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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
Extra: How trainers became high fashion
The soles of sneakers have been elevated from scuffing gym floors to strutting the fashion runways of Milan, Paris and New York. But when and how did the lowly trainer become high fashion? Stockholm shoemaker CQP tells us more.
Are architects afraid of colour?
We explore the use of colour (or the lack thereof) by architects in the West and ask what can be done about it. We also mull over automated ships and visit German bathroom firm Duravit’s flush new London showroom.
Extra: Lithuania’s lasting legacy
For five decades, Lithuania churned out government-issue uniforms for the eastern bloc. While the regimes didn’t last, the workforce’s talents did; find out how a new generation is utilising those skills to keep the country at the forefront of a global industry.
Restoration and reuse
We meet the architect giving a new lease of life to a brutalist complex in London and find out how a brewery in Athens became the National Museum of Contemporary Art. Plus: Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto on his upcoming exhibition in London.
Extra: Austrian audio
Austrian firms have always been sound when it comes audio technology. The tradition continues today with Mikme, a Viennese start-up with designs on revolutionising the sector. Monocle’s Alexei Korolyov pops his ear to the ground to find out more.
Meeting BV Doshi
The 2018 Pritzker laureate shares some wisdom and tells us why he’s never been tempted to build outside of his native India. Plus: who are the Pritzkers and why is their approval so prized?
Extra: London calling
Born out of necessity but protected by nostalgia, the red telephone box has become a byword for Britishness. Where did the design for the ubiquitous kiosk, with its embowed roof and panelled doors, come from? And how can we transform it to match our everchanging daily needs?
Britain’s postmodern buildings
We ask why a spate of the UK’s bright and bewildering but controversial postmodern buildings have just obtained listed status. Plus: dispatches from the Venice Biennale – what can the Holy Land teach us about sharing and what does Saudi Arabia have to say about urban sprawl?
Extra: Enid Marx
You’ve looked at, lazed on and may have even licked her work but have you ever heard of Enid Marx? With her textiles, prints, illustrations and stamps she deftly defined the design of the mid-1900s in Britain.
Freespace: Venice Architecture Biennale 2018
Venice, a city of canals, church bells, bobbing boats and over-fed pigeons is a-chatter with talk about the just-opened Venice Architecture Biennale. Josh Fehnert sits down with the directors of this year’s show. He also talks to the commissioners behind the UK and US exhibitions and takes note of the…
