Issues

Better together

Visitors to the secretariat of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in Jakarta are greeted in the lobby by a sculpture of two men touching fingers through a glass screen. “Mirror Man” celebrates the unity of humankind. That might seem inappropriately cuddly in these turbulent times but bringing different perspectives together in service of common interests is something that the association does remarkably well.

Though it is a political and economic union made up of 10 southeast Asian member states – Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – Asean tends to involve partners from outside the region in most of what it does, from hosting US presidents at its annual east Asia summit to signing the world’s largest free-trade agreement. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) came into force last year, uniting, among others, China, Japan and South Korea. “Asean has the convening powers of bringing all of the major powers to the region to meet and address some of the world’s most challenging issues,” Asean’s new secretary-general, Kao Kim Hourn, tells Monocle. Kao, a Cambodian who survived the Khmer Rouge genocide as a boy before moving to the US, began his five-year tenure in January.

Since its foundation in 1967, Asean has helped to foster cordial relations between its formerly fractious members. Peace has brought prosperity and outside investment. Foreign countries, companies and other organisations are hammering at Asean’s door, eager to tap the region’s young, 660-million-strong population. The recent trend of diversifying manufacturing away from China is only adding to this gold rush. By the end of this decade, Asean’s combined economy is expected to overtake Japan’s – a huge milestone at a time of anaemic growth and ageing workforces elsewhere. As suitors compete to catch the association’s eye, being pally with everyone is a helpful core value. “We have our own agenda to work with all of the major powers and all of the major powers are our friends,” says Kao.

But this open and inclusive approach, long a source of pride, is beginning to cause problems. Heightened interest in the Indo-Pacific region is putting external pressure on Asean to change how it operates, straining an overstretched secretariat. Demands for decisive action and stronger leadership sit uneasily with Asean’s principle of noninterference and a modus operandi that gives every member state an equal say. Decisions are made by consensus and leadership is rotated alphabetically. Such politeness and idealism feel out of step with a wider world divided by fierce competition between China and the US, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and mini-lateral groupings (such as the Quad alliance of Australia, Japan, India and the US) that encourage smaller powers to pick a side. Asean’s perceived failure to resolve conflicts in its own backyard, such as the crisis in Myanmar and disputes with China over the South China Sea, is also giving rise to internal criticism. An annual survey published in February by Singapore’s iseas think-tank described Asean as “slow and ineffective”.

It is against this backdrop that the leaders of Asean’s member states will meet in May for the first of two annual summits chaired by Indonesia. Kao will have a seat at the table during what could be a transformational year for his role and the secretariat. Indonesia has made a stronger Asean a priority; the country’s foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, called it “pivotal” to the group’s future relevance. The government has been a strong supporter of Asean, even providing the secretariat with new digs: two 16-storey towers that were opened in 2019 alongside the regional organisation’s first permanent home, a tiered building modelled on rice terraces. With little hope of real progress on Myanmar and the South China Sea, Jakarta will want results to justify its slogan, “Asean matters: epicentrum of growth”. The challenge is to carry out structural reforms while standing behind its founding principles and commitment to multilateralism. “It’s good that people are questioning the relevance of Asean because it shows that they want us to play a larger role,” says Kao.

To understand Asean, it helps to know how the organisation came into being. The five original members – Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines – signed the “Bangkok declaration” at the height of the Cold War. Since most of the co-founders were former European colonies that had only recently regained their independence, their governments were reluctant to hand over hard-won powers to another supranational body. “Asean is a platform that is meant for intergovernmental co-operation,” says Joanne Lin, a former diplomat for Singapore who spent almost seven years working at the secretariat before joining the Asean Studies Centre at the iseas- Yusof Ishak Institute. “It doesn’t have any rules that surpass national sovereignty and it isn’t involved in running the day-to-day business of member states.”

Unlike the EU, Asean is not a customs union and, though it negotiates free-trade agreements as a body, internal barriers remain. There is no Asean president and no parliament; its bureaucracy is limited. Kao oversees a staff of about 400 people and an annual budget of about $25m (€23.2m). Every member state contributes the same amount so the dues can only be as much as the poorest country – currently Laos – can pay. This has contributed to the perception that the secretary-general position is weak, a charge that Kao strongly refutes. “The role and responsibilities have increased dramatically,” he says. He should know, having spent years at the Cambodian foreign ministry dealing with Asean-related affairs. Today he calls the title “significant”.

Personalities matter. The two most recent secretary-generals – a position that rotates alphabetically among member states every five years – were happy to keep the cogs spinning in relative obscurity. Though it’s early days, Kao is clearly comfortable in the media spotlight and he knows his brief inside-out.

As with the EU, it can take an insider’s knowledge to notice when a slow-moving multilateral body is exceeding expectations. When Russia invaded Ukraine, for example, Asean’s foreign ministers took several days to draft a collective response: a few mildly worded paragraphs that failed to mention Russia, let alone condemn Moscow. Yet this was seen as a sign of progress among the association’s member states. “In my term here, I haven’t found it slow,” says Urawadee Sriphiromya, Thailand’s permanent representative to Asean. “We can make a statement on Ukraine right away and respond effectively.”

Effective or not, regional analysts tend to agree that Asean doesn’t always get a fair shake. “People underestimate it because they hold it to the standard of the EU,” says Susannah Patton, a former Australian diplomat and director of the Lowy Institute’s southeast Asia programme. Patton cites Asean’s decision to ban Myanmar’s military leaders from attending its summits as a significant move, alongside the signing of rcep and the admission of Timor-Leste as an observer last year, 20 years after it won independence from Indonesia. Jakarta has gone from sending in troops to flexing its diplomatic muscle in support of Timor-Leste’s membership application.

Then there are the highly technical changes under the hood. Asean’s governance today is a vast improvement on the version to which Cambodia acceded in 1999. A wide-ranging agreement in 2007, known as the Asean Charter, established a number of new mechanisms. One of the most significant, the Committee of Permanent Representatives (CPR), requires every member state to appoint an ambassador to Asean. These UN-style permanent representatives, who have a direct line to their respective foreign ministries, meet regularly to flesh out decisions made at ministerial level. Such is their importance that Joe Biden made time to greet them after last year’s Asean-US summit. China, meanwhile, sent its most senior diplomat, Wang Yi, to the secretariat to address them in person.

The presence of the CPR has contributed to a diplomatic bubble around the secretariat. Close to 100 countries have a designated ambassador to Asean. These multilateral diplomats meet more regularly than their bilateral peers and are often in and out of the secretariat (representatives of China and Poland popped in during Monocle’s visit). “We want to have more Asean meetings here and make the centre of Asean diplomacy more vibrant, resilient and reactive,” says Kao.

Masahiko Kiya became Japan’s ambassador to Asean at the end of 2022. “A strong, peaceful and prosperous Asean is good for Japan,” he tells Monocle at his tropical residence in Jakarta. “So many Japanese companies are doing business here that if any fighting erupts, Japan would be heavily affected.” The senior diplomat took over his country’s mission at the start of a busy year. Tokyo will host the Asean leaders at a summit in December to mark the 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations – the longest of any major power (“dialogue partner” in Asean jargon).

The UK became the newest of 11 dialogue partners in 2021, joining the likes of the US, Australia, China and Russia. Each is allocated a co-ordinating country from the CPR as a buddy. Thailand is currently Japan’s co-ordinating country and ambassadors Kiya and Sriphiromya meet frequently. “You can’t consider Asean co-operation as complete without the dialogue partners being involved,” says Joanne Lin, who used to work on external relations during her time at Asean. “They are very supportive of our integration initiatives and we need their support to fund certain programmes. They are a very good source of financial support for Asean’s activities,” she says.

Tokyo wins plaudits for supporting Asean-led initiatives, whereas China is seen to prioritise its own economic and security interests. At a summit in 2012, Cambodia’s then foreign minister, Hor Namhong, bowed to pressure from Beijing to block the issue of a joint communiqué backing the Philippines in its territorial dispute with Beijing in the South China Sea. It was a low point for Asean.

Talk for long enough about the association and the topic of meetings will come up. Among its members, there is an enduring belief that dialogue is key to regional peace and stability. According to Kao, there are now as many as 1,700 meetings a year and that number keeps growing.

The need for every member state to attend Asean meetings is one of the reasons why Timor-Leste’s membership has been held up for more than a decade. English is the association’s official working language; some member states remain unconvinced that the former Portuguese colony can find enough English speakers to cover every gathering. But with Timor-Leste’s accession only a matter of time, expansion could provide the impetus for reforms such as meritocratic appointments and majority votes. Leaving things as they are could imperil the Asean project – especially with the accession of an untested new member – and invite further accusations of lowest-common-denominator decision-making.

Perceptions of Asean will continue to differ but when the 56-year-old institution looks at itself in the mirror, with all of its imperfections and areas to improve, it can continue to be proud of what it has achieved. As Kao says, “Asean has always been part of the solution and not part of the problem.”

Building connections

Mipim is the world’s largest real-estate trade fair, bringing together investors, developers, city leaders and government ministers for four days of property conversations in Cannes. And Le marché international des professionnels de l’immobilier (you can see why they stick to Mipim) has been gathering all these players together since 1990, only missing a beat during the coronavirus years.

The main venue is the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, the conference centre by the beach, which also plays host to the city’s celebrated film jamboree. Every hotel lobby, restaurant and bar, as well as a large contingent of luxury yachts, is also taken over for ad hoc meetings and quite a bit of jollity in the sun. This March’s get-together was buzzing, with more than 23,000 people securing tickets (still down on pre-pandemic times but nobody seemed to be stressed by this).

Yet, despite all the smiles, the industry is facing some stubborn headwinds. The first of these is that, for many developers, it’s hard to raise capital; several talked of the markets being almost frozen (and this was before the Credit Suisse collapse potentially made the situation even trickier). And the money that they can get their hands on comes with interest rates that make projects unviable. Then there’s new climate-change legislation, already being drafted in many countries, that would compel property owners to reveal the co2 emissions for individual buildings and how they plan to make them greener. While this is commendable, it’s prompting many large property companies to dispose of assets that could sully their portfolios in the future; better to ditch environmentally unsound places now rather than find that no tenant will touch them in five years’ time. Many developers are also dealing with the changing world of work. In short, it’s not the best time to speculatively build an office tower in the US.

Nicolas Kozubek is the director of Mipim and, when we caught up with him at the Palais, he seemed decidedly unflustered about managing such an epic circus of demanding participants. In fact, he was pleased to see a surge of attendees from France, the UK and Germany, as well as a continued strong showing from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt. But how did he view the tricky issues that the property world needed to tackle? “This is a transitional moment,” he says. “Most of the participants, cities and territories, know that things need to shift towards more sustainability and more user experience in projects. So it’s how you make this change happen, especially when you have some assets that are potentially not well adapted to the future.” Kozubek was sure, however, that Mipim could play an important role in the search for solutions. “One of the most important purposes of Mipim is to foster the right conversations. So it’s not only about business and networking; it’s now about learning.”

And even if there were some cautious attendees, others were genuinely ebullient. Mark Dixon of office-solutions company iwg saw only sunny uplands for his business, which provides the kinds of spaces that hybrid workers are demanding. Cities that had already done much of the groundwork for becoming carbon neutral were also full of confidence, believing that investment and people after a better quality of life would find them. Countries such as Poland were also out in force, telling a story of growth even when there is a war on their border. There was clearly still money in some pockets – and, yes, some of it did go on magnums of rosé at the end of the day.

The view from Mipim

We asked eight leading voices about challenges and trends in the property industry, from demands arising from climate-change legislation to why cities are banking on the life sciences.

1.
Build for fairness

Rui Moreira
The mayor of Porto explains how the city plans to accommodate its younger residents.

“We have a high demand for housing and so we have to increase the supply. And, of course, the supply has to be across the board. That’s why we have been having meetings with investors at Mipim who want to build affordable housing. What we are offering them is based around a system of long leases in vacant areas in the city, which will allow them to build on our land. Anda sizeable part will have to be affordable housing.

There’s another thing that we are doing: because of the high revenues we are getting from city taxes, we are giving money back as housing vouchers so that younger people can rent houses. I was speaking with foreign investors today who want to build these properties, where the rent is essentially covered by city hall. If we don’t allow any new housing then we won’t be able to redistribute the taxes in this way.”

2.
Don’t believe everything you are told

Alice Charles
Director of cities, planning and design at global engineering and architecture collective Arup, which focuses on sustainable development.

“We are seeing a lot of commitment from investors and developers. We’re hearing that they want to decarbonise their portfolios. But one of the disappointing things is that some large investors see getting to net zero as an opportunity to offload assets. They’re looking through all the real estate they own across the world and they’re identifying what they call ‘stranded assets’: properties that perhaps have a low energy rating and that they perceive will have a low monetary value in the future. Quite a few are selling those assets rather than being responsible leaders and retrofitting them. And that’s not going to get us to net zero.

They’re often in the best position to act; they have the most resources and skills within their organisations. So many of them need to start thinking differently. Some investors now have a ‘grey to green’ plan: buy buildings that they classify as ‘grey’, make them ‘green’ and make a lot of money in doing so. We need to see a much greater focus on businesses recognising that this is an opportunity as well as an important response to climate change.”

3.
Build things that deliver quality of life

Niko Kyynäräinen
Director of business and economic development for Turku in Finland, a city that’s using better infrastructure to meet its ambitious target of being carbon neutral by 2029. And which wants to be a nice place to live too.

“The city is already developing in a sustainable way but we need to do more about traffic. And here we are looking at different solutions but a tram system will be one of the key elements. We ended our tram system in the 1970s but now we are looking into a new one. That’s going to be a big source of growth for the city and the whole region in the future. It will shape how the property market in the city will develop.

Of course, there are tension points, as in every city. But I think that the tram will create a sense of wellbeing. It will also run in an area where we have most of the problems inside the city. We need to show people that these projects are not only for the rich.”

4.
We are at a positive tipping point

Cristina Gamboa
The CEO of the World Green Building Council, an NGO that unites 77 national green building councils and works for the decarbonising of real estate.

“I am seeing at Mipim something similar to what is happening in the UN’s Race to Zero campaign: we’re at that tipping point in the conversation where it is becoming much more mainstream in the decision-making process to consider environmental issues.

That is definitely the case with the big engineering and architecture firms, which are committed in this journey but also with asset managers and decision-makers who look after the investments because many stakeholders around them are asking for greater transparency and disclosure.

There is a movement towards quality investments, which are delivering better returns, are future-proofed and aligned with decarbonisation and sustainability.”

5.
Geopolitics shapes the property industry

Michal Olszewski
The deputy mayor of Warsaw was part of a large Polish contingent at Mipim. He is promoting his city – and nation – as an attractive place to invest.

“We have suffered as a country because of geopolitics but we are also profiting from geopolitics. We suffered because we were always on the marching paths of the armies from Russia to the west and from Germany to the east. And they usually demolished our country. But we are now in a situation where, because of the war in Ukraine, investors understand that Poland is the most stable market in this area of Europe.

Many companies have moved their human resources from Ukraine and Belarus to Poland because of the aggression from Russia. Our recent analysis suggested that the population of Warsaw would grow by 250,000 over the next 25 years. And then, within one month last year, it grew by 250,000 because of the refugees from Ukraine. And, being frank, thanks to those people, we are filling the gaps that we have in the labour market because they have the skills that we need. So the main reason for being here at Mipim is to send a very important message to investors that we are stable and we are growing.”

6.
Developers can change people’s lives

Olaide Oboh
Director at Socius, a UK developer that focuses on the social impact its projects can deliver. It has a £1.5bn (€1.7bn) pipeline of projects in the UK.

“Socius was set up as a social-impact developer with a focus on improving the communities that we work in and, importantly, people’s life chances. We don’t believe that buildings regenerate [a place on their own], we have to create the right infrastructure to ensure that we create proper social impacts.

What does that look like? Well, we work with local communities to understand what their ambitions, aspirations and issues are. And we use the development as a vehicle to address those issues. So, for example, Cambridge is an unequal community. It has lots of rich people and not enough facilities to support the people who are deprived. What we are doing there is dedicating half of our scheme to a public park. And that’s about giving people a high-quality public space to enjoy themselves in but, importantly, we have also created community growing beds in that space so that people can grow their own food, which reduces the distance from farm to plate.”

7.
Find places with room to grow

Michael Körner
Managing director of the Municipal and Regional Investment Agency in Leipzig, looking to attract developers and investors to the city (the fastest-growing metropolitan area in Germany) but also to its environs.

“In the 1930s, Leipzig was the fourth-biggest city in Germany and had more than 750,000 inhabitants. Then, after 40 years of communism, we dropped down to 440,000 people. So we are growing from a lower level and, of course, this dynamic is always a relative thing: to achieve growth rates of 5 per cent for a city like Munich is going to be much more difficult. However, Leipzig as a city is developing very well. But the region around the city is not growing as quickly. So that’s why the Invest Region Leipzig exists.

My company promotes a region that has a very successful city at its centre to investors. If, for example, you don’t find the space that you need in the city, you will find it in the region. We have invested in excellent infrastructure and in an international airport. But we still have a lot of space available and one of the areas that we are focusing on is life sciences because the past four years have shown us that personalised medicine will be the future.”

8.
Why it is good to be flexible

Mark Dixon
Ceo and founder of iwg (formerly Regus), the world’s largest flexible-workplace provider, with more than 3,300 workspace locations across more than 120 countries, which cater for some eight million people.

“Coronavirus made people realise that they could run effective companies without having everyone come into central offices. But the pace of change has been remarkable since then; we will open up to 1,000 buildings this year. There is great demand from companies wanting to provide facilities near to where people live. They believe that this will let them get better people – and they do. And they have more retention. And, overall, it’s much better for the planet. And, by the way, it’s half the price of a regular office, so every CFO in the land is thinking that this is attractive.”

Monocle Radio
For more from Mipim, listen to Monocle Radio’s podcast ‘The Urbanist’ (16 March episode). A fuller interview with Mark Dixon is also available on ‘The Entrepreneurs’ podcast. Find these shows and more at monocle.live/radio

Growing strong

“I’ve lived in Colonia Roma for 15 years and the neighbourhood has changed a lot,” says Edo Nakatani, who opened the noodle shop Fideo Gordo here last year. The chef has one eye on us and the other on the regulars settling at the colourful terrazzo tables as they fill up ahead of what looks like a busy lunch service. “From day one we were full,” says Nakatani with a grin, as the sun glints in through the open-fronted restaurant amid the smell of toasted sesame oil.

Nakatani is the first to admit that the timing of Fideo Gordo’s opening helped him catch the tail end of a boom in visitors to the Mexican capital. Unlike other cities that battened down the hatches and enforced strict lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic, Mexico City remained open and welcomed remote workers and visitors. “I think it’s 50 per cent tourists and 50 per cent Mexicans,” Nakatani says gratefully as chefs beaver away in the open kitchen behind us.

Between 2019 and today, lots of people have discovered what long-time residents such as Nakatani already knew: Mexico City has much to offer. Many flocked to established mid-rise neighbourhoods including Roma and Condesa, which are close to the gleaming towers of downtown but still offer an enviable quality of life for residents: green space, walkable streets and plenty of good shops and places to eat. On the business side, this means good footfall and notably cheaper housing and rent than a comparable berth in Miami, Los Angeles or New York. The favourable weather and slower pace of life have also helped to provide a springboard for entrepreneurship and buoy existing businesses.

Canadian fashion designer Bridget Tidey is another entrepreneur who picked Roma as the base for her ethically sourced, small-batch clothing brand Zii Ropa back in 2015. “Mexico City is having its moment,” she tells monocle. With its ribbed concrete façade and vast, geometric windows, her smart shop, which she opened in 2020, is lined with railings of light linen and cool cotton clothes. “We’ve seen an incredible increase in sales and have international clients who spend weeks or months here, then come back year after year,” says Tidey. “We also have loyal local customers who keep coming back.”

Roma’s success hasn’t been simple or straightforward, though. Safety was once as big a consideration as desirability. “There are more police now,” says Elena Reygadas, who opened her pretty, plant-covered restaurant Rosetta in 2010 and has since expanded with various sites and a bakery called Panadería. She’s part of a hospitality movement – simple, sumptuous and homegrown – that has seen Mexico City become the home of a culinary moment that is proving tempting for visitors and ripe for export. Star Mexican chef Enrique Olvera, for one, opened a site in Los Angeles in 2020; meanwhile, homegrown hospitality firm Groupo Habita is selling an equally polished image of Mexico in its 14 sites across the country and hotel in Chicago. In Mexico this adds up to a new interest in the city’s food scene that’s attracting a steady stream of guests. “There are also just more people out and about on the street,” says Reygadas.

The optimism about entrepreneurship here might be palpable today but Mexico City has long punched well below its weight in terms of attracting fresh businesses and liveability. It has taken time to shed an image of being packed, polluted and dangerous. Part of that image clean-up has been municipal, as successive city governments installed better streetlights, more security cameras, refurbished parks, mended pavements and added playgrounds as well as reforming and improving the police service. Infrastructure investments helped too: 12 years ago it was among the world’s worst cities for traffic but today the situation has calmed, bike-sharing schemes abound and a better Metrobús route has helped the population of more than nine million to move – and breathe – more easily. While there is still distance to cover, the city’s traffic is now no worse than that of Toronto or Lyon and ranks better than many major capitals in Europe and North America.

Though it kept going, the city did also suffer during the pandemic: Mexico’s economy contracted by 8.5 per cent in 2020 and many small businesses closed. While governments around the world piled on national debt to minimise the pandemic’s effects, Mexico’s federal lawmakers adopted a hands-off approach, providing little aid to struggling businesses but continuing to welcome foreign visitors. It was a lifeline that helped retailers, businesses and the hospitality industry to stay afloat. Passenger numbers on flights into Mexico City in 2022 were still 8 per cent below 2019 levels but longer-term stays helped it to overcome this hit. During the first nine months of 2022, temporary resident visas for long-term US visitors were up 85 per cent compared to before the pandemic. Though hospitality and fashion are key growth areas and perhaps the most visible success stories as you walk through Roma-Condesa, there is also high demand for new desks and spaces for an increasingly itinerant workforce, many of whom no longer need to go into an office. “We now run more than 30 locations across Mexico City, most of them concentrated in Roma and Condesa,” says Martín Haiek, co-founder and CEO of flexible office space company Around, which launched in 2021. “Our clients – that’s now more than 50 companies – are a mix of start-ups, venture-capital funds and creative agencies.”

The other notable success that you’ll hear discussed at cafés or by street-food stalls in Roma (not to mention in the boardrooms of downtown) is investment in technology. Though the past few months have been torrid for tech stocks, the city’s start-ups are proving resilient, insists Hernán Fernández, managing partner at Angel Ventures. “Over the past decade the technology sector in Mexico City has exploded beyond anything we had dreamed of,” he says. “It’s a global innovation hub.” He should know: his company put up cash for successful homegrown investments including Clip, a Mexico City-based digital payments company, and fintech company Kueski. Clip has since raised more than €421m, with investors also pouring €300m into Kueski. Other notable start-ups in the city include apartment-listing platform Homie and Spanish-language audio content subscription service Beek.

That investment as well as an influx of new talent can be measured in many ways, insists US-born Isaac Phillips, who moved to Mexico City to start telecoms company Siglo. He sees it in the daily customers of his broadband services (currently 30,000) but perhaps more poignantly, he says, in the streets of Roma- Condesa on his lunch breaks. “I see professionals who work in the arts, people who work in the start-up ecosystem, as well as bankers and freelancers,” he says.

While the Roma-Condesa moment might be now, some of the founders who monocle meet think that the entrepreneurial movement is just that: on the move. Brenda Urcid, CEO of the design studio Futura, moved her company from an office in Condesa to a new space in the less-established but nearby Doctores area. Urcid says that she sees many businesses moving further from the booming Roma- Condesa corridor into nearby but cheaper neighbourhoods such as Doctores, Navarte and Escandon. “A lot of galleries and studios are moving into new neighbourhoods,” she says. “It’s great that it’s now expanding beyond Roma-Condesa. There are still a lot of creatives in Mexico City.” And, it seems, plenty of the city to explore.

Bigger picture

Japanese fashion company Jun Group started in 1958 with a single design: a line of red tartan swimming trunks that famously sold out in a day. Founder Tadashi Sasaki went on to develop full menswear collections under his first label Junmen, adding womenswear to the mix in 1968 with the launch of the Ropé label (named after Saint-Tropez). Since then, the Jun Group has been one of Japan’s biggest fashion pioneers, launching more in-house labels under the Ropé umbrella, opening some of the best-known concept shops in the country, including Maison Kitsuné, and investing in international labels such as Paris-based apc and US casualwear brand Saturdays nyc.

From the beginning, Sasaki looked beyond fashion, broadening his portfolio to include wine, fitness and golf – an approach the European fashion groups are only now warming up to. Café de Ropé, the Parisian-style café that the group opened in 1972, became a Tokyo institution, known for introducing Japan to Perrier water and café au lait. Golf clubs, hair salons and even discos all followed suit.

Today, Sasaki’s son, Susumu, is the company’s president. He oversees 47 brands, almost 2,500 employees, more than 340 shops and annual sales of nearly ¥54bn (€376m). Even though he was always more interested in music than fashion, a spell at Esmod fashion college in Tokyo ignited his passion for clothes. “My father didn’t say so but I always knew that I was expected to take over,” he says. Speaking from the company’s Tokyo headquarters, he shares his plans for the Ropé brands and explains why going global isn’t always good for business.

How have the Ropé brands evolved over the years?
The original Ropé brand still exists [after more than 60 years] and enjoys strong brand recognition in Japan. Adam et Ropé and Ropé Picnic are part of that family, with Ropé Picnic remaining our largest brand in terms of volume. It’s an affordable brand that’s in shopping centres all over Japan and aims to bring fashion to everyone. It’s also Japan-oriented; we’re not trying to appeal to a global audience. When it comes to Adam et Ropé, we’re taking it back to its original spirit. It used to be a lot more fashion-oriented when it started out [in 1990] but had become a little too conservative.

You say that Jun is about fashion, food and fitness. Which aspects are you most interested in?
Fashion is always at the heart of the business but I’m probably more interested in food and fitness right now. I’m excited by our sports brand Nergy and our Nergy karate club for women. People are thinking about training their minds and bodies, not just about what’s on the outside.

Golf seems to be featuring more in the Jun portfolio. How did that happen?
During the pandemic, lots of young, creative people started playing golf. So now new golf-fashion brands are emerging and it’s getting competitive. But we’ve been doing golf for a long time so we have a foundation in terms of our network and understanding of the industry.

How do you pick your investments?
My first experience of bringing a brand in was in 1992, after seeing apc in Paris and talking to its founder, Jean Touitou. We wanted to introduce apc to the Japanese market because we felt that it could change the direction of the industry. At that time, fashion was very decorative but apc designs were simple; they had the same spirit as hiyayakko [a block of cold tofu]. With Saturdays nyc, we were buying the brand for the Adam et Ropé [boutique] and it seemed as though it would be a good match for us. In each case, we start by talking to the owner or designer and if it feels like we’re all facing in the same direction, the deal goes ahead.

What happens when a label doesn’t work out?
If something doesn’t work, we stop doing it. Coronavirus aside, our revenue hasn’t changed dramatically for 25 years but the brand portfolio has: some brands disappeared or merged with others. The most famous one to close was j&r, which made history in the 1980s and 1990s. The clothes were sexy and body-conscious but people are more casual now.

You’ve committed to making your clothes from entirely recycled or sustainable sources by 2030. How’s that going?
We’re already at 43 per cent and improvements in technology will make our target possible. Our customers are very environmentally aware and appreciate our efforts. One of the biggest problems is [the amount of] clothes being thrown away, so we are carefully controlling manufacturing quantities. The fashion industry has a huge effect on the environment at every stage and I’d like to change that.

Is there still room for growth?
I don’t need the company to get much bigger. We don’t want to open shops overseas. This globalised way of thinking has reached a tipping point. We’re about making good products, taking care of our staff and keeping our customers happy. Of course, we need to keep generating sales but it’s also important to think about our social purpose. In terms of growth, food is a big opportunity and the Saturdays Café has a lot of potential. Jun has always been more than a clothing company: we represent a lifestyle.
jun.co.jp

Dutch master

“Don’t worry,” the kind-eyed waitress says as Monocle peers down at the shards of a glass that moments before had contained some orange juice. “In the Netherlands a broken glass is good luck,” she says, deftly manoeuvring us clear of the spill. Whether or not that’s true, the idea is reassuring. We’re at the newly opened De Mark restaurant in the revamped De Durgerdam hotel, by a bar that has seen its share of spills since it first opened in the 17th century. Today, however, it looks more polished than ever.

The wood-clad, whitewashed inn on the shores of the Ijmeer is now helping to bring new life to the small, single-road village of De Durgerdam. If you’ve never heard of it, take note. We’re just 7km northeast of Amsterdam but the view through its windows feels a world away from the bustle of the Dutch capital.

Amsterdam-based Aedes is the canny investor and hospitality company that saw the potential of this site, nestled on a road lined with pampas grass, opposite a wooden jetty jutting into the vast lake beyond. Its owner, Paul Geertman, started bringing historic buildings back to life in 1995, before branching into hospitality. The ambitious, three-year renovation of this hotel was his vision. “De Durgerdam is the first project that we developed, own and operate,” he says. “In that respect, it’s very special for us.” The son of archaeologists, Geertman trained as an architect. Though he pursued neither career, his sensitivity to form and history is everywhere in this hotel.

For the interiors, Aedes tapped Design Academy Eindhoven graduates Brecht Duijf and Lenneke Langenhuijsen, co-founders of Buro Belén. De Durgerdam is their first interiors project but you wouldn’t know it to see it. Belén began with the idea of honouring the building’s past, an approach that enriches the hotel’s 42-cover restaurant, its four rooms in the main building and the newly built guesthouse at the back, in which there are a further 10 guestrooms. There’s also a snug fireside space with a curtain for extra privacy, a downstairs reading nook for guests and a communal table at the front of the restaurant.

The four rooms in the main building are all different but each is accessed by a deeply recessed, age-worn spiral staircase. The palette throughout is a mix of brick-red and ochre, and you’ll spot custom-fired bathroom and accent tiles from Royal Tichelaar Makkum, a firm founded in 1572.

Monocle’s favourite suite is in the eaves of the original pitched roof and includes a wood-burning stove, a window seat, a barley twist chair and a desk with views of the village and bobbing boats beyond. Every room has a comfy reading chair and in this one there’s also a writing desk from which to gaze out at the boxy outline of the city of Almere, Enneüs Heerma Bridge and islands across the water.

Though the rooms in the main building vary in size, they all include custom throws that glisten like pools of mercury, art from Geertman’s collection and voluptuously curved tulip-wood headboards. There are some homely touches too: for example, the inside of every cupboard is painted sky blue in a nod to the village custom of doing so to ward off insects (the blue paint once used for this purpose contained an ingredient that bugged the bugs).

It’s this delicate sense of place that helps the revamp feel faithful to the past. The effect is one of total gezelligheid – an unhelpfully untranslatable sense of cosiness and warmth that’s uniquely Dutch. This is aided by the common sense informing the interior decisions: windows that open, TVs that fold away and comfortable spaces where you can read or jump on the bed as you please.

De Mark restaurant is headed up by Richard van Oostenbrugge and Thomas Groot. Though the pair know haute cuisine well from founding Amsterdam’s lauded restaurant 212, which has two Michelin stars, the food here is more befitting of the inn’s neighbourhood feel. It’s a place to enjoy good cooking masquerading as comfort food served by candlelight: think beefier-than-meat tomato tartare, risotto with gooey gouda and morels, then sole meunière with spinach and seaweed, or veal cheeks with Opperdoezer Ronde potatoes.

The Dutch cheeses to finish show the place’s commitment to provenance but the chips and French mayonnaise on the menu hint that it’s OK to come here to have a pint and bite at the bar if you’d prefer. On Monocle’s visit, it was a neighbour rather than a tourist at the next table. Back at the breakfast table, the waitress has cleared the broken glass and the sun peeks through the clouds, its light glinting on the lake outside. Church bells and the honking of geese outside are just about audible. Whether or not breaking glass brings good luck, one thing is clear: De Durgerdam doesn’t need it.
dedurgerdam.com

Design

Architecture: Rome
Natural learning

Rome’s Luiss Guido Carli university in the upscale Parioli neighbourhood of the city has a new addition to its leafy campus, courtesy of design studio Alvisi Kirimoto, which is based in the Italian capital, and interior architecture firm Studio Gemma. The two-storey design includes a lecture theatre and an open-air atrium to host various educational activities and cultural events, from gala evenings to film screenings. On the edge of Villa Ada, the Italian capital’s second largest park, the structure looks to enhance the verdant feeling on campus by embracing the nearby forest landscape: its raised form puts the building’s occupants level with the canopy of the surrounding trees, while also freeing up the ground floor to create an open-air space to host classes, talks and alfresco events.

When approaching this commission Massimo Alvisi, co-founder of Alvisi Kirimoto, looked to nature and its benefits in an educational context to ensure that university students could get the most out of the setting. The building is clad in dark wooden slats and glass that dissolves any sharp divide between the exterior and interior. “The high permeability of the building facilitates an immersion into the landscape,” says Alvisi. “It’s a conceptual choice that reflects the openness of the campus.”

Inside, the colours, textures and materials work together to create a naturally upbeat atmosphere, with suspended acoustic panels in coral red creating the illusion of a floating ceiling. The same bright red is echoed in the building’s furnishings, bringing a cohesiveness to its metal, scratched plaster and wood spaces. The result is a new hub that serves as a model for other educational institutions and those seeking ways to seamlessly integrate structures in verdant environments.
alvisikirimoto.it, studiogemma.com.au

Parks: Mexico City
Fresh air

In Mexico City, the sprawling Bosque de Chapultepec is considered the city’s green lungs. The park is a vital ecological hotspot in one of Latin America’s most populous cities and has, of late, been receiving an upgrade. Notably, Erre Q Erre architects has recently completed the Environmental Culture Center, a striking, spiralling botanical pavilion and garden. “The architectural language of the pavilion aims to be one more element of the landscape,” says Erre Q Erre founder Raphael Ponce Ortiz. “This has been achieved by integrating the geometry of the roof with the topography of the site, and with the use of materials from in the Chapultepec Forest.”

This material selection and the project’s efforts to work with the topography to minimise disruption to the environment is also reflected in the choice of planting, with new varieties of plants from across Mexico selected. Visitors can meander through these plots when walking to the central pavilion, which will eventually host ecology talks and exhibitions. The result is a combination of landscape, architecture and culture that is set to help Mexico City breathe easier.

Furniture: Copenhagen
Second time around

Copenhagen-based Mater is a pioneer in sustainability and the circular economy, inspiring makers and design-lovers to think more sustainably. In 2019 it reissued a wood-veneer chair and table designed by Nanna and Jorgen Ditzel in 1955 as part of the Ocean collection that uses old fishing nets and ocean-waste plastic as its materials. Now, Mater has launched a version made using circular economy principles in collaboration with Carlsberg and A:gain, an organisation that develops and produces upcycled building materials.

Named Ocean OC2, the chairs, benches and tables, which come in Carlsberg’s distinctive green, use plastic waste from the beer company’s kegs (as well as other repurposed plastics) and a frame of partially recycled steel. “The collaboration between Carlsberg, A:gain, the Ditzel family and Mater is a unique example of an innovative way of thinking about circular production across industries,” says Henrik Marstrand, Mater’s founder. “We are constantly looking for similar collaborations where we can use upcycled plastic or other waste streams and send it all back as furniture and lighting.” The resulting pieces look just as good outside as they do indoors and now take pride of place at Carlsberg’s headquarters in Copenhagen. And if you drop by one of Mater’s shops, they could take pride of place in your home.
materdesign.com

On DESIGN

NIC MONISSE ON…
Artificial creativity

It feels like it is near impossible to escape talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and Chatgpt. There are those who are fascinated by its potential to solve problems, assist in composing emails and essays, and “make” art. Rightfully, others – particularly those in creative industries, from architecture to furniture – are sceptical, considering it a threat to the integrity of work and livelihoods (a computer could “design” a chair).

It’s an issue that architect Reinier de Graaf, who is a partner at the Office of Metropolitan Architecture, weighed in on at the recent launch of his new book, Architect, Verb. “Architects don’t know anything about anything, so their knowledge can’t easily be stolen,” said De Graaf, in reference to architects’ job security in the face of Chatgpt. “AI simply confirms everything we have thought but beauty in design is something we discover; it emerges from corners you never thought it would.” This sense of discovery, De Graff says, is innate to us as humans and it will continue to set us apart from AI.

So where does one go to see actual, designed beauty in the flesh? Trade shows and design festivals are a great start. A pick of the bunch would be Salone del Mobile, which wraps up right as this issue hits newsstands, plus a host of others in the coming months, from Melbourne Design Week in late May to Copenhagen’s 3 Days of Design in June. There’s a creative energy that is hard to replicate – and attending is one way to beat the bots.

For more news and analysis of design events around the world, pick up a copy of our Salone del Mobile newspaper at monocle.live/shop.

Photo: Milan
Q & A

Hélène Binet, Photographer

Swiss-French photographer Hélène Binet has, over the course of her 35-year career, worked exclusively on film, immortalising some of the world’s most significant architecture. It’s work that was celebrated at this year’s Salone del Mobile in Milan with a showcase of her original images.

How do you capture the essence of a building?
I approach each building with a different thought. It’s a play between the idea I receive from the place, historically, architecturally or my idea of what I should be bringing out of the building. It’s about capturing a moment that can bring together these aspects.

What role does architectural photography play in shaping our perceptions of buildings and spaces?
I’m not interested in how we imagine a place we haven’t been to. Photography is quite powerless in relation to the experience of space. I’m more interested in the capacity of a mind to imagine space; it’s like reading a book where descriptions help you create your own space and layer your own experience.

You only shoot on film. What is it about this medium you like?
Film is expensive and heavy but it being so tangible allows you to give the best of yourself in the moment – much like a concert or recital for a piece of music. The endless possibility of Photoshop scares me.

Keeping it real

It is the moment of truth for 11 Dutch celebrities. They are fidgeting nervously under dramatic lighting and sinister flags as they wait for their cue to start throwing accusations of duplicitous behaviour at each other. Glued to a monitor in a room nearby, three TV executives from Israel watch as a contestant breaks down in tears. They don’t understand a word but are gripped and throw questions at Kevin Soares, the executive vice-president for international formats at idtv, the Amsterdam-based production company that first created the programme. Why is she crying? How do they prepare the contestants? Can they control what is going to happen?

Monocle is on set for the filming of the tense round-table scene in The Traitors, the hit psychological reality TV show in which a group of people are isolated in a castle and must root out the traitors in their midst. Israel is the latest in more than 20 countries to buy the format. Soares knows the series’ universal appeal better than most: he has travelled to 11 Traitors sets around the world to help develop local versions. “It goes back to the basic core of being human: if we can’t tell the difference between good and evil, lie or truth, we become unbalanced,” he says. “Even though there are a lot of cultural differences, fundamentally we react to certain situations in the same way – so wherever you watch the show you can relate.”

The visitors from Israel nod approvingly as Soares explains their hands-off approach with the contestants. “Reality is better than anything scripted,” says Roee Strikovski of Fremantle, the production company that owns the studios that will be making the series in Israel. “And it works with this maybe even better than Big Brother.”

The Traitors is the latest in a long line of Dutch TV formats that have gone on to enjoy huge international success, in some cases changing the television landscape forever. Streaming services might have opened up a whole world of content that can be watched across different countries without the need to create national versions but The Traitors is proof that there is still space for traditional broadcasters to apply a tried-and-trusted formula of gripping storytelling, strong execution, great timing – and a little bit of luck.

The Dutch have long thrived in this genre. Many say that the country invented reality TV: in 1991 a producer put seven strangers in a student house in Amsterdam and filmed them over several months. Nummer 28 ran for one season before quietly disappearing. The following year mtv did the same with The Real World, putting seven New Yorkers in a Soho loft: its blend of in-house tensions and Gen X angst captivated viewers – and a new genre was born. The reality format evolved further in 1999 when former Dutch footballer-turned-media mogul John de Mol finally found a network willing to take a chance on his new idea, Big Brother. Now the human lab rats were to be denied access to the outside world and would perform tasks and games in front of a rapt TV audience. The rest, of course, is history. Big Brother went global and De Mol ended up creating some of the most iconic formats of the past two decades, first with his company Endemol and then with Talpa, the content creator he founded in 2017. “Big Brother came out when the internet was starting to boom and the idea that you could be watched all the time by everyone was quite influential,” says Alex Mazereeuw, a TV columnist for Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. “That is the brilliance of De Mol – good marketing and good timing.”

De Mol was also following in a long tradition of innovation and entrepreneurship in the Netherlands, a mercantile nation that has always punched above its weight on the international stage. Making things and selling them – think tulip mania in the Dutch Golden Age – is in the nation’s DNA, as is making the most of limited resources and soaking up myriad influences. Geertje Hoek, managing director at Talpa Concepts, also sees something in the nation’s character – renowned for its liberal social values and open-mindedness – that makes the Dutch receptive to being guinea pigs for some of the more outrageous ideas. “The Netherlands is a good market for trying out new formats,” she says. “It’s also quite a representative market. History has proven that if something does well here, it’s likely to do well in some of the other big territories.”

The golden years of Dutch reality TV saw formats push the boundaries of taste; in 2005, De Mol made headlines with the pilot of a show in which a woman searched for a sperm donor. But most of his hits were relatively family-friendly formats, including Fear Factor, Deal or No Deal and The Voice. The latter was De Mol’s last big international hit – more than a decade ago. Since then his reputation has taken a serious hit: last year a female contestant on the Dutch version of The Voice accused cast members of sexual harassment. The show was taken off air and two of the accused men are now being prosecuted. This came amid already growing global concerns about the vulnerability of reality-TV contestants, with networks toning down their risk-taking and backing safer formats.

It was into this fallow period that The Traitors arrived in March 2021. Dutch TV creative Marc Pos had an idea to base a show around the story of The Batavia, a Dutch East India Company vessel that was shipwrecked off the coast of Australia in 1629, prompting mutinous behaviour as the stricken crew fought for the ship’s bounty. He sought the help of one of the biggest Dutch TV production companies,

idtv (owned in turn by UK-based All3media group), and in 2016 started working with Jasper Hoogendoorn, then a concept developer for the company. Hoogendoorn, now idtv’s creative director, immediately saw the potential of the format. “It is so interesting to see what an amount of money and peer pressure can do to bring out the bad side of human behaviour,” he says.

But the networks were not convinced. One of the most popular formats in the Netherlands at the time was The Mole, where the identity of the mole remains a mystery to the audience. The central concept in The Traitors – in which the audience knows who the traitors are from the start – seemed revolutionary in its potential to strip the audience of suspense (and their ability to figure out who the traitors are themselves). Then, in 2020, commercial network rtl4 agreed to take a chance. When it aired in March the following year, it turned out to be the perfect show for the moment, as people were spending most of their time at home during the pandemic and conspiracy theories were flourishing. “That claustrophobic sense, the questions around who can you trust in times like these – all that anxiety is baked into the format of The Traitors,” says TV critic Mazereeuw. It was an immediate hit and within days of the first broadcast, major networks from all over the world were calling. The huge success of the UK version in late 2022, and the US one this year, sparked more excitement – and an increasing number of countries, from Finland to New Zealand, are now clamouring to create their own versions.

The Dutch series, called DeVerraders, has now run for three full seasons and two specials. Monocle joins the filming of a Halloween special at a château in the north of the country where celebrity contestants plot and conspire on a set decked out in skeletons and pumpkins, conspicuously ignored by the crew and other visitors, who are under strict instructions to respect the contestants’ alternate reality. “It’s a psychological bubble,” says Soares, and a distinctly sinister one too. At the end of a manicured lawn, screams and howls suddenly come from a greenhouse: the snake handlers waiting outside are a hint to the task within.

Is this show proof that a renaissance is afoot for Dutch TV formats? It has certainly given a renewed confidence to the big players such as Talpa and idtv, and emboldened a host of other production houses to try new formats. Marc Pos has since left idtv to create his own company and there is much anticipation about his next project, while production houses Vincent TV Producties, Sky High TV and Tuvalu Media continue to create staggering amounts of reality formats, with varying levels of success.

Mazereeuw worries that there are still too many copycat formats on the market but Hoogendoorn believes that The Traitors has spurred both renewed international interest and innovation. He talks excitedly about idtv’s next project, The Unknown, which he describes as a psychological adventure reality show. He can’t give too much away: the first episode airs in the Netherlands in May and they are building hype with a slow reveal but it involves ordinary people being plunged into extraordinary situations, all the while being controlled by a mysterious puppet master. With stunning locations and plenty of twists, it sounds like a combination of Squid Game and Race Across the World, with some unmistakable Traitors elements thrown in. International rights have already been sold to two countries, which is unusual for a show that has not even aired. Hoogendoorn says that the central premise is asking people to decide whether to take a safe course in life or to try something daring and unknown. “After the pandemic, we all have moments when we think, ‘Is this the life that I want to live or do I dare to choose another path?’,” he says. “A lot of people dream about changing their life but don’t dare to do it. That’s the main idea behind this format.”

Capturing the zeitgeist is tricky, however, and often happens by accident. The fast-changing nature of global politics and the programmes’ long lead times can also throw up curve balls. Talpa’s much-hyped Million Dollar Island, in which 100 contestants live on a tropical island for two months to vie for a €1m prize, must have seemed like a great idea during the fog of the pandemic, when everyone was dreaming of sunnier times. It eventually premiered in early March 2022, just weeks after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The images of swimsuit-clad contestants fighting over food to win huge sums of money jarred with footage of Ukrainian farmers wondering whether they could still feed the nation amid the Russian onslaught. Talpa Concept’s Hoek remains upbeat about the format, however, and says that the Australian version will be filming soon. She talks about today’s audience seeking comforting family content to escape social media and worrying global news. There is also fatigue with ubiquitous influencers and a move towards more compassionate reality TV.

While The Traitors certainly puts its contestants through the psychological wringer, its DNA feels closer to family board games and wholesome whodunits. Innovation and risk-taking, it seems, don’t mean finding someone willing to give birth on live TV or inventing sadistic mental tortures for wannabe celebs; it can be as simple as having faith in the people in front of and behind the camera. “Authenticity, real people and real emotions: that is what people want right now,” says Hoek. “It’s not just about the tricks; it’s about what you can make people feel.”

What’s the next big export?

1.
Make Up Your Mind

A mix of The Masked Singer and RuPaul’s Drag Race, Make Up Your Mind sees Dutch celebrities transform into drag queens and perform for two panels who compete to guess the person’s identity. It might be a show that is riffing on an existing formula but its mix of diverse contestants and high production values has made it a hit and there is global interest.

2.
The New Vermeer

This gentle programme, pegged to the blockbuster Vermeer exhibition running at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum this year, asks professional painters and aspiring artists to create works inspired by the Dutch master’s notebooks. It has been an instant success in the Netherlands, with the cast of amateur artists capturing the public’s imagination.

3.
AvaStars

When production on this new John de Mol format was announced two years ago, the concept of Dutch celebrities pairing up with virtual versions of themselves to compete in a talent show might have seemed ahead of its time. But two years is a long time in technology and when the programme finally hit the screens in February, it was widely panned for a visual style that columnist Alex Mazereeuw likens to “Playstation characters from 2005”. He admits, however, that he can’t stop watching. Could this be a slow-burning “so bad that it’s actually good” hit?

4.
Marble Mania

Talpa’s surprise hit from 2021. The show, inspired by a Youtube channel, sees Dutch celebrities race marbles on a huge track. Reflecting a shift towards gentler, simpler content, Talpa’s Hoek says that it premiered during “troubled times when people longed for feel-good entertainment that they could watch with their family and that allowed them to escape reality for a little bit”. Versions have already been filmed in France and Belgium, and it returns to Dutch screens later this year.

5.
The Floor

Another Talpa production, this quiz show aired in the Netherlands this year. Its usp is the number of contestants, with 100 quiz fanatics standing on led boards and duelling each other to whittle down the numbers. Designed with social media-friendly snippets in mind, The Floor has now sold internationally.

6.
A Year of Your Life

Despite numerous attempts, no reality format has matched the winning formula of Big Brother. But that doesn’t stop production houses from trying, and Endemol successor Talpa is currently testing a new spin: making it longer. While Big Brother contestants only had to put up with their fellow housemates for a few months, the 40 strangers in A Year of Your Life are tasked with enduring each other’s company for 365 days. Billed as the longest reality game show ever, those who make it to the end can win €1m.

Choice cuts

Photography

Gülsah Ayla Bayrak: The Start of Something
Foam at MAQAM, Amsterdam

Photography museum Foam is collaborating with maqam, a cultural organisation with a Turkish, Persian and Arabic focus, for this show by Belgian-Turkish artist Bayrak. Using photos, collage and images from pop and classical culture, she plays with takes on identity, blurring perceived boundaries between East and West.
‘The Start of Something’ runs until 18 June

Venue

Dot.ateliers
Accra

Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo is now an international name and his paintings sell for millions at auction. Since 2020 he has been giving studio space and guidance to young artists. This has now evolved into a David Adjaye-designed destination in Accra, home to a studio, library and exhibition space. A show of Boafo’s portraits will travel here from New York’s Gagosian

Books

August Blue
Deborah Levy

The latest novel by one of the world’s greatest living writers follows Elsa M Anderson, a concert pianist who publicly unravels mid-performance. Escaping to Athens, she briefly encounters an oddly familiar stranger and embarks on a journey to track her down. A melancholy yet lyrical portrait of identity and memory.
‘August Blue’ is released on 4 May

Small Worlds
Caleb Azumah Nelson

Azumah Nelson’s debut, Open Water, made many prize lists when published in 2021. Its follow-up is set over three years in the life of a young man who believes that “the one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing”. But during summers in London and Ghana, he’s forced to find comfort in new things. This rich coming-of-age tale explores family, art and faith.
‘Small Worlds’ is released on 11 May

Yellowface
Rebecca F Kuang

Athena Liu has a book deal with a big publishing house and a TV deal with Netflix. But she is dead. Her “friend”, June Hayward, a less starry writer, steals her unpublished manuscript and passes it off as her own. Kuang’s thriller will leave readers reeling with its pace and dark humour.
‘Yellowface’ is released on 16 May

Music

AmaXesha
Bongeziwe Mabandla

One of South Africa’s most lauded contemporary artists, Mabandla’s mix of electronica and Xhosa folk is captured beautifully on this new album, produced by Mozambican musician Tiago Correia-Paulo. The mysterious, ethereal record is embellished by Mabandla’s rich and melodic voice. Highlights include the sunny “Hlala” and the emotional punch of “Hamba”. No wonder previous tours of his home country sold out in no time.
‘AmaXesha’ is released on 5 May

Tirer La Nuit Sur Les Étoiles
Etienne Daho

Having enjoyed a career of more than 40 years, France’s beloved king of pop is back with an impressive album that celebrates the joys of nightlife. Single “Boyfriend” is a sultry delight, while the title track, a duet with singer-cum-actress Vanessa Paradis, is a standout. So too is “Virus X”, a dance floor-ready song punctuated by electro beats.
‘Tirer La Nuit Sur Les Étoiles’ is released on 12 May

TV

Sin Huellas
Amazon Prime Video

This “paella western”, set in Spain, is a farcical comedy-drama following two cleaners, Cata and Desi, who become involved in a murder after discovering a body at a mansion and deciding to tidy up the crime scene. Their poor judgement lands them in a tight spot: chased by police, they’re also followed by Russian hitmen – and members of the victim’s family too.

War Sailor
Netflix

An adaptation of a major Norwegian film, this limited-edition series set around the outbreak of the Second World War is based on a true story. The three episodes examine the fate of 30,000 merchant sailors who worked for Allied forces while in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, joining a conflict they never expected to be part of.

Love to Love You, Donna Summer
HBO

This HBO documentary delves into Donna Summer’s era-defining sound, which influenced countless artists. Featuring never-seen-before footage, the show provides an intimate look at Summer beyond the stage to explore the challenges and controversies in her personal life, all with compelling contributions from collaborators.

Film

Pamfir
Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk

Pamfir returns to his village in western Ukraine to find that crime (specifically, contraband cigarettes and other wares) is the only way to make a living. When his teenage son accidentally sets fire to the town church, Pamfir is pushed into smuggling – and the attention of the local crime boss. Part-character study of a good man in a bad place and part-thriller, this is a misty, atmospheric take on the “one last job” genre.
‘Pamfir’ is released on 5 May

Return to Seoul
Davy Chou

Having been adopted as a small child, French twentysomething Freddie travels to Seoul to find her birth parents. Her father responds but her mother doesn’t. Park Ji-min delivers a nuanced performance as a young woman struggling to meet expectations about who she’s supposed to be. The film is also a touching portrait of the unsettled identities of people who grow up between cultures.
‘Return to Seoul’ is released on 5 May

Beau is Afraid
Ari Aster

After Hereditary and Midsommar, Ari Aster steps out of the comfort zone of horror into more absurdist territory. His new feature stars Joaquin Phoenix as the eponymous Beau, a man riddled with anxiety and paranoia, who is thwarted in increasingly extreme ways as he tries to visit his mother. It feels like an extension of Aster’s 2011 short film Beau, where a man is so crippled by his fears that he’s unable to even leave his room.
‘Beau is Afraid’ is released on 19 May

Art

Soft and Weak Like Water
Gwangju Biennale

The 14th edition of South Korea’s Gwangju Biennale uses water as a metaphor to explore resistance, co-operation and care due to its power to precipitate change. Curator Sook-Kyung Lee has gathered 79 artists, including Lebanese composer Tarek Atoui, Indian photographer Dayanita Singh and Cuban-born María Magdalena Campos-Pons.
‘Soft and Weak Like Water’ runs until 9 July

IMAGES: A24, Netflix, Travys Owen, Prime Video, Chang Fia, CONIC.

Great lengths

Trio
Berlin

A buzzy opening often comes with promises of gastronomic revolution. Thankfully, Trio, from the team behind Berlin’s Otto, does not. “We’re not reinventing techniques or flavour combinations,” says the restaurant’s head chef, Vadim Otto Ursus. “Our dishes don’t need much explanation.” Trio is co-owned by Ursus, Eva Alken and Clemens Roesch, all of whom wanted to start a more casual sister space to Otto.

Behind a curving corner window in Mitte, guests can tuck in to a hearty menu of Austrian fried chicken, venison goulash and Königsberger Klopse or enjoy a draft beer and gherkins at the bar.

The interiors are equally relaxed, with moss-green cabinetry and red laminate tabletops. “They just need some scratches,” says Ursus with a smile. “We’ll get there soon.”
trioberlin.webflow.io

Langosteria
St Moritz

You’d be forgiven for wondering why it makes sense to ride a ski lift more than 2,000 metres above sea level and into the snowcapped mountains of St Moritz in order to eat fresh fish. Or why a group’s seventh location – its second outside Italy – deserves a closer look. But the new Langosteria on the slopes of Corviglia does just that.

Clad in Moncler-designed uniforms, the 70-plus members of staff look as though they’ve hopped out of helicopters and skied into work. And with the open kitchen set behind a glass cabinet filled with Alaskan king crab, Norwegian langoustine and Sicilian red prawns, the Switzerland location somehow already feels like it is the natural centre of the Langosteria universe. But what to order?

“The winner is the pasta,” says founder Enrico Buonocore. “Paccheri with sea bass, lemon and capers is our famous dish.” The main dishes are simple but sumptuous: Monocle was served prawns that had been poached for seconds and then mixed with lemon, shell-fresh clams tossed in tomatoes and baby-squid linguini dressed in a little olive oil.

In fact, the complex theatrics are saved for dessert. Just when you think you’ve eaten every tiramisù that Italy can throw at you, the waiter unsheathes the house favourite as if it were an Adriatic jellyfish. Who says that you can’t cast the mountain into the sea?
langosteria.com

Recto Verso
Paris

“If you have a friend over, you use your nicest tableware,” says Kevin Vasic, co-founder of Recto Verso in the Marais. “We want our café to have the same quality.” Vasic and partner Luís Mesquita opened Recto Verso in February and serve home-made cakes on Japanese plates. This attention to detail goes into the coffee. Vasic and Mesquita use beans by Norway’s Fuglen Coffee Roasters and Sweden’s Koppi to make filter and espresso-based drinks. Our Ethiopian pour-over took a few minutes to brew; time to bask in the café’s homely charms.
6 Rue Portefoin

Julius Brantner Brothandwerk
Munich

If there is one ingredient that Julius Brantner values most, it is time. “Like a fine wine or good cheese, bread becomes significantly better when you respect its natural maturing process,” says the third-generation baker. Instead of taking over his family business, Brantner opened his own bakery in Munich where he uses only organic ingredients and wants to “make gluten sexy again”. Whole rye grain is used for a sourdough that rises for at least 24 hours. This allows the bread to develop a fuller flavour and reduces levels of hard-to-digest carbohydrates that can result in allergic reactions. Excellent bread takes time so Brantner and his team work long hours. They only shut up shop when the last loaf is sold.
julius-brantner.de

Recipe / Aya Nishimura
Japanese Swiss roll

This show-stopping, feather-light Japanese version of the classic dessert is well worth all the whisking.

Serves 10

• Ingredients
  3 medium eggs
  5 tbsps caster sugar
  1½ tbsps neutral oil
  1½ tbsps whole milk
  5 tbsps plain white flour, sifted
  300ml double cream
  Sugar, to taste
  1 kiwi, peeled and sliced
  1 banana, peeled and sliced
  5 strawberries, quartered

Method

1.
Preheat the oven to 200C (180C fan).

2.
Separate the egg whites from the yolks and place in two separate bowls.

3.
Beat the egg whites with an electric whisk until they double in volume and bubble uniformly. Add 1½ tbsps of sugar and beat for a minute. Add another 1½ tbsps of sugar and beat until the mixture is glossy and forms a firm peak.

4.
Beat the egg yolks and the remaining sugar in another bowl. Once the mixture turns creamy yellow and thickens, add the oil and milk. Beat for a minute. Add the flour bit by bit, mixing until fully incorporated.

5.
Add a large spoon of egg-white mixture to the yolk mixture. Gently incorporate it using a large metal spoon to keep air in the mix. Add another third of the egg-white mixture and repeat. Add the rest of the mixture, making sure that there are no visible clumps.

6.
Gently pour the mixture into a 24cm by 33cm baking tray lined with baking parchment. Use a spatula to spread the mixture evenly. Bake in the oven for 7 minutes. Turn down the oven to 180C and cook for another 7 minutes.

7.
Remove the cake from the oven. Let it cool completely on a wire rack and cover with a tea towel.

8.
Flip the sponge upside down and carefully peel off the baking paper.

9.
Slice off the end of the cake at a slight angle to help it close when rolling.

10.
Whip the cream with the sugar to taste until it forms soft peaks. Spread the cream over the cake leaving a 2cm gap.

11.
Arrange the fruit on top of the cream. Lift the bottom of the sponge and roll firmly. Wrap with clingfilm and rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. Remove the clingfilm and serve.
ayanishimura.com

Quarter Room
Tokyo

Less than a year after his opening his liquor-shop-cum-bar Nomura Shoten (see Issue 156), Soran Nomura started this new cocktail bar. “This is my main base,” he says of Quarter Room. There are six staple drinks and ever-changing specials. Our favourite is “woman with fan”, a negroni made with fig-leaf gin, cacao liquor, roasted tea, Pedro Ximénez sherry, white chocolate and cues from Modigliani’s eponymous 1919 painting. It’s proof that inspiration can be found in confounding places but the result requires no explanation.
5-10-7 Daita, Setagaya, Tokyo

Images: Robert Reiger, Kathrin Koschitzki, Danilo Scarpati.

Culture

Retail: France
True north

“You can smell the cinnamon when you walk in,” says Natalie Magnusson at Bokbar, her Nordic café and bookshop in Paris’s rapidly gentrifying Belleville neighbourhood. Originally from Gothenburg on the west coast of Sweden, Magnusson had been living in France for a decade when the pandemic began and she lost her job at a translation agency. “It was a blessing,” she says. “I could work on my bookshop.”

Bokbar opened its doors last September. Magnusson funded it with her savings and did most of the work on its interiors herself; there are plans to to host meetings with authors, writing workshops and a “language café” where people can practise Swedish.

“I wanted to share my love for Swedish literature,” she says. On the shelves, you’ll find works by Nordic authors, both in their original language and in translation. Her best-selling author is Tove Jansson, the Finnish creator of the Moomins. “The atmosphere of the north can really be felt in the books,” she says.

France might have a flourishing literary scene but the appetite for Nordic books, fuelled by the popularity of hit titles such as Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series, seems only to be growing. Bokbar functions as a relaxed, unofficial cultural embassy that has quickly become part of the neighbourhood’s everyday life.

“I wanted it to feel like home,” says Magnusson. The space features Swedish touches, from Skultuna candle holders to an ifk Göteborg football club pennant. Customers stop by for coffee from Gothenburg roasters Gringo Nordic and the cinnamon buns that Magnusson bakes downstairs. Some homesick Swedes have also walked through the doors. “You can come here and talk to people,” says Magnusson. “This is a space for everyone.”

Media: Palestine
In the neighbourhood

Radio AlHara’s five co-founders launched the station in 2020 as a way to stay in touch with their friends over lockdowns. It initially broadcasted from Bethlehem, Ramallah and Amman but now you’ll hear shows hosted by presenters and DJs from around the world. A global spectrum of underground music fills its schedule, traversing Afro-funk, jazz and Turkish rap, as well as Iranian pop and Bahraini wedding songs. “AlHara means ‘neighbourhood’,” says co-founder Elias Anastas, who also works as an architect. “The station has been extending the limits of that neighbourhood to the scale of the planet.”

Radio AlHara also aligns itself with humanitarian causes. In 2021 it aired static for 24 hours to protest against the eviction of Palestinian families in Jerusalem, prompting solidarity from radio stations across the globe and initiating the Sonic Liberation Front. More recently, the station broadcast a programme to support with Iranian protesters. “Radio AlHara is an experiment to create a cultural centre that is constantly being reshaped by its community,” says Anastas.
radioalhara.net

Soft power: France
Home turf

The Swedish Institute’s outpost in Paris’s Marais district is its only space abroad. The 16th-century Hôtel de Marle, which Sweden acquired in the 1960s, might look eminently French from the outside but the interiors’ feel and design are decidedly Scandinavian.

The warm, textured building evokes a feeling of hem (home) and houses exhibition spaces, an auditorium, classrooms and a garden. Most of its events are held in French and English, and are largely free. The numbers that attend attest to the rising popularity in Paris of all things Swedish: 250 people take language lessons here every semester. The garden hosts open-air film screenings in the summer; meanwhile, the annual Midsommar event, which coincides with the city’s Fête de la Musique celebrations on 21 June, attracts some 6,000 people.

The institute also serves as a home away from home for visiting creatives based in Sweden, from writers to dancers, who can apply for residencies. Selected candidates can rent one of the six on-site flats, recently redecorated by interiors companies including Svenskt Tenn, for up to four weeks at a favourable rate.

The latest addition to the building is Café Fika, named after the ritual of pausing for a coffee and snack. Founded by caterers Caroline and Damien Nobilé, who fell in love with Sweden’s cuisine during a trip around the country, it serves organic coffee from Stockholm-based Lykke Kaffegårdar and Nordic specialities, helping to satisfy Parisians’ hunger for Scandinavian delights.
paris.si.se

Publishing: France
Cook smart

From apricots and anchovies to vodka and yuzu, the Dix façons de le préparer (“Ten Ways to Prepare”) collection of cookery books focuses on an eclectic range of ingredients. Produced by Les éditions de l’Épure, a Parisian publisher specialising in food and wine, the series comprises almost 350 titles, which can be spotted at chic delis around the French capital. Other than a variety of produce, titles cover anything from smoke to cheeky butchery cuts such as “the bottom”. The latest set includes harissa and poison.

Sold at €10 each, the booklets contain 10 recipes based around one chosen ingredient or theme, spread over 24 pages. Every edition is bound with a different shade of cardboard and matching linen thread. To read the recipes, the pages need to be cut open using a paper knife, an old-fashioned touch that adds to the books’ tactile appeal. “Once you have opened the pages, don’t worry about staining them,” says Sabine Bucquet-Grenet, the publisher’s founder. “After all, these books are made to be cooked with.”
epure-editions.com

Media: Estonia
Truth be told

The Estonian government is stepping up its fight against misinformation by boosting funding for the country’s Russian-language journalism. The Ministry of Culture has granted €1m to be split between four private media companies – financial paper Äripäev, dailies Postimees and Põhjarannik, plus the popular news website Delfi – to bolster their Russian coverage alongside their usual output. About a quarter of Estonians are ethnic Russians: the goal is to provide them with reliable information in their language so that they don’t fall prey to propaganda from across the border. “We’ve banned Russian news channels in Estonia but Russian-speaking Estonians still watch them,” says Katri Raik, the mayor of the eastern town of Narva, whose population is 97 per cent Russian-speaking.

In stark contrast to its neighbour, Estonia has a vibrant media landscape comprising newspapers, websites and TV channels across the political spectrum. In 2022 the country placed fourth out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index; Russia was 155th. “The grant will help us increase the volume of both local and national news in Russian and to not have it behind a paywall,” says Erik Gamzejev, Põhjarannik‘s editor in chief. “The problem for private media is that the habit of paying for journalistic content is very low among Russian-speaking readers: when the news is behind a paywall, people often go elsewhere.” Põhjarannik is the newspaper of record for northeastern Estonia (an area with a Russian-speaking majority) and already publishes in both languages. The grant will also help the title issue 50,000 copies of the free Russian-language publication SP Ekstra. According to Gamzejev, there are hundreds of thousands of Estonians who get their news only in Russian. “It is good for the whole society if they get information about local, national and international issues from Estonia’s own media channels,” he says. “It is easier for everyone when the spaces for information have the same content.”

Music: Italy
On the record

Entrepreneur Ornella Cicchetti launched music agency Sounds Familiar in 2013 but always wanted to open a record shop. She achieved that in March when, in the Trastevere neighbourhood, she created Rome’s coolest vinyl shop.

Cicchetti, who began her career in music in London in the 1990s, works with acts spanning funk and disco to house and techno. Her vision is reflected in the contents of her shop’s timber boxes alongside a fresh take on music merchandise.

Cicchetti has always rejected the norms of a music industry that treats “the DJ like a God and the crowd like a doormat”. Her shop is the physical expression of her fun-loving attitude and is designed to attract connoisseurs and novices alike. Rome-based architecture practice Studiotamat was put in charge of creating interiors that capture her exuberant musical universe. “They understood what I wanted before I did,” she says with a laugh. The result is a colourful, cheerful take on industrial aesthetics. Though it’s an intimate space, there’s room for live DJ sets too.
soundsfamiliar.it

Images: Shin Miura: Radio AlHara, Seven H Zhang
Still life: Tony Hay.