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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
Home futures
How will fewer resources, a lack of space and new technologies impact the way we build our homes? We seek answers at a new exhibition and talk to a designer about creating tiny homes. Plus: quantifying the value of design.
Extra: Chip off the old block: Thomas Chippendale
The 18th century is known for the Enlightenment, a few bloody revolutions and the work of Britain’s most eminent and enduring cabinet-maker Thomas Chippendale. His journey to prominence is being documented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the exhibition ‘Chippendale’s Director: The Designs and Legacy of a Furniture Maker’.
Hem line
A sit-down with Petrus Palmér, CEO and founder of Stockholm furniture firm Hem. Plus: we decamp to Dubai to see if the desert is fertile ground for a new crop of design thinkers and look at why Sweden says no to a new Apple store.
Extra: Stan Lee and comic-book art
Comic-book fans are mourning the passing of Stan Lee, who helped to make a niche industry popular and lucrative. We discuss the growing appreciation of graphics and ask whether comic-book illustrators are due more recognition.
Elemental: the work of Alejandro Aravena
We meet Pritzker prize-winning architect Alejandro Aravena to talk politics, climate change and architecture’s role in turbulent times. Plus: what is director Wes Anderson up to in Vienna?
Extra: The big Apple
Steve Jobs once said ‘Design is how it works’ – and it was a mantra that became a cornerstone in the success of iPhone. This week, as Apple launches its new iPad Pro (the latest in a long line of recent releases), we look back at some of the design…
Meeting Olafur Eliasson
What can designers learn from artists – and where does one discipline end and the other begin? We sit down with Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson to find out. Plus: London-based watchmaker Uniform Wares on keeping time with the industry and our Fashion editor’s chat with a brand worth knowing.
Extra: Strings attached: Gibson guitars
It’s been a turbulent few months for Nashville’s Gibson guitars, which has just announced former Levi’s president James Curleigh as its new CEO. That’s music to the ears of fans of the ailing brand, with a proposed revamp aimed at retuning the business. We look back at the designs that…
The Barbican estate: living with a legend
Fifty years since the first residents moved in, we explore life in London’s much-discussed brutalist housing complex. Plus: a tour of Sweden’s newly reopened National Museum after a five-year transformation.
Extra: Bricking it
“Bricks and mortar” is a phrase that evokes feelings of safety, reliability and permanence – but do these ancient materials pass muster in a world of sparkling glass towers? One architecture firm we spoke to thinks so. Henley Halebrown recently celebrated the traditional brick-built trope (with a twist) in the…
