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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
Workplace design
We forego the gimmicks and reveal the hazards of hot-desking as we imagine a more meaningful manner in which to improve office design. Josh Fehnert is joined by academic and writer Jeremy Myerson, who is working on solutions for building better a workplace.
Extra: What happened to the town square?
Ireland’s exhibition at the Venice Architecture Biennale is entitled “Free Market” and ruminates on the changing role of the town square in civic life. Here we ask if such spaces should be for public discourse or for parking cars – and whether these time-tested spaces are disappearing.
Fashion forward
We sit down with the Tokyo-based company designing suits for blue-collar workers and visit an exhibition at London’s V&A exploring how fashion and sustainability can go hand in hand. Plus: what do we really know about enigmatic fashion designer Charles James?
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?
