Monocle on Design
Your essential guide to design, covering furniture, craft, and architecture. Discover fresh stories, rising talents, and the latest from top studios.
Latest Episodes
Why craft matters
The intersection of craft and utility at the inaugural Harewood House biennial and the opening of retailer Galeries Lafayette’s latest space in Paris.
Architecture and the silver screen
We’re in Tinseltown for the Architecture and Design Film Festival. Josh Fehnert talks to founder Kyle Bergman and Los Angeles’ chief design officer and filmmaker Christopher Hawthorne about the city’s sometimes uneasy relationship with its own buildings.
The quiet architect: Kevin Roche
The Irish-born Pritzker prize-winning architect Kevin Roche died this month at the age of 96. We revisit his lifetime of achievements in a feature-length interview with the maestro recorded in 2016.
Sydney style: Akira Isogawa
We head to Sydney to meet Japanese-born Australian fashion designer Akira Isogawa in his atelier and talk about his childhood in Kyoto, his take on slow fashion and the first major exhibition exploring his career. Plus: what London should have learned from the Thamesmead housing estate.
Meeting Stefan Sagmeister
We visit New York-based graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister to talk about growing up in Austria, his big break in album art and why taking sabbaticals is so important.
Meeting Irma Boom
We sit down with Dutch graphic designer Irma Boom to ask why she considers book design to be a feat of architecture, the future of inkless printing and why we should judge books by their cover. Plus: Josh Fehnert runs through the design headlines with the V&A’s Rory Hyde.
Meeting Sir Terry Farrell
Architect Sir Terry Farrell’s playful pastiche of styles can be seen from the MI6 building to the Breakfast Television Centre in London. His six-decade career has veered from masterplanning city blocks to building train stations in China. Josh Fehnert sits down with the postmodern master.
Will design books survive?
Has the world of digital turned the page on design book publishing? We ask Phaidon’s new editor at large, Spencer Bailey. Plus: we shed some light on Stockholm’s design week.
The robots are coming
Why an architecture team is turning to a robotic arm for a helping hand. Plus: we ask a UCL professor for help understanding the ramifications of robots in design and ‘Disegno’ editor in chief Oli Stratford joins Josh Fehnert for a flick through his magazine picks for the month.
Toronto: a design city in the making?
Is Toronto a design city in the making? Monocle’s Toronto team host a special edition of the programme to assess the state of the city’s design sectors – and their burgeoning influence on design markets elsewhere.
