Issues

Missing old-school audio? Press play at Dug Factory, Tokyo’s boombox specialist and analogue empire

Ask anyone in Japan about acquiring a vintage boombox and one name will crop up repeatedly: Junichi Matsuzaki. The Tokyo-based 65-year-old has amassed a collection of 5,000 portable radio-cassette players and vintage electronics. At his shop in Shibuya, the shelves are lined with mono and stereo examples from the 1970s to the 1990s by Japanese companies such as National, Sony, Pioneer and Sharp. There are blank cassettes, Japanese music of yesteryear on tape and merchandise designed by an artist friend, including T-shirts declaring “Boomboxes are beautiful”. Matsuzaki sits at a small desk, repairing a Sony radio with a tiny built-in TV screen to make it fit for contemporary use.

“The number of pieces that I sell every year is limited,” he says. “Each item requires careful maintenance and restoration before it can even be offered for sale.” Parting with favourites can be hard but Matsuzaki is pragmatic. “When I buy a boombox, I look for great design,” he says. “I keep some for my personal collection and sell the others. However, if someone wants something specific from my collection, I’m open to letting it go.”

Matsuzaki used to work as a display designer, adding panache to interior spaces with old Japanese appliances. “That spilled over into my personal life,” he says. “I spent weekends browsing recycling shops, gradually assembling a collection of pieces that caught my eye. What began as a hobby evolved into a professional pursuit.” Design moved into the background as boombox dealing took over.

Matsuzaki acquires most of the pieces in the collection directly from owners who no longer use them. He also works with waste-disposal companies, which set aside radios and cassette players as they arrive. If he’s lucky, he might pay a few hundred yen but he can pay up to ¥100,000 (€550), depending on the model and condition. Selling prices are similarly varied. A Sony CF1700 might be retailed at ¥11,000 (€60), while the hefty Sharp GF-909 can sell for ¥220,000 (€1,200).

Matsuzaki says that cassette culture is enjoying a revival in Japan, prompted by an increasing number of artists releasing new music on tape, as well as the rise of cassette specialty shops in Tokyo. His customers vary in age and nationality but the core buyer is likely to be someone in their fifties or sixties who grew up with radio-cassette players. The outsized JVC M90 – an early-1980s hip-hop classic beloved of Run DMC – is highly sought after. And mint condition is key. Matsuzaki’s collection includes used items but also unused deadstock pieces. Original packaging and accompanying manuals are significant too. “Complete sets from the era are prized, as they offer a full glimpse of the appliance as it was originally conceived,” says Matsuzaki.

After 23 years it’s hard to believe that Matsuzaki has gaps in his boombox collection but he hankers after one in particular: the National RX-5350, a large stereo radio-cassette player released in 1983. “While many models of the era leaned towards rugged, bulky designs, this one stands out with its sleek, futuristic design,” he says. “One day I hope to acquire one in excellent condition.”
dug-factory.com

Small tags, big statements: The art and design of iconic clothing labels

A clothing label is small and inconspicuous by design, often tucked away in folds of fabric. So it might seem an unlikely place for a brand to sketch out its style philosophy. For canny designers, however, this little tag has long been just the place to set the tone, whether by adding a clever illustration, inscribing a reference to a company’s heritage or breaking the black-and-white mould with a burst of colour. Here, Monocle’s editors and stylists present a few of their favourite examples.

For each of its seasonal collections, Munich’s A Kind of Guise takes inspiration from a different country. This label, being an ode to Belgium, features the nation’s staple foodstuff: frites. In focusing on one location at a time, the brand advertises its singular sense of fun.

Régric’s labels for Arpenteur are designed like mini-comic strips. The French cartoonist has been working with the menswear firm since 2011, establishing a distinctive visual identity thanks to his ligne claire drawings. If his style looks familiar, that’s because it was popularised by Belgian cartoonist Hergé, the author of The Adventures Of Tintin.

Fiorucci’s playful cherubs are integral to the Milanese brand’s image. Originally illustrated by renowned Italian graphic designer Italo Lupi in the 1980s, they were inspired by a Victorian-era Christmas card depicting two angels – a nod to the company’s provocative blend of heritage and irreverence. 

According to the Venice-based Barena’s design team, the bright orange of its label was inspired by the city’s anti-fog signals and warning markers, and was picked for its “visually arresting quality”. 

While 95 per cent of Swedes can identify Fjällräven’s fox logo, it wasn’t the company’s trademark when it was founded in 1960. But as Swedish speakers will know, fjällräven translates as “arctic fox”. 

The bold font of Kaptain Sunshine, and the minimal lettering, highlights its clean aesthetic and distaste for loud logos. With this Tokyo brand, everything is black and white.

CYC, one of Singapore’s oldest bespoke tailoring firms, has a place in the country’s history, having dressed Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister. This archive collection from the 1970s recalls the optimism of the era and is paired with bright cotton and linen shirts, perfect for the year-round balmy climate. 

To mark its collaboration with fellow British firm Wales Bonner, John Smedley has designed a co-branded label. According to managing director Jess Mcguire-Dudley, this is a significant event. “[Our founder] John Smedley was a great marketeer at heart,” she says. “One of the only 19th-century manufacturing business owners to brand his products as a marker of the pieces’ superior quality, he chose to stamp both his name emblem on the inside of each garment using dark blue ink.” It is still a feature of the firm’s clothes to this day.  

Casey Casey’s bold lettering is purposefully direct. Since its inception in 2008, the Paris brand’s graphics, invitations and labels have, like its garments, been handmade and hand-finished. 

De Bonne Facture’s collaboration with Spanish knitwear atelier Knitbrary features a drawing of a stack of books. The elegant French company, whose name means “well made”, works with high-quality European ateliers, and Knitbrary is no exception. 

Sunspel’s sun and clouds motif was in circulation in the 1940s and 1950s. Now, with provenance a valued quality, the firm is once again flying the flag for brand UK.

En Soie’s playful textile label recalls the Zürich-based brand’s history as a silk trader. The colourful fringing adds texture, while the whimsical alpaca motif is a nod to the atelier’s commitment to using natural fibres.

Meet Rena Dumas and RDAI, the design minds creating beautiful Hermès boutiques worldwide

Anyone who has ever stepped into a Hermès boutique – and there are more than 300 worldwide – has experienced the Parisian brand’s meticulously designed interiors, housed in architectural marvels. But few will know about Rena Dumas, the woman who dedicated much of her life to translating the essence of the maison into bricks and mortar. “Rena was very humane and intuitive,” says Julia Capp, the CEO of Rena Dumas Architecture Intérieurs, today known as RDAI. “It was extremely important to her how you felt within a space, how you sensed it both personally and culturally.”

Dumas, who died in 2009, grew up in Athens before studying interior design in Paris. There, in 1959, she met her husband, Jean-Louis Dumas, the CEO of Hermès from 1978 to 2006. She founded RDAI in 1972 and designed interiors, studios and offices for Christie’s, Yves Saint Laurent and John Lobb. But the boutiques for Hermès were where she could really impart her vision – and capture the essence of a brand. She started in the mid-1970s by delving into the French luxury brand’s archives for the redesign of the flagship on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré.

Her collaborations in the following decades included working from 1998 to 2001 with Pritzker prize-winner Renzo Piano on a luminous 15-storey skyscraper in Tokyo’s Ginza district, housing Hermès’s Japanese headquarters; there’s also the flagship in Seoul, which includes a museum, café and offices, completed in 2006. Dumas believed that every Hermès boutique should be unique while staying recognisable.

Today, under the leadership of Dumas’s close collaborators, architects Denis Montel and Julia Capp, RDAI has a team of 120 people. The pair joined the practice in the late 1990s during a period of growth and worked closely with Dumas before taking over to continue her legacy. Montel is executive vice-president and artistic director, though the company is still tied to the Dumas family. “When Rena met someone, she would immediately sense what they could be,” says Capp, an Australian who worked in London, Hong Kong and Shanghai before joining the practice in Paris. “She didn’t look at either of our portfolios. She’d seen what we were working on and asked whether we wanted to work for her.”

The firm has since expanded beyond interiors into architecture. In 2014, RDAI won France’s top architecture award, the Équerre d’Argent, for the Cité des métiers Hermès workshop in northeastern Paris, featuring a façade combining hand-moulded and glazed bricks. Other projects under Montel and Capp’s direction include residential towers in Taiwan and the interiors of the five-star Hotel SO/Paris in 2022. But it’s the detailed, high-end interior design for Hermès that the practice is best known for and where experimentation and creativity – particularly with materials – take centre stage and define its distinctive approach.

RDAI’s studio is housed in a grand Haussmannian building in the heart of Paris, a short walk from Place des Victoires. Montel and Capp welcome Monocle through a courtyard that was once home to the piano-maker Érard – Franz Liszt was a regular visitor – and into their office, with its lofty corniced ceilings and a grand marble staircase. The first floor is home to an open-plan workspace; a corridor lined with rolls of fabric, timber samples and lengths of rope; and the studio’s Materials Library, a room where floor-to-ceiling shelving is densely packed with samples in every conceivable finish and texture. Here, a small team is dedicated to the office’s deep research into new, custom materials and techniques that will inform future interiors, particularly for clients such as Hermès.

Over the years, the Materials Library has amassed a list of some 7,000 international suppliers and tens of thousands of samples. “There’s something almost a little exaggerated about the way that we work,” says Montel, explaining that craftspeople are tracked down all over the world to work with the collection of materials. “Increasingly, we don’t search for new materials. We produce them after seeking out the necessary skills.”

It’s an approach that translates to the firm’s work for Hermès. The design for every new boutique begins with rigorous research into its geography, social customs, gastronomy and, above all, local crafts traditions. Collaboration with regional artisans informs interiors in which nearly every element is custom-made, from tapestries to tiles and carpets. In the Mumbai shop, for instance, some walls are clad in bamboo-veneer marquetry in a deep blue recalling the painted houses of Jodhpur, while others are enveloped in hand-embroidered fabrics produced by a workshop of 80 women across 10 villages.

In Lille, contemporary rugs incorporate motifs referencing Dutch paintings in the city’s picture gallery, while at the recently relocated shop in Hanoi, tables reinterpret the traditional Vietnamese technique. “Every boutique is an ambassador for local craftsmanship,” says Capp. “Hermès is a luxury goods brand but it is also a brand of craftsmanship. So, we’re communicating what the brand does.”

Every Hermès boutique is distinguished by a striking façade – the threshold that first engages the passer-by and often where local crafts are reimagined and pushed in new directions. For the shop in Fukuoka, the façade draws on kumiko, a traditional Japanese woodworking technique in which intricately carved pieces are joined without glue or nails. RDAI had the pieces precision-cut by machines and then assembled by hand. Similarly, in Lyon, which is often described as the “city of silk”, both the shop’s wall fabrics and the woodwork feature embossed details that are reminiscent of brocatelle fabric. These creations are sometimes the result of relationships that go back several years or even decades before a project finally comes to light. “It’s constant exploration,” says Carole Petitjean, the director of RDAI’s Materials Library and design department. “It’s a research process that is carried out everywhere in the world all of the time, regardless of whether there’s a specific project.”

Despite maintaining a consistent design approach to their work, no two of RDAI’s Hermès shops are identical but all are immediately recognisable as belonging to the brand. That coherence comes not from repetition but from a disciplined approach to texture and proportion and, above all, an obsession with colour cultivated by Rena Dumas. “Before meeting her, I didn’t know one could be so precise with colour,” says Montel, adding that new names had to be invented – “smoked aubergine”, “fresh butter” or “water mint” – to capture the nuances that standard palettes could not express.

Dumas’s own furniture designs extend this philosophy. Conceived largely in her spare time – what she called her “secret garden” – the approximately 60 pieces that she created reflect the same attention to materiality and modularity that’s seen in her interior design. They include a hand-knotted carpet in raw silk with a central yellow sun motif, a chestnut folding screen and console, and a small modular table in figured ashwood that can be divided into two smaller consoles. Though the practice has long reissued these designs, only recently has this dimension of the studio’s activity been more formally developed. A new department, RDAI Éditions, is set to launch later this year.

Only a few ago, investing this degree of detail and resources in physical retail might have seemed questionable, even for luxury brands. But Montel is confident that RDAI’s approach has a bright future. “The way that a brand can really communicate about itself is not online,” he says. “Boutiques are increasingly important. And even beyond shops, architecture can play an important role.”

Portfolio
RDAI has designed Hermès shops across the globe. Here are three of our recent favourites.

1.
Hermès Vienna
2023
Housed in an 18th-century building, RDAI’s concept draws aesthetic inspiration from the Viennese secession. It features bespoke glass globes, art nouveau-style stucco mouldings and a gently winding staircase.

2.
Hermès Omotesando
2021
This shop features a geometric copper-coloured stainless-steel cladding that wraps around its exterior. Inside, curving walls and bamboo marquetry bring a sense of play to the retail experience.

3.
Hermès Lyon
2021
Referencing Lyon’s nickname, the city of silk, the shop’s wall fabrics and woodwork have embossed details reminiscent of brocatelle fabric. The original building was renovated and extended to include adjacent premises.

The commute: Step aboard Takaoka’s city tram with Mayor Yuzuru Demachi

In the latest stop for our regular feature The Commute, we head to coastal Japanese city Takaoka, 500km west of Tokyo, to meet its mayor Yuzuru Demachi. A former foreign correspondent, he was elected to city hall in 2025 and uses his crosstown tram ride to make a broader point about his politics and meeting the electorate.

What time will we find you on the platform?
At about 08.00, though sometimes I cut through Takaoka Castle Park and walk to the office instead.

Will you be listening to music or a podcast?
Neither really. I’d rather talk to people on the tram or, if I’m walking through the park, enjoy the sounds of nature.

What do you like to chat about? Is it small talk about the weather or straight to politics?
One resident might tell me that there’s a pothole near their house that I need to sort out or a student might say that she’s planning to vote for me. On the way home, I buy a can of beer at the convenience store and chat to the staff there – that’s part of my daily routine.

You have said that taking the tram is a statement…
The easiest changes are those that you can make yourself. I cancelled the lease on the official car and stopped travelling in [more expensive] green-car seats on the bullet train. And I cut my own salary. I want to build a city that works with public transport, where people can walk around. It’s a burden on society when parents drive their kids to school every day. And honestly, I also want more than just going back and forth between home and city hall in an official car.

Are there other ways to get around?
Buses. Right now, they’re in a vicious cycle: fewer passengers, less revenue, fewer services, then even fewer passengers. We need to break that. We’re looking at things such as routes that run jointly across operators and pilot schemes for autonomous vehicles.

That’s enough about work – where do people relax in Takaoka?
The Amaharashi Coast is where everyone is heading. The views of the Tateyama Mountain Range rising beyond the sea are something else. When friends visit Takaoka from Tokyo [about two hours by train], I take them to Shino, a counter-only obanzai restaurant, or to the restaurant inside Nousaku, a traditional casting foundry.

Well, this is our stop. What’s next for Takaoka under your leadership?
The city is already rich in history, craft and culture. So the challenge now is in adapting to a new era and creating a place that feels joyful and full of possibility. How can we make that happen? I just try to listen to as many people as possible. That’s why I take the tram.

Further commuting:
Take the Paris metro with shoe designer Alexia Aubert
Join José Miguel de Abreu biking from Porto to the central Ribiera district

Big ideas in small packages: Japan’s tiny ‘kei’ vehicles provide a compact lesson in design, efficiency and versatility

The wider world is finally waking up to the joys of the kei car; even Donald Trump declared them “really cute” after his recent visit to Japan. A category of its own since 1949, the kei-jidosha – “light vehicle” – is small enough to qualify for cheaper insurance and lower taxation but just large enough to be allowed on a motorway (you can spot them by their yellow registration plates and black numbers). The legally capped dimensions (maximum length is 3.4 metres) and engine (660CC) might be on the diminutive size but the vehicles are huge sellers in Japan: more than 1.6 million were purchased last year. 

Originally introduced after the Second World War to boost the car industry, they have become a staple of Japanese roads, used as family cars, delivery vans and farm trucks (the Daihatsu Hijet is a classic that has been in production since 1960). Core kei models such as the Suzuki Every or the Honda N-Box – the top selling car in this class last year, with a starting price of about ¥1.7m (€9,300) – might look curiously boxy to non-Japanese eyes but they make sense on the country’s narrow residential streets. The nation’s car designers also know how to maximise the kei’s aesthetic potential: think 4×4 versions, smart interiors and playful SUV styling.

The rugged, award-winning Mitsubishi Delica Mini punches above its weight, with water-repellent seats, doors that slide open with the swipe of a foot and space to pile up luggage. Collectors have come to covet out-of-production roadsters, dinky trucks and limited-edition releases. We might not see Trump in a Nissan Roox anytime soon but key kei-car selling points – affordability, efficiency and fun – can provide lessons for modern mobility everywhere.

The Monocle 100 issue, out now: Our definitive directory and radical dose of optimism

There’s a change of pace this issue. We’ve put to one side the page architecture that usually shapes the issue and given the entire magazine over to The Monocle 100, a directory of people who we like, places with important stories to share and products that we covet. It’s a list that is hopefully useful but raises some smiles too.

We started working on this project some months ago, asking our team to nominate everything from the best military kit to running shoes, artworks to modernist apartment blocks (and even the ultimate roadside shrubbery). I think that they’ve done a fine job, even if there was some jostling for page acreage among editors keen to allow their selections to shine.

Beyond the competitive fun of pulling this together, there’s another reason why I hope that this issue hits the mark. It is a celebration of talent, shining a light on both established and aspiring names. It’s also a blast of positivity, global know-how and spotting opportunities at a time when such ambition can often be hard to locate in our media – or, indeed, anywhere.

So, you’ll meet a man taking a stance against graffiti vandals scarring his city, discover how Dr Stretch is manipulating a nation back to litheness, see how architecture is helping a city to rediscover its soul after a terror attack, slip into a cosy armchair in the perfect airport lounge and have a go on a vending machine that supports local businesses.

Also commanding some prime glossy-papered real estate in this issue is our annual Property Survey, which is timed to land ahead of Mipim in Cannes, the industry’s largest fair (we will be there again this year with a Monocle Radio studio at Le Palais des Festivals). Over our nicely appointed pages, we visit a new public housing project in Singapore that’s embracing nature, drop in on the agents charged with selling Dubai’s most valuable homes in the city’s highly competitive market and see why developers in Japan are wooing renters with pooches. Poodle power is on the rise. I’m all for it.

While I have you, if you are a subscriber, take a tour around our rapidly expanding collection of digital city guides – Palma and Dubai have just gone live. Written by our editors and correspondents, they are constantly being updated and will help you to unpack a city with ease. Come to think of it, they deserved an entry in The Monocle 100.

There’s another piece of travel news to share too. Always passionate about good hospitality, we have just launched the The Monocle Townhouse at the Widder Hotel in Zürich. This three-bedroom establishment, with an epic roof terrace, sits on the heart of the city and all of its furniture, art and fittings have been selected by us. There’s some rather fine reading material too for guests to peruse.

Finally, there are also upcoming events in the Gulf and Asia. You might have guessed that we like spending time with our readers. In the meantime, if you have thoughts or ideas to share, please always feel free to send me an email at at@monocle.com. Have a great month.

‘If you have the privilege, this is a way to survive.’ How two 1950s towers built community in São Paulo

Illustrator Ana Strumpf moved to the Locarno building with her sons having lived in the US for four years. “I needed a neighbourhood that I could walk around,” she says gesturing to the vast window of her airy, art-filled apartment in the 1950s structure. Locarno is one of two identical buildings (the other named Lugano) in São Paulo’s Higienópolis and in is a portal to the past that offers some clues to what makes a meaningful community today.

From her studio in what would originally have been the maid’s bedroom, she says that the appeal of living here is the lively community. Strumpf is in a Whatsapp group with the parents who live in the buildings and organises parties for the children. One of her sons, she says, regularly goes down to the garden and plays with her neighbours’ dogs.

The architecture also provides entertainment of another kind for the boys. “Sometimes they like doing silly things that 12-year-olds tend to do, like pull moonies from the windows,” she says with only the slightest hint of disapproval. Once they’re safely at school, she throws open the shutters, partly to let in the breeze as she works but also because she knows that a well-known concert pianist, who lives above her, likes to practice every day at 11.00. “When he plays – oh my God,” she says. “This place is heaven.”

Lofty praise indeed for architecture’s capacity to make homes from houses and forge social connections, as well as for the vision of the building’s designer, Adolf Franz Heep. The émigré, known among contemporaries for gliding through the downtown in his distinctive slim bow ties, had arrived in Brazil in 1947 from Germany. He’d been helping with post-war reconstruction and separated from his Jewish wife by the Nazis. Following his escape across the Atlantic (at the age of 45 and using a fake passport) he joined the office of Frenchman Jacques Pilon and helped to complete the new HQ of newspaper O Estado de S Paulo, including subterranean printing presses. Heep’s solo designs for residential blocks soon followed. Relatively affordable and aimed at a burgeoning Brazilian middle class, Edifício Lausanne, with its red and turquoise aluminium blinds, is regularly name checked in today’s architectural guides; and at 47 storeys high, Edifício Italia still presides gracefully over Praça Republica.

Today, architect André Scarpa is convinced that the 1958 Locarno and Lugano buildings are Heep’s masterpiece. Scarpa knew of the buildings before he moved in and even once designed a shelving unit inspired by their H-shaped exterior window planters. He met his partner, Pedro Rossi, in 2023. After just two months they jumped at an available rental and moved in with their dogs Ipê and Gil. “I used to think that I loved Lausanne and lived in Lugano,” Scarpa says a little wistfully. “Now I think this design is better. Lausanne is very visual, with its coloured shutters, but Lugano and Locarno have light that flows through the apartments, the ceilings are high at 2.8 metres and every room connects perfectly.”

Higienópolis sill feels like a precious slice of old São Paulo in a city that likes to keep up with trends. On a Sunday, the queue for Mirian’s rotisserie chicken served from a hole-in-the-wall stretches round the block. Those waiting patiently are muttering that a much-loved bar has recently undergone a brutal refurbishment but another stalwart from the 1960s called Ugue’s still packs them in for feijoada (stew) and cold beers. Weekend runners in jogging kit are a common sight but you can spy uniformed maids walking packs of pedigree dogs, if you keep your eyes peeled.

Found beyond security gates (a 1980s addition), Lugano and Locarno lie perpendicular to the neighbourhood’s gently climbing main avenue. A mirror image of each another, they stand on either side of a narrow garden; their names spelled out in discreet sans serif ironmongery. A gardener sweeps the ochre paving stones with an old broom, clearing away branches and fruit from the guiambê shrubs, manacá-da-serra and palm trees. On the ground floor of each building are three apartments and two entrances with canopies held up by tapering white-tiled pillars. Inside, wide curving stairs – the steps and rails painted a soothing cream – take residents to other floors. While lower apartments have glass bricks that allow in plenty of light, the 12 floors above (with four apartments on each level) rely on windows that stretch their entire length.

The buildings are certainly attractive and welcoming places to live but they seem to be a particular draw to architecture obsessives. Agnaldo Farias, who teaches art and design at the nearby University of São Paulo, lives on the eighth floor of Lugano. “Heep was such a serious, meticulous architect with an eye for detail,” he says, citing the German’s education under Ernst May and Adolf Meyer at the Kunstschule in Frankfurt and years spent working with Le Corbusier in Paris. “Nothing escaped him. He brought ideas from Europe but adapted them to Brazil, understanding the climate, the problems,” he says with enthusiasm. “The ventilation windows above the main windows, for example. With their individual levers they’re so clever and they make for better living.”

With so much glass, however, each block offers views straight into the apartments of the opposite building. “Like Rear Window,” Farias says jokingly, in reference to the Alfred Hitchcock film. Scarpa admits that he had concerns when he first moved in. “I was worried about privacy but we respect each other, we all know each other,” he says. “I can look across and know [my neighbour] Claude is there today; that Juliana is back from holiday. Heep was interested in how the middle classes might live socially in a city as big and busy as São Paulo. If you have the privilege, this is a way to survive as a community without going crazy.”

Manoel Veiga, a painter who has lived on the second floor of Lugano for the past 18 years, says that there are more children here than when he first arrived. “I came at a moment of generational change,” he says. “My neighbours used to be much older and many had even lived here since the building was new but they were passing. I think my daughter, who is now 14, was one of the first children here.”

Veiga is proud that his apartment remains just as Heep designed it. Visitors step immediately into the living area, which stretches the entire depth of the floor plan, with a dining space to the rear. Here, Veiga and his wife, Nalu, have their morning coffee at an old bar table from Rio de Janeiro, watching the street behind the block come to life. On each shelf are what he calls his “nanocollections” – clusters of interesting objects that he’s picked up from antique markets and on his travels. There are vintage miniature spirits, little wooden boats and model airplanes, as well as magazines from 1966, the year that he was born. The kitchen runs into the old servants’ area and, like Strumpf, the artist has set up a workspace with a desk, chair and books in the former maid’s room. Across the adjoining corridor are the apartment’s three main bedrooms, though Veiga has turned one of these into a wet studio, a carpet of canvas protecting the floor from paint. Pinky-brown floorboards that run throughout are original, hence the care. “It is very hard to find peroba rosa wood anymore,” he says. “It’s very resistant, hard-wearing. Seven decades and I’ve never had any problems with termites.”

Veiga laments one detail, however. The previous owner changed the bathtub. To get a glimpse of the original, you need to visit art producer Thais Francoski’s nearby apartment, kept bright with its white walls and minimal decor. The 34-year-old has been in Locarno for three years, her first address in São Paulo after moving from Curitiba in the south of the country. She jokes that her neighbours know if she is having a party because her friends always end up dancing by the windows. Her bathroom, unchanged since Heep signed off on his project, is a vision of mid-century style: the walls are lined with aqua-blue tiles, matched by the chunky ceramic of the toilet, pear-shaped bidet and vast sunken tub.

Light flows in through the clouded glass bricks of the bathroom’s exterior wall. It also proves a party draw. “There are so many selfies by friends posted from this bathroom,” she says. The arrival of younger residents, as well as the pandemic, have loosened the community’s rules a little too. As well as sitting on benches outside to read or chat with neighbours, residents often take yoga mats or dumbbells down to the garden for exercise sessions, which was previously frowned upon. Children are not supposed to use skateboards but this has been allowed now too. Francoski bemoans that the communality only stretches so far, though. “The only complaint I have is that I can’t sunbathe in the garden in my bikini. It’s not allowed. We need sun though.” Heep, she tells Monocle, would have been on her side. After all, she opines, “this architecture is all about being healthy”.

‘Good deeds should be done in silence’: Meet the anti-graffiti artist working in secret to clean the walls of Brescia

He goes by the name of Ghost Pitùr – but it’s tough trying to get more personal details out of him. Born and bred in the northern Italian city of Brescia and in his thirties, he’s a professional painter by day and a crusader against the scourge of graffiti by night. Often wearing a hoodie, he goes out under the cover of darkness to repaint buildings that have been defaced. His motivation? Returning what he calls “visual harmony” to the Lombardian city that he loves.

Is he the anti-Banksy, armed with a paintbrush rather than spray cans? He sees some similarities, though he’s keen to point out that he isn’t an artist. “Just like Banksy, my message is crucial,” he tells Monocle. “I am criticising how and why so many buildings have been ruined and defaced with graffiti that has nothing artistic about it. The façades of houses are not canvases; they are not spaces designed to be written on. They were built and painted with care, work, effort and sacrifice – and for this reason, they must be respected.”

Irked by the “presumptuousness and arrogance” of those who choose to scrawl on a wall, he’s keen to carry out his act of urban love incognito – which might explain why he gets cold feet and backs out of a face-to-face meeting with Monocle. He says that he hopes to inspire other people to act like him, even while his identity remains a mystery.

“Anonymity is very important to me,” he says. “Mainly because I believe that good deeds should be done in silence, without profit and without wanting to get anything in return.”

‘The solution is not more tourists.’ Málaga’s mayor navigates his growth challenge

Since 2000, the 83-year-old mayor of Málaga, Francisco de la Torre, has overseen its transformation from a holiday resort into a city with year-round cultural and economic pull. On his watch, passenger numbers at Málaga airport have risen to 25 million a year. The Carmen Thyssen, Picasso and Pompidou museums have anchored a cultural offering with longevity, while nanotechnology firms, research centres and international business schools have bolstered an economy that was once reliant on tourism. Steady diversification and political stability are De la Torre’s central achievements – and why he has won six consecutive elections since assuming office 26 years ago, making him one of Europe’s longest-serving mayors.

That stability has helped Málaga to invest in public spaces, pedestrianisation and improved liveability. The mayor’s policies have supported the historic centre, while annual hotel occupancy in Málaga city is 84 per cent – well above the national average. But success has brought challenges. Half a million cruise passengers arrive in the city a year, swelling footfall on its streets and beaches. Locals and visitors jostle daily for space, just as parakeets and pigeons square up along the orange-treelined Alameda Principal. De la Torre insists that the city’s next phase will be defined less by growth than by control. “The solution is not more tourists,” he says. “It is better-quality tourism, with greater spending capacity.”

The mayor is leading the way with creative solutions to problems that are particularly acute in Spain, such as overtourism and housing. Like their compatriots, malagueños are contending with a housing crisis; prices rose 25 per cent in the city last year, with foreign buyers accounting for a third of purchases. In response, De la Torre froze new tourist-flat licences in central districts and is planning a tax on short-term rentals. The revenue generated, says the mayor, will help to fund rent subsidies for locals on lower incomes. He is also lobbying for more devolved power. Málaga has land for about 6,000 homes that are ready to be built but plots for 28,000 remain tied up in planning. “Local governments in Spain have responsibility but not the power,” says De la Torre.

At a polished table in Málaga city hall, he sketches on a pad of paper as he speaks. The drawings illustrate two subjects that dominate his thinking: how to encourage visitors to explore Málaga beyond its beautiful but crowded centre and the complexity of the Guadalmedina river project – an ambitious regeneration plan that he hopes to deliver before leaving office. The project would create a mile-long green corridor above an underground road link to Málaga’s booming port. But at a cost of €300m, it will require national and European funds. “It’s very complex,” says De la Torre. But he is determined. “I always think first of the city for the citizen,” says a mayor who returned to work within a month of having a stroke in 2020. “If the city is good for the people of Málaga, it will also be good for those who visit.”

A masterclass in camouflage and military architecture on the island of Gotland

“The client wanted to send a message that we weren’t going to just throw up some barracks,” says Henrik Jonsson Linton, an architect at Stockholm-based practice CF Møller. After winning a Swedish Fortifications Agency competition to design a new base for the P18 armoured regiment on the Baltic island of Gotland, the team at CF Møller decided to reimagine what a military complex could look like. The result is a garrison that defies convention, blending elements of functionality, security and architectural distinction into a striking, understatedly Scandinavian visual identity.

The Gotlands Garrison’s simple design belies its functionality. As well as sleeping quarters, there are offices, a canteen, several vehicle-repair workshops and a medical clinic. Because it’s the base of an armoured regiment, it needed to be spacious enough to allow vehicles and people to co-exist and work in high-pressure situations. “Basically, no one should get run over by a tank,” says Jonsson Linton.

The architects were also tasked with making the garrison’s buildings blend in with their heavily wooded surroundings, which would bring both strategic and aesthetic benefits. The challenge, says Jonsson Linton, was to preserve “the feeling of wild nature” while meeting the security standards of a modern army. It was a steep learning curve for the designers. Early proposals featured glass façades, which the military immediately ruled out because of the material’s delicate nature. Still, CF Møller managed to sneak in enough glass to filter some of the diaphanous Gotland light while conforming to the complex’s technical requirements.

Gotland is a logistical site that is crucial to Sweden and Nato’s strategy of deterrence and defence in the Baltics. There are plans to use it as a logistics hub if conflict ever breaks out between Russia and Nato. The Swedish Armed Forces has also announced its intention to create a combat group of 4,500 soldiers to be permanently stationed on the island – a key part of the 27,000 new recruits it hopes to add to the ranks by 2030.

When Monocle visits, 300 conscripts are being put through their paces. “The work that we do feels urgent and inspiring but we have a challenge: the combat group isn’t yet complete,” says Joakim Marklund, P18’s deputy regimental commander. “That’s why our international joint combat exercises are incredibly important, so that we can be a deterrent and still have enough time to produce the combat brigade.”

The garrison’s new residents seem content with their workplace. “It’s great that everything is new and clean,” says Cornelia Ohlsson, an armoured-vehicle gunner. “I wasn’t keen on doing national service but now I think that it’s really fun,” says Aram Shakeley, an armoured group commander. “It’s good to be part of something that’s being built from scratch.”

Looking out towards the woodlands that still cover much of the garrison, Tomas Ängshammar, a spokesperson for the P18 regiment, is already thinking about the next phase of development, in which thousands more soldiers will arrive to fill the base’s bunkrooms and pathways. “The challenge that we’re facing is that the geopolitical situation keeps changing,” he says. “But we can be flexible in how we’ll respond to that, thanks to this location.”