and, most recently, Nike, where he oversaw the Jordan segment from the sportswear behemoth’s European base in the Netherlands. He still commutes to Canyon from Utrecht.

De Ros Wallace says that urban bikes represent about 5 per cent of global sales, something that he wants to increase. “One of our strategic pillars is urban mobility,” he says. “But it doesn’t have to come by bringing down performance. It has to come by pulling up urban mobility.” He is determined to bring a design-forward, technology-filled approach to city biking, an area that he thinks offers big opportunities for growth as metropolises reassess their transport infrastructure.

Canyon, which employs nearly 1,700 people worldwide, including at a hub in Amsterdam, isn’t aiming to be the next Specialized or Giant Bicycles. In fact, being the biggest bike company in the world isn’t part of its game plan. “Others play that role,” says De Ros Wallace. “Our ambition is to be the most innovative and inspiring.” The brand is banking on differentiation to stand out from the pack as it looks to tweak its catalogue. Part of the plan, being an e-commerce player, is striving to provide the best customer service and extending the ways in which consumers can interact with the brand. This has been done through investment in an app and a forthcoming membership scheme. Canyon’s physical presence is also being extended with the growth of its Canyon Factory Service (CFS) centres – essentially repair workshops – that are currently operating in towns including Rotselaar in Belgium and Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Munich’s CFS is slated to open in early 2025.

Founded as a bicycle retailer called Radsport Arnold in the 1990s by brothers Roman and Franc Arnold, the company moved into manufacturing and by 2002 had renamed itself Canyon. Franc is no longer involved, while Roman sold a majority stake to Belgium-based investor Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL) in 2020, retaining equity in the company as well as chairmanship of the board. Despite its desire to push into cities, Canyon’s brand DNA still draws on its sporty beginnings, with a focus on high performance, and there remains a strong link to athletes. This is something that Monocle sees while touring the showroom, where bikes used by cyclists including Dutch superstar Mathieu van der Poel are on display next to floor-to-ceiling windows. More than 50 riders were on Canyon bikes at the Paris Olympics and the company sponsors some 270 athletes, as well as having several high-profile ambassadors, including US basketball player LeBron James.

The link to sporting excellence is clearly aimed at making Canyon both inspirational and aspirational. “We build the best bikes for the pros but we also want to trickle down,” says Sven Reutter, a Canyon product manager, as we visit the Innovation Lab, part of the brand’s R&D centre, which features a soldering station and a set of small 3D printers. 

The R&D is just one part of the Koblenz-based design and engineering machine. Canyon is keen to point out its state-of-the-art facilities, including a test lab where such things as frame stiffness are tested and gizmos including a 3D optical scanning arm are deployed to ensure that frames have been made correctly. There’s also a destructive test lab – which sounds more fun than it looks – where Canyon ensures that new bikes can stand the test of time before going into production.

A short drive from the HQ, Monocle visits a big factory facility where the bulk of Canyon’s higher-end bikes are assembled. Hundreds of parts are needed to put the bikes together and these come from around the world, from Portugal to Taiwan. The factory, where a flashing green light indicates that work is about to begin on a line of bikes awaiting stages such as gear wiring or motor attachment, can produce up to 400 bicycles a day before they are boxed and shipped. So are there any plans to manufacture outside Germany? “For us, local for local is the ideal: Europe for Europe; Asia for Asia; the US for the US,” says De Ros Wallace. “It’s the ideal but not the reality because much of the industry is in Taiwan.” Still, there are plans to open a warehouse in Asia to make logistics more efficient.

Canyon hopes to forge ahead, despite the industry looking a lot flatter than it did during the pandemic, when everyone seemed to want to hop on two wheels and get fit. Sights are set on growing the current sales of €741m to more than €1bn by 2025, with plenty of opportunity to increase market share in the US, where the company has a southern Californian outpost, as well as southern Europe and Asia. Canyon is also aiming to extend its clothing line and move into accessories such as shoes and helmets. “We’re investing heavily in talent,” says De Ros Wallace, who owns five bikes – all of them Canyons, of course. “We are the right size to manoeuvre.”

From car to chopper

It’s a warm July afternoon and the rotor blades of a canary-yellow Airbus H135 helicopter are turning lazily on the roof of the ÖAMTC headquarters in eastern Vienna. In the near distance, the radar atop the city’s international airport’s air-traffic-control tower seems to mirror their movement. Then, suddenly, as if the wind has just picked up with furious haste, the blades whizz into action, propelling the helicopter up into the clear blue sky, leaving a burst of downwash in its wake.

The ÖAMTC (Der Österreichische Automobil, Motorrad und Touringclub) was founded in 1946 as an automobile and motorcycle club serving the burgeoning numbers of Austrian car owners. For decades it mostly provided breakdown cover but, in recent years, as a future without internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles has become ever more likely, the ÖAMTC has undergone a reinvention. Today it is a one-stop shop for all things mobility. It still provides its members with roadside assistance but is also branching out into, among other things, travel and tourism. Its glassy, ufo-like headquarters in the Austrian capital, which opened in 2017, is meant to symbolise this transition. Perhaps most radically for a motorists’ association, today there are many cyclists among the ÖAMTC’s 2.5 million members who can take advantage of roadside bicycle assistance delivered by mechanics who ride around on electric bikes. On the car side of things, meanwhile, increasing numbers of electric vehicles (EVs) are being serviced, meaning that technicians must be as well versed in the battery-powered as in the ICE.

Launched in 1983, the association’s air rescue service, which provides medevac assistance across Austria, was the precursor to this diversification. The ÖAMTC has 21 air bases across the country, with a 31-strong fleet of Airbus H135s. The upkeep of these €7m aircraft is financed partly through ÖAMTC membership fees and partly through government funding and insurance contributions. Though the ÖAMTC is an NGO, it works closely with state and regional authorities, a common practice in Austria and Germany, where clubs and associations (known as Vereine) frequently perform critical state-adjacent duties.

Co-ordinating the ÖAMTC’s air-rescue operations is CEO Marco Trefanitz, a cool-as-a-cucumber former telecommunications executive, who doesn’t bat an eyelid or raise his voice when the helicopter whisks into action. “The whole system is organised by the state, which runs the dispatch centres in the nine provinces of Austria and sends calls through to us,” says Trefanitz as he invites Monocle to sit down in the rescue team’s helipad-side rest area, which features an array of dumbbells and exercise machines. There is an adjacent kitchen and storage room, as well as a command centre dominated by a large monitor streaming live footage from around the country, alongside real-time weather maps. Long-haired and open-shirted, Trefanitz, who assumed his position in 2012, doesn’t look like the typical Austrian CEO. There’s a bit more pressure in his new job than in his previous one but he insists that it is far more rewarding. “The work here is not about me or shareholder value. Everything we do at the ÖAMTC is about how we can improve to better help our members and our patients.”

About five minutes after rushing off, the H135 returns. “Storno,” mouths Captain Robert Gallmayer as he climbs out of the cockpit: “cancelled”. False alarms are routine. About 10 per cent of calls are made as a precaution rather than a necessity, says Gallmayer after the rotors have died down and it’s possible to talk normally again. Often, he is already airborne while the call is still in progress; sometimes, the operator might conclude that ground vehicles are sufficient for the job, which means flying back to base to refuel and await another call. Gallmayer, lead pilot among 13 at the Vienna base (there are 71 across the entire ÖAMTC), has already flown two missions today, a normal number for this time of year as hundreds of thousands of Austrians begin their summer holidays. Both Gallmayer’s earlier missions involved dropping divers into the Danube in search of missing swimmers; one was pulled out alive, while the other sadly could not be found. 

Another common call requires retrieving someone who has had a stroke or heart attack from a mountainside or forest track. Indeed, car accidents or breakdowns are in the minority, with helicopters only called to the scene when the injured need to be rushed to hospital. During the summer, there are usually about five or six missions a day, and the feedback section of the ÖAMTC air rescue’s website gives heartening indication of how successful these predominately are. Pride of place among the comments and photos is given to a child’s drawing of those famous yellow helicopters. Below it reads, simply, “Thank you for saving us.”

Reaching for the sky

About three minutes ago, Monocle took off from downtown Brisbane. There’s an empty seat to our left and two more behind us. The cabin is suspended beneath the wings of a pilotless electric aircraft, whose silver propellers hum away. “Wave if you feel woozy,” says a disembodied voice. But airsickness won’t be a problem, not least because we’re sitting in a chair on an airfield in Hampshire, England, wearing a VR headset. The voice belongs to an employee of Wisk, the California-based Boeing subsidiary that built the pilotless air-taxi model in the middle of the tent.

It’s quite a ride. The air taxi would offer a quick, scenic alternative to a tedious 30-minute car journey. And, if all goes according to plan, it might be a transfer option for visitors to the 2032 Brisbane Olympics. But will people be willing to fly in a vehicle without a human being at the controls? “It’s like a driverless car,” says Wisk’s Carrie Bennett, who has clearly encountered this reservation before. “It’s fascinating at first but then you forget about it because everything just works. And you don’t have to worry about a child chasing a ball across the street.”

The Farnborough Air Show is huge. It has more than 500 exhibitors and some 35,000 people visit over its five days. This year’s iteration is quite quiet in terms of big orders for commercial jets, though that’s possibly a reflection of an industry still searching for its level in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. At the last Farnborough before the virus struck, in 2018, a record 1,464 orders were placed with the two biggest manufacturers, Airbus and Boeing. In 2022, that figure was 441. This year, it’s 256. Manufacturers are also beset by supply-chain difficulties, which are off-putting for potential buyers. Airbus has an order backlog of 8,585 aircraft; at current rates of production, that represents more than a 10-year wait. (Nevertheless, it’s demonstrating the A321XLR, an extra-long-haul variant of its single-aisle workhorse, which Iberia hopes to start flying this year.)

Among those making purchases, Qatar Airways has made a particular effort, to the extent that the entrance to Farnborough’s main exhibition hall resembles one of its tonier Business Class lounges, complete with a string duet and a Diptyque scent dispensary (the airline has confirmed an extension of its Boeing 777-9 order from 40 to 60). A physical presence is, however, no guarantee of sales. Brazilian manufacturer Embraer has parked on Farnborough’s aprons a handsome black and turquoise E190F cargo jet but has announced no new commercial deals (Embraer has, however, sold six A-29 Super Tucano attack aircraft to Paraguay’s air force).

If there’s one thing that demonstrates just how far the Farnborough Air Show has come since it was first staged in 1948, it is its focus on clean and renewable energy. Representatives of the aviation industry seem determined to stress that the environment has no stauncher allies. Suspend your cynicism, however, and you’ll see that there’s a lot going on in this realm. The hoardings of ZeroAvia boast of the UK-US firm’s inclusion on lists of top green-technology companies. Rudolf Coertze, its head of research and development, explains that the firm is working towards having its zero-emission hydrogen-electric powertrains adapted to small passenger aircraft the size of a Cessna Caravan or a Dornier 228. And he says that it won’t stop there. “There is no reason why this wouldn’t ultimately work with a Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 – and that could be coming by 2035. It would remove a large fraction of emissions caused by aircraft.”

Small aircraft will serve as pioneers in this regard. The Cassio is French start-up Voltaero’s rear-propeller electric-hybrid aircraft. There are high hopes for the plane and Global Sky has reserved 15 of them during the show (232 were pre-ordered before the end of Farnborough). Jean Botti, Voltaero’s CEO and a former chief technical officer at Airbus, is an enthusiastic salesman. He sits us in the pilots’ seats and explains how the airframe can be adapted to carry passengers, post or cargo, or perform rescue operations. Future, larger models will have retractable undercarriages and pressurised cabins. “It could replace a lot of light aircraft and also compete with business aviation,” Botti tells Monocle. “There’s a lot of criticism of private jets and, of course, this is much, much cleaner. It will also be cheap to fly: €400 to €500 per hour.”

For all the talk of a cleaner, quieter future for aviation, some aspects are eternal. The most sophisticated machines will still need the most basic parts, someone will always be needed to build them and a marketplace as busy as the Farnborough Air Show will always help to sell them. Beagle Aircraft is based nearby in Dorset; customers for its components include BAE and Leonardo. Among the exhibits at its Farnborough stall are a cargo door from a business jet, an outer leading edge from the wing of a German Air Force Tornado and a flight simulator. “We didn’t make that,” says Beagle’s order-book manager, Tom Rosser. “But if you don’t have something to draw people in, they’ll walk by. And for the five or so minutes when they’re on the simulator, you have a captive audience. That lets us explain why the things that we make are important.”

Coming to Farnborough, says Prosser, isn’t just an exercise in PR outreach. A lot of meaningful business gets done here. “For a company our size – just 100 to 120 people – it wouldn’t be worth doing as a loss leader,” he says. “Last year we paid for the stand with the sales that we made on the first day. And the lunches definitely help to get agreements over the line.”

Top three deals at Farnborough

Flynas
The biggest deal at this year’s event was between Airbus and Riyadh-based Flynas, Saudi Arabia’s first low-cost airline. Flynas is best known as the airline of choice for budget-conscious pilgrims visiting Mecca: during the last Hajj season, the airline filled 100,000 seats. It is now significantly expanding its all-Airbus fleet, ordering 130 A320s and 30 A330s, with delivery to begin in 2027 – a huge move by an airline whose current fleet consists of just 64 aircraft.

Japan Airlines
This year, Japan Airlines (JAL) finalised orders for 20 Airbus A350-900s and 11 A321neos, and for 10 Boeing 787-9s, with an option on 10 further 787s. The A350 order was reduced by one from the terms announced in March: the 21st had been intended as a replacement for the JAL A350 lost in a runway collision at Tokyo Haneda in January but JAL has decided that it can live without it. Boeing was clearly grateful for the 787 order: the firm’s senior vice-president, Brad McMullen, went out of his way to thank JAL for sticking with the company. 

Korean Air
Boeing’s recent difficulties were reflected by a restrained presence at Farnborough. The much delayed 777-9, for example, was only represented by a mock-up of its cabin. So, Boeing will have appreciated the vote of confidence from Korean Air, which signed for 20 777-9s, 20 787-10s and options on another 10 787-10s – a reported outlay of $12.6bn (€11.5bn). Due for delivery in 2028, these will be a significant boost to Korean Air’s fleet ahead of the completion of its long-planned acquisition of Asiana Airlines.

Inside Mioveni: How Dacia transformed a village into a global auto hub

The rumble and thud of heavy industry is overwhelming. Inside the stamping department at Dacia’s production plant in Mioveni, Romania, sheet metal is being sandwiched under pressure to create doors for the car brand’s new Duster model. For the robotic machinery to do its thing, huge, heavy moulds are being manoeuvred across the hangar by a yellow crane arm that spans the entire 15-metre length of the roof. “This is the high speed line,” shouts Alina Predescu, the department’s senior manager and a Dacia employee for the past 15 years, referencing the equipment on display. The combined 12 lines that operate here produce 4.5 million pieces a month. Next, they’re passed to the body shop where the cars start to take form.

To call Mioveni a production hub would be an understatement. Opened in 1968 during the early years of Nicolae Ceausescu’s Socialist Republic of Romania, the Dacia factory is a beast that almost never sleeps. Operating 24 hours a day over three shifts, it rests only on Sundays. A car is produced here every 55 seconds, while 350,000 cars roll off its production line each year. The figures are a testament to the phenomenal success of Dacia in recent years. The brand was long seen as a budget, no-frills player but has morphed into much more. Dacia now sells more than 650,000 cars a year and its Sandero recently became the best-selling car in Europe. The relationship, though, is reciprocal; Dacia wouldn’t be where it is today without its historic mothership plant, located about a 90-minute drive northwest of the capital, Bucharest.

When Monocle visits the plant – a series of grey, flat-roofed buildings surrounded by large car parks – we’re told to imagine it more as a town than a factory. On a map, its 288 hectares look almost as big as Mioveni itself, which sits below the plant’s slightly raised vantage point next to woodland. Before Dacia arrived, Mioveni (pronounced with a short “I” at the end) was a sleepy village of about 6,000 inhabitants. Today the automotive town is home to 30,000 people. Many Mioveni residents have either worked here or know someone who has – attracted by what one employee calls a job opportunity “gold mine”. With revenue of €5bn a year, the plant represents some 2 per cent of Romania’s GDP and about 2 per cent of its exports. 

Dacia began by mass-producing cars for the local market through a licensing agreement with Renault. Car kits were dispatched from France and assembled in Romania under a local brand name, though the plant shifted to making its own parts not long after. Dacia’s debut model, the 1100, was based on the Renault 8 and its second car on the Renault 12. That relationship came full circle in 1999, when the Paris-based multinational bought the brand. Renault’s CEO at time, Louis Schweitzer, had been to Russia and seen the success of Lada. He was convinced that there was a worldwide gap in the market for Dacia, especially in post-Iron Curtain Eastern Europe. 

With Renault’s arrival, efficiencies were greatly increased. Monocle is anecdotally told that before that, in the 1970s and 1980s, 30,000 employees were producing 100,000 cars a year, with capacity tripling at the plant between 2004 and 2010. “The factory has changed each year,” says the plant’s general manager, Sile Fulga, who has been here since 1987, wearing a Dacia logo wristband to protect his watch. “In 2000, we didn’t have any robots.” 

Underlying Dacia’s expansion has been an idea that counters the trends of the automobile industry. There has been a push back against the expensive bells-and-whistles cars that had already started to come onto the market at the end of the 1990s. “The idea was to say, what if we have a piece of the group that would not play the game of always more,” Dacia’s CEO Denis le Vot, also group chief supply chain officer, tells Monocle. Under Renault’s stewardship, Dacia launched the no-nonsense Logan model in saloon and estate versions, which came with wind-down windows and no air conditioning.

The car bodies being welded together by automated arms when Monocle visits are very different from those of the original Logan. Given how popular SUVs are worldwide – representing more than half of all sales in Europe – Dacia’s decision to pivot to an SUV look for most of its cars has proved prescient, even if many of them are smaller superminis, compact SUVs and crossovers. But Le Vot says that, though some aspects have changed, “the spirit is the same”. The less-is-more concept, for example, still prevails. 

Some might call them under-equipped but Le Vot prefers to say that Dacia produces cars with only the essential features. “We like to quit anything that is not strictly necessary,” he says, adding that the idea of “essentiality” is nonetheless shifting all the time given the types of vehicles coming onto the secondhand market, often a direct competitor of Dacia. Its cars feature manually adjusted seating, plastic over leather upholstery and understated screens; air conditioning, once deemed a luxury, is now part of the package. For a long time, Dacia also shunned lane-keep assist – the sometimes tedious feature that steers you back onto the road should you drift outside the lines – as too much technology, but new EU safety regulations mean that this is now part of the brand’s essentiality too. 

One of the less visible reasons why Dacia has become a superstar of the region – and beyond – is the way it has been run by Renault. Though brand studios in France might get design input, Dacia has been allowed to keep plenty of devolved powers, maintaining a 3,000-strong engineering corps in Bucharest, as well as a Romanian design team. There is a strong focus on what the Dacia CEO calls “design to cost”. Dacia cars are created with a sharp focus on the core things that matter to consumers in a process meant to separate real value from unnecessary technical glitz. Despite its range of cars, with the exception of its single electric model, Dacia also keeps the same platform across its catalogue – all the bits out of the consumer’s view, including the bulk of the body structure, axles and even a lot of the powertrains – which lowers costs. Lastly, Dacia taps Renault Group HQ and its R&D, which Le Vot refers to as “big brother”, to borrow technology developed years earlier.

The city of Mioveni is dominated by the St Peter and Paul Cathedral, with its distinct orthodox spires, which sits just off a main thoroughfare. Inaugurated little more than a decade ago, it’s one of the many buildings constructed here since the 1970s – many of them nondescript communist-era blocks – as the population started to grow. Walking around town, the influence of Dacia is difficult to miss. The yellow taxis driving around the streets are Dacias, as are the police cars, both Logan models. The workers in blue overalls fixing up the square arrive in a Dacia pick-up, while a family of three we talk to is driving a workhorse Dacia Solenza from 2003 that needs pushing to get its engine going. 

Later, we meet members of a local Dacia classic car club, all eager to show off their vintage models. Catalin Francu was a driver for Dacia in the 1980s and 1990s during the company’s original foray into rally car racing (Dacia recently announced that it would be joining Dakar Rally from 2025). Like many people, for Francu there’s a pride and perhaps even sentimentality attached to a brand that is still seen as indivisible from Romania itself. “I was born with Dacia,” he says. “And for many Romanians, it’s the same thing.” Both Alin Stanciu, owner of a 2003 Dacia 1310 estate, and Catalin Filip, whose 1969 1100 turns plenty of heads as people walk past, agree. Stanciu talks about a “nostalgia” for Dacia that clearly comes from where he has grown up. “It’s normal because everyone has a connection to the plant,” he says. “Four members of my family worked there.”

Still, present-day Dacia wants to be seen as much more than Romanian, even if CEO Le Vot calls it the heart of the brand. “Dacia is Romanian but Dacia goes way beyond Romania,” he says. “The uniqueness of the brand is not specifically the geography, though the history is linked to the geography.” For one, Romania is no longer the top sales market, with top spot going to France followed by Italy. The Mioveni plant also isn’t the only factory producing cars. Le Vot is quick to add that Mioveni has a “bright future” but there are two plants in Morocco that make what the CEO calls the “low drive”, more budget cars such as the Sandero and Logan, as well as the seven-seater Jogster. The Mioveni plant focuses on higher-end cars, including the Duster. 

Part of that gradual shift in brand orientation involved a redesign of the Dacia logo in 2021, which started to feature on new cars from the following year. It’s one of the many logo iterations we see on Dacias during our time in Romania. The kissing “D” and “C” feels modern and has been coupled with Dacia moving away from its traditional blue to an olive green. This has been complemented by lifestyle advertising that makes Dacia feel outdoorsy. Le Vot, quoting the brand markers, says that it’s all part of being “robust and outdoors, eco smart and essential but cool”.

Alongside the brand’s first electric car, the China-made Spring, which hit the UK in October (a first-generation model has been available in other markets for longer), 2025 will see the release of a large suv, the Bigster – a bid to cash in on that lucrative segment of the market. It will be made right here in Mioveni, from the metal stamping to the final conveyor-belt quality control. 

Alongside the evolving look and feel, Le Vot argues that the way Dacia is perceived continues to shift. While he says that Dacia is “still the cheapest on the block” for those who want it, buyers aren’t just secondhand car owners looking for the only new car they can afford. Premium brands have become so expensive, he says, that plenty of new Dacia owners have gravitated from higher-end players. It means that 70 per cent of Dacia’s sales are now made up of its most expensive models. “The market is coming to us,” he says. And with it, Dacia’s evolution continues apace.