Issues

Is Romania the next tech frontier? Inside Iași’s rise as a hub for young talent

“A property near the Palas Campus business hub costs more than €500,000,” says Raluca Munteanu, a development manager at Romanian real-estate company Iulius, gesturing at a cluster of squat houses with tin roofs – the kind of buildings that you might see in stock footage of communist times. Munteanu is showing Monocle around the heart of Iasi (pronounced “yash”), Romania’s third-largest city.

With a population of about 400,000, it sits in the country’s northeastern corner, near the border with Moldova. It was the capital (or dual capital, with Bucharest) of two of Romania’s predecessor states and has a heavy dusting of historic churches, which frequently appear in your eyeline despite a Ceausescu-era attempt to block them from sight with apartment buildings.

The Palace of Culture, a huge neogothic wedding cake that houses multiple museums, is Iasi’s focal point. But right by it is an arc of equally large but more modern structures. Since 2010, Iasi has been the third-fastest-growing major city in Europe (tied with Wroclaw), behind only Dublin and Valetta. Its economy has grown by an average of about 5 per cent a year over this period and it shows.

As well as the Palas development, which was inaugurated in 2012, there’s the nearby Palas Campus, a business park that Iulius completed in 2022, with 60,000 sq m of office space. Multinational companies such as Microsoft are clients; Amazon is the main tenant. Iulius recently obtained an €80m loan for a Foster + Partners-designed remodelling of Palas, with the first phase under construction.

Since Romania joined the EU in 2007, Iasi has grown into a technology hub. Though it’s a university city, it wasn’t industrially competitive because it’s so far from Western Europe’s big markets, says Mihai Bulai, a lecturer at Iasi’s Alexandru Ioan Cuza University. But technology companies could take advantage of the city’s cheap, high-quality human capital. Oracle and Accenture are among those that have piled in alongside Amazon, establishing software-development operations. Vlad Radulescu, vice-dean of Alexandru Ioan Cuza’s computer science department, says that Big Tech employers are heavily involved in university life – Amazon runs a cloud-computing course, for example, and Romanian firm Bitdefender offers one on anti-malware.

Iasi also has homegrown technology start-ups such as Adservio, an ed-tech firm founded 17 years ago by Alexandru Holicov. It now has 1.5 million users, about 60 employees and €4m in annual revenue. Operating in the shadow of multinationals can be tricky. In recent years it has been “hard to attract talented people”, says Holicov, given that big firms can outspend him on recruitment. But global technology-sector layoffs – Amazon and Microsoft have cut staff in Iasi recently – has given Adservio and other smaller firms an opportunity.

When potential investors fly into Iasi, says Holicov, they’re surprised at how Western European it feels. The city’s airport is slick, operating flights to cities from Dublin to Dubai; there’s a tram network in the centre, where smart shopfronts abound. The Women’s Tennis Association Tour stops off at the Iasi Open every July. The city hosts FILIT literature festival; it was named a Unesco Creative City for Literature in 2023.

In a whitewashed house off the main avenue, university lecturer Bulai runs Negru Zi, a café and arts space, with his wife, Roxana Durneac. They have hosted more than 100 plays, book launches, talks and other events since they opened 18 months ago. When Bulai finished his degree in 2002, only two people from his class of 20 weren’t planning to emigrate. But things have changed. Among his students today, just 10 per cent, at most, are keen to leave Romania. Wages have shot up, especially in technology. Iasi’s low cost of living also compares favourably with the usual emigration destinations in Western Europe.

Iulius’s plan for Iasi’s centre attests to its confidence in the city’s continued growth. Munteanu worked in Bonn for a couple of years before returning home more than a decade ago and has witnessed her home city’s development. “Romania is the place to be,” she says. As she waves her hands over maps plotting out her grand designs, she is adamant that it will all be finished in three years. “We need to do it quick,” she says.

‘We’re not overconfident’: Boeing Global’s president Brendan Nelson on rebuilding trust

Few aviation giants have endured a bruising like Boeing. The past decade has brought crashes, production stoppages, supply-chain failures, regulatory pressure and a well-documented backlog. Even its most loyal customers, especially in the Gulf, have voiced frustration. But according to Boeing Global’s president, Brendan Nelson, there is a way forward.

Towards the end of last year, the American aerospace giant put on a truly confident display at Dubai Airshow. In one of the vast exhibition halls, a gleaming model of the Boeing 777X sat proudly at the heart of the brand’s pavilion. Guests paused to examine the aircraft’s distinctive folding wingtips and elongated fuselage – a miniature of a superlative machine. This is where Brendan Nelson, Boeing’s senior vice-president and president of Boeing Global, appeared most in his element. He stood beside the model with the confidence of a curator showing off a prized exhibit.

Before our interview begins, he adjusts his bright-blue tie patterned with tiny aircraft and offers a friendly, “Call me Brendan.” Throughout the conversation, he often touches his chin as he listens, eyes fixed and unwavering as if aware that a single misplaced word could send the wrong signal. It is the focus of someone who knows that the margin for error (reputational or otherwise) is razor thin. Nelson is not the typical aerospace executive. A trained physician and a former defence minister of Australia, he combines clinical directness with political fluency: a blend that feels necessary in guiding Boeing back from the brink.

“Dubai Airshow, in many ways, is like a home away from home,” he says. “We’ve had eight decades of partnership with the Middle East and it is exciting to be in a part of the world that has a can-do attitude.” The region has certainly done its part. Boeing’s customer list here reads like a who’s who of Gulf aviation: Emirates, Qatar Airways, Riyadh Air, Saudia, Flydubai. Orders are vast and this year’s event made that clear. Emirates placed its latest eye-watering order of 777-9s worth about $38bn (€32.23bn), a reminder of just how much the world’s biggest long-haul carrier still wants Boeing to succeed. Flydubai committed to $13bn (€11bn) worth of aircraft, with 75 new jets to underpin its next growth phase. And in a sign of how fragile relationships have become, Etihad stepped decisively away from Boeing, opting for a 32-strong widebody Airbus fleet instead, its patience exhausted by repeated delays. Riyadh Air, meanwhile, waits keenly for the arrival of its first Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, the opening aircraft in its planned fleet of 72, without which the new Saudi carrier cannot begin operations in its own fully fitted-out livery. These deals were not casual chequebook diplomacy – they were reminders of both the region’s faith in aviation and its growing insistence that Boeing must now deliver, without excuses.

The past eight years have been among the most difficult in Boeing’s history. The tragedies involving the 737 Max shook the industry’s faith. Pandemic disruptions, workmanship lapses, supplier breakdowns and missed deadlines compounded the sense of a company struggling to meet its own standards, let alone its customers’. Some, like Emirates’ Tim Clark, have been blunt in their assessment: Boeing, he has reminded the world, should fully understand the damage that its failures have caused. “It’s immaterial whether we think it’s fair or unfair,” he says. “Criticism is important. The moment you close your mind and stop listening, that’s when you get into trouble.”

The attitude is refreshing but also necessary. Too many of Boeing’s recent wounds have been self-inflicted. “We’ve had very frank, very open discussions internally,” he says. “Looking at where we didn’t do things as well as we should have and how we can do it better.” This, at least, aligns with what airlines say they want: accountability backed by visible change.

The most significant shift came in August 2024, when Kelly Ortberg took over as CEO. His mandate was to return Boeing to the company that it once was: rigorous, disciplined and quietly excellent. “Kelly said that there are four pillars the future of this company will be built on,” says Nelson. “Culture, stability, execution and thinking about the future.” Resetting production required slowing down, something that Boeing historically resisted. The company introduced new quality metrics, paused entire lines to hear from frontline employees and invested heavily in training and tooling. “We listened to our staff and implemented the ideas they put forward,” he adds. “We’ve stabilised the balance sheet and the production line.” But he refuses to celebrate prematurely. “I don’t want anyone to think that there is any sense of overconfidence in us,” he says. “We are confident but not overconfident.” For an organisation previously accused of hubris, that distinction matters.

But if Boeing has a safety net, it is the Gulf. “This region, our customers, the governments – they remained very committed to Boeing, even through the challenges,” says Nelson. “Our biggest challenge,” he adds, “is producing the 6,000 backlog of planes as safely and efficiently as we can.”

Outside, on the runway, Boeing’s most important aircraft did something it hasn’t been allowed to do much in recent years: impress. The long delayed, long criticised, long awaited 777X climbed into the clear desert sky with surprising grace for a jet of its size. It banked, levelled and swept past the crowd with a self-assurance that the company itself has lacked for too long. Back inside, Nelson watches with calm pride. “People have been saying to me, ‘It’s great to have Boeing back,’” he says. “We’re a company that’s turning, you’ve seen significant improvements in production quality and safety.” But then comes the caveat, delivered with characteristic bluntness: “We’ve let down customers at times. We’ve eroded trust. I’m confident that it is being rebuilt but we still have work to do.”

Boeing’s future plans are measured rather than revolutionary. The company is focused on steady delivery, refining its current portfolio and building the technological foundation for the next generation of aircraft. “These aircraft – the 737 variants, the 787, the 777X – will be significant for the next 20 to 30 years,” says Nelson. There is no rush to unveil something radically new. Not until Boeing can guarantee that it works every time, on time.

Boeing begins 2026 with renewed attention, warmed relationships and a hint of regained respect. But respect is not the same as redemption. And despite signs of recovery, it has not yet earned the right to declare itself fully restored. The company is moving forward but carefully. The industry is watching but sceptically. And customers are ordering but insistently.

Beneath the optimism sits an undeniable truth: Boeing is only at the start of its repair job. Trust, once lost, is not rebuilt by an airshow performance. It is rebuilt aircraft by aircraft, delivery by delivery, year by year. For now, Boeing looks more grounded and self-aware than it has in years. But the world will wait to see if that momentum endures, long after the desert dust settles and the crowds go home.

Read next: Airlines today are creating a generation of disloyal customers

‘We want art to be approachable.’ Bonhams auction house’s bid for accessibility

On a winter afternoon in New York, handlers wearing white gloves are moving furniture into the new Bonhams headquarters on West 57th Street. The finishing touches are being put to what will soon be the 230-year-old auction house’s US flagship in the former headquarters of piano maker Steinway & Sons. Benjamin Walker, Bonhams’ global head of modern decorative art and design, watches as the movers carefully bring a bronze Philip and Kelvin LaVerne console table and a walnut-and-black leather Phillip Lloyd Powell chair into their new home. Well, at least until they go to auction.

The old Steinway building has been a neoclassical landmark since it was completed in 1925. In 2021 a narrow skyscraper designed by Shop Architects was built on top of it. The new Bonhams HQ occupies the ground floor of the skyscraper, spanning a contemporary space with a triple-height gallery and a grand staircase designed by Gensler, as well as the historic Steinway Hall, with its neoclassical rotunda. A few blocks from its previous Madison Avenue address, the new HQ impresses with its grand architecture.

“This building will be more reflective of our respect and passion for the individual objects and collections,” says Walker, surveying the light-filled atrium and grand staircase. “It feels very Gilded Age. It will elevate us.” In the adjoining rotunda, a 1910 Steinway & Sons piano used by Elton John will be played at performances during the opening celebrations before it goes under the hammer.

Bonhams’ inaugural auction here will be of the Evan Lobel collection, which features the work of US designers such as Karl Springer and Philip and Kelvin LaVerne, plus household names that include Andy Warhol. “American designers from the 20th century haven’t been given the light that they possibly should have been,” says Walker. “The path that collectors have historically gone down is to look to France and at French designers. But in that process, they have overlooked what great talent there was here on their doorstep.”

It makes sense, then, that the opening show spotlights creatives inspired by or connected to the city. “Evan Lobel is a New Yorker,” says Walker of the prominent dealer and curator. “It’s fitting that we should shine a light on the designers who were making furniture and vases in New York’s heyday.”

The renovated building is sure to be as much of an attraction as the collections. “It will be the first time that people have seen the Steinway Hall in more than 10 years,” says Lilly Chan, the managing director of Bonhams US. Since the piano maker departed the building in 2014, it has been inaccessible to the public. The move also follows the acquisition of Bonhams by London-based Pemberton Asset Management in October 2025 and comes as the company outgrows its space on Madison Avenue.

The new headquarters will provide about 30 per cent more square footage, with this additional space allowing Bonhams “to execute the mission that we’ve always had, which is to bring evergreen, yearlong cultural programming”, says Chan. In March there will be special programming for Asia Week New York and in May for the Marquee Fine Art Auctions. The opening lands amid a broader Midtown Manhattan revival, in which luxury residences and a fresh wave of restaurants, such as Le Veau d’Or and Le Rock, are breathing new life into the neighbourhood – not to mention the recent $3.5bn (€2.98bn) redevelopment of Rockefeller Center.

With street-facing windows, the new Bonhams HQ aims to demystify the auction world. “A lot of people don’t know what an auction house does,” says Chan. “You read about it but what exactly happens behind the scenes? It has always felt like a culture behind closed doors. We sell across more than 60 categories – we wanted to have the space and ability to showcase the breadth of what we do.” Bonhams has a diverse portfolio featuring jewellery, furniture and contemporary art, and offers pieces across price points. In Chan’s view, in comparison to other auction houses, Bonhams is simply more approachable. “Our collector base is quite wide – we have top buyers and new collectors. We pay attention to all of them.”

That breadth has helped Bonhams to endure the economic and political turbulence that has affected auction houses in recent years. “We keep an eye on these things,” says Chan, adding that there’s always a market for well-priced collections if confidence is strong. In uncertain times, she adds, buyers remain active – they’re just “more discerning”. Despite trying times for the art market, Walker remains upbeat too. “The prices that have been achieved in the past season are the highest that they have ever been,” he says. According to Walker, the challenge now is championing mid-priced work. “That’s where Bonhams comes in,” he adds. His hope is that this new space will tempt collectors and art appreciators alike through the doors. “We want art to be approachable,” he says. “We want as many people as possible to come in.”

What does it take to make it as a designer today? Paris-based agent Alice Bouleau shares her insights

Alice Bouleau no longer holds meetings in Paris’s dive bars. For years, they were the safest places for one of fashion’s most discreet headhunters to operate unnoticed. Today she prefers hotel lounges and no longer works for fashion houses. After seven years in the recruiting business, Bouleau left to launch The Arrow, an agency that represents designers, helping them to future-proof their careers in an industry that hires quickly, fires publicly and offers little long-term security.

The Arrow is designed to offer something that fashion has long neglected: a dedicated service defending and managing the sector’s design talent. Bouleau negotiates contracts, assists designers in securing sponsors for personal projects and brokers one-off collaborations, all with an eye on long-term strategy. “Stylists, make-up artists, photographers and even architects have agents looking after their careers,” she says. “But designers didn’t. I realised that something had to change.”

Bouleau has already signed up 15 clients, including footwear specialists Paul Andrew and Serge Ruffieux, New York up-and-comer Hillary Taymour and London menswear designer Priya Ahluwalia. The timing is deliberate. “There are very few creative-director jobs today where you can feel safe for 15 or 20 years,” she says. “Now, when designers take on a role, they have to think about what comes next.”

That outlook was shaped by Bouleau’s previous career. For seven years, she worked behind the scenes as a partner and the creative-practice head at Sterling International, an executive-search firm specialising in fashion and luxury. Her job was to help ceos to find their “dream partners in crime” – creative directors capable of leading studios, delivering covetable collections and hitting ambitious sales targets.

Her searches spanned conglomerate-owned houses “turning over more than €8bn a year” and niche labels with closer to €2m in revenue. She recruited across Europe, Africa, Asia and North America, scouted talent during fashion week in India and at design week in Reykjavík, and arranged clandestine meetings to avoid being spotted. “In our world, you can’t casually take a phone call on the street and you’ll never catch me working on a train,” she says. Over the past two years, that secrecy intensified as the fashion industry underwent one of its biggest-ever executive reshuffles. From Dior to Balenciaga, more than a dozen heritage houses parted ways with their creative leaders and turned to recruiters such as Bouleau to find the next star. Hiring became a high-stakes spectacle. “I was constantly receiving calls from major media outlets,” she says. “There were rumours swirling all the time – and those could genuinely destroy someone’s chances.”

From a business perspective, it was a boom period. “For headhunters, this system works very well,” says Bouleau. “Every couple of years, you get to launch a new search and get paid.” But watching the churn of designers being hired and fired left her uneasy. “Because of how quickly we consume fashion, companies have become more impatient and treat their creative leaders accordingly,” she says. “They don’t give people enough time to succeed.” She points to Phoebe Philo’s tenure at Celine in the 2010s as a rare counterexample. “Everyone wants that kind of success but they forget that she was given the chance to build the foundations of her vision.”

The demands being placed on people have also become unrealistic, says Bouleau. “You’re no longer just expected to design,” she says. “You have to think about PR and social media, oversee campaigns and have a strong commercial understanding. Sometimes, a client would describe their ideal profile and I would tell them that this person doesn’t exist. You can’t have a fresh face with 15 years of experience. Our goal is to tick 80 per cent of the boxes; the rest is where the magic happens. It’s like falling in love. There’s always some tension.”

Today, fashion houses seem less interested in long marriages and more inclined to have short-term flings. “I don’t think that we’ll ever be done because of the pace of the industry,” says Bouleau. “That’s why we need to rethink how we support creative talent. Right now, it feels as though we put them on a pedestal one minute and in the bin the next.”

The risks for designers are substantial. Creative director salaries can range from €400,000 to several million, excluding bonuses, but public failure can be career-ending. “If it doesn’t work out and you’re fired at 40 in a very visible way, it’s extremely hard to find another role,” says Bouleau. That’s where The Arrow comes in. By acting as an intermediary, Bouleau believes that it can help designers to protect themselves and plan beyond a single role. “It can be incredibly lonely at the top,” she says. “People often have to make huge decisions on their own.”

Based in her native Paris, Bouleau now spends her days meeting clients for long brainstorming sessions, often at Hôtel Amour in the 11th arrondissement. “There’s a constant push and pull,” she says. “Sometimes, we discuss existing offers; at others, I think about new collaborations on their behalf. Whether it’s a sponsorship, a product placement or an in-house position, you need to be sure that it won’t hurt your career in the long term.”

As fashion increasingly borrows from Hollywood, with creative directors treated as public figures, career planning has become almost as important as creative output. In this new landscape, agents such as Bouleau are changing the balance of power between brands and design talent. “It’s very different from even five years ago,” she says. “I want to defend the talent I bring forward – not be part of a system that just keeps recycling them.”

Read next: The Monocle City Guide to Paris, featuring the best hotels, restaurants and retail spots in the French capital

The reality behind Japan’s “vanishing phenomenon” and how people disappear

From rental families to islands filled with cats, Japan is fertile ground for global media outlets peddling stories that feed into the idea of exotic “otherness”. Johatsu is another subject to file in this category. To young Japanese, the word means “evaporation” but to an older generation it is a term that was once used for people who voluntarily disappeared from their own lives without a trace. The problem is that foreign media keep rehashing the phenomenon – so is it really still happening?

The term hit public consciousness in 1967 with the release of Shohei Imamura’s film Ningen Johatsu (A Man Vanishes), which told the story of a Niigata salesman’s sudden disappearance. Johatsu came to apply to people who wished to exit a stressful job or an unhappy marriage (wholesale disappearance being preferable to the social stigma of divorce). When Japan’s booming postwar economy stuttered in the 1990s and debts piled up, so too did the prevalence of johatsu.

It seems to reveal something important about the social pressures of life in Japan and its strict privacy laws. But the term, once widely used by the Japanese media, is rarely mentioned today. “When people hear the word, it’s questionable whether they would think of it as the phenomenon of people going missing,” says Hiroki Nakamori, an associate professor at Rikkyo University’s Graduate School of Social Design Studies and an expert on the subject. “It’s a relic of the past.”

The widely cited figure of up to 100,000 people vanishing every year in Japan requires unpacking. This number dropped below 100,000 from the late 2000s (and is now roughly half the number of those who go missing annually in the UK, for example). Almost a third of the “missing” have dementia or other medical conditions. And of those who are reported as gone, 90 per cent are eventually found.

So does our fascination with johatsu derive from a need to pigeonhole Japan or a craving to disappear ourselves? “There is often a narrative that it is taboo but the reason why Japanese people don’t really talk about it is because they’re not familiar with the phenomenon,” says Nakamori. It’s not to say that these disappearances don’t happen in Japan – they do – but perhaps it’s easier to see them as particular to that country, rather than universal to all.

In Singapore, protecting national heritage begins in its shops

It might be an enthusiastically forward-looking nation but Singapore is also determined not to lose sight of its past at street level. In October 2025 the National Heritage Board (NHB) announced the 42 participants in the pilot SG Heritage Business Scheme, which aims to recognise and protect businesses that are deeply woven into the fabric of Singapore’s cultural landscape.

The list includes CYC, a third-generation tailor that once made clothes for the country’s founder Lee Kuan Yew; Tong Heng, a 90-year-old Cantonese pastry shop; and Basheer Graphic Books, a second-generation design and art-book shop and newsstand that, among other delights, has stocked every issue of Monocle since our launch.

NHB’s move comes at a critical moment when many shops and restaurants in Singapore are struggling to stay afloat: 2,431 F&B businesses shut between January and October 2025, squeezed by rising rents and wage bills. The board’s research shows that though 75 per cent of locals are said to recognise the importance of heritage businesses, only 46 per cent regularly buy from these businesses.

“We started thinking about how to support our local heritage businesses in a bigger way,” says Kirk Siang Yeo, NHB’s group director of policy and community. The team drew inspiration from San Francisco’s Legacy Business programme and Seoul’s Future Heritage scheme, both of which show that state recognition can raise the profile of long-standing enterprises. “These are big cosmopolitan cities that have undergone a lot of change, much like Singapore,” says Yeo.

Beyond conferring special designation as a Singaporean heritage business, NHB is also exploring consultancy and support. With its assistance, the owner of Basheer Graphic Books, Abdul Nasser, hopes to integrate inventory across the physical space, website and distributors into a seamless digital platform.

Though the scheme is in its infancy, some businesses say that they have already noticed an uptick in sales. Anushia Flower Shop, a garland maker for Hindu festivals, has reported a 5 per cent increase in enquiries for wedding and sporting celebrations. Tong Heng’s Ana Fong hopes for a wider ripple effect. “With NHB’s help, I hope that heritage brands can come together to show locals and foreigners that we Singaporeans have our own history and culture,” she says.

Read next: Is Singapore building the next Silicon Valley?

The commute: A morning stroll to the fair with artist Bose Krishnamachari

Every other year, the historic Indian port city of Kochi becomes a buzzy centre of contemporary art with the arrival of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. During its 16-week run, which for this edition ends in March, artist and co-founder Bose Krishnamachari spends his days ensuring that everything is in order, meeting guests and appreciating the vast array of works on display. Here, we join him on his commute to the fair.

Do you have a morning routine?
No, I don’t like to programme my life. It’s so boring if you know what you’re going to do. For me, the most interesting thinking happens in the morning while you travel or read. It’s a time for imagination.

What does your commute look like?
I usually walk to a café, which is just a few minutes away from my apartment, before heading to the fair. As soon as I step out, I pass Nehru Park, a children’s park that comes alive in the mornings with rhythmic music. People gather there to exercise and it’s beautiful to witness. I also pass the Old Harbour Hotel, one of Kochi’s oldest hotels.

During the biennale, what do your mornings look like?
I work closely with the production team and some brilliant artists so most mornings I catch up with those involved in the biennale. We’ll meet between 07.00 and 08.00 at a roadside chaiwala. We’ll have breakfast there, usually idli rice cakes and chutney. Then I’ll go to some of the biennale sites – we have 22, so it takes time to get around them all.

How would you describe Kochi?
It is a beautiful city. The state of Kerala is known for its literacy rate, which is higher than New York’s. It’s full of well-educated, well-travelled and hard-working people.

Tell us about this year’s biennale.
We thought that it would be fairly small but it has turned out to be one of the largest so far. As well as the venues, there are eight further projects, participation from students from across India, masterclasses and spaces created for Keralite artists.

This is the sixth edition of the biennale. What have you learnt?
That I need to work on the ground. I have to look at Excel sheets every day but, as an artist, I hate them. You need to touch the soil. That’s the way I like to work.
kochimuzirisbiennale.org

More commuters who took Monocle along for the ride:

Step out onto the street with Josefa González-Blanco

Tag along Rebekka Bay’s bike ride through Copenhagen

Take the Paris metro with shoe designer Alexia Aubert

Join José Miguel de Abreu biking from Porto to the central Ribiera district

The Lighthouse, a US company reimagining the studio system for the modern world

In 2011, Youtube stopped referring to content makers as “Youtube stars” and began calling them “creators” – a label that was broad enough to apply to people of vastly different levels of fame. Fifteen years later, “creator” has become the default term for anyone producing work to be shared on digital platforms. The global value of the commercial ecosystem surrounding this activity grew to more than $250bn (€215bn) in 2024 and continues to rise.

Legacy media industries have historically clustered in physical hubs. In the US, Hollywood has long functioned as a metonym for American cinema, while television networks and newspaper offices are concentrated in Manhattan. By contrast, one of the defining characteristics of today’s creator economy is the geographic dispersal of the creators themselves. They work across the world, from garages, shared offices and private dwellings of every description. The Lighthouse, which describes itself as the first “campus and studio playground for the creator economy”, is premised on the idea that even in a sector where work can happen anywhere, there are still advantages to being anchored in a particular place.

The first Lighthouse campus opened in Venice Beach, California, at the start of last year. The brand has since expanded to New York, where it occupies a former pencil factory in north Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighbourhood. “We primarily serve the content-creator community but also the wider creative industries,” says Jon Goss, the company’s CEO. “We are a production studio, a workspace, a professional development programme and a curated community.”

Lighthouse members have access to an array of facilities, from photography sets to podcast studios equipped with cameras. “Everything we’re doing is to facilitate frictionless creativity,” says Goss. “The space is set up to enable creators to have an idea, run into a studio, make content and then edit and publish it. We try to compress the time that it takes to do all of this.”

The campus’s polished aesthetic reflects a creator economy that is growing out of its adolescence and into a period of greater maturity. Many of the creators are professionals who offer a traditional service or product while also making content creation central to their business. Among them is Marian Cheng, co-founder of Mimi Cheng’s. “We have had a restaurant in the East Village since 2014 and launched our frozen retail dumpling line nationwide in October 2025,” says Cheng, who uses the test kitchen on the top floor of The Lighthouse to record herself cooking. She also values the building’s backstory. “There’s a sense of history behind it,” she says.

The transformation of the Brooklyn site, as well as its Venice Beach counterpart, was undertaken in collaboration with Warkentin Associates, an interior-design firm known for blending industrial heritage with the functionality necessary for contemporary creative spaces. “I fell head over heels in love with this building,” says Goss. “I fought hard to get it. I knew that there would be no other place like it.”

Greenpoint’s location reinforces this appeal. Easily accessible from Manhattan, it has a post-industrial character. Kelsea Olivia, the founder of events and floral-design house East Olivia, likes its energy. “I live in the city and crave what I can get in Brooklyn,” she says. “You walk out these doors, turn right and you’re on a street full of great restaurants, shops and small businesses that are creating physical spaces or objects in the world.”

At the core of The Lighthouse is a belief in the power of collaboration. “We thought a lot about the Bauhaus,” says Goss. “It sparked a movement across the creative industries, not just in design and architecture. Andy Warhol’s Factory was another inspiration – a collision of different kinds of people, from artists to those in business. Even recording studios and Silicon Valley garages showed us that bringing people together can spark something new.”

The aim, he says, is to create a space where creators can make, learn and belong – and to catalyse a new movement. Brad Ogbonna, a photographer and Lighthouse member, attests to the importance of proximity. “It’s great to be around other creatives,” he says. “It keeps me inspired. There’s a real value in meeting writers and editors who work in other fields, such as podcasting. A lot of the time, the closer you are to other disciplines, the more opportunities arise.”

The Venice Beach campus has already demonstrated how this model can work in practice. “There have been multiple collisions and collaborations that happened organically between members,” says Goss. “Last week a new member told me that he is now doing branding and creative direction for another creator he met here. A masterclass that we ran with Iheartmedia turned into a workshop where creators submitted ideas to producers and now three podcasts are being developed as a result.”

For Goss, The Lighthouse exists to enable such moments. “We’re not just a co-working space,” he says. “We’re helping creators to flourish like they never have before.”

Alvalade, the 15-minute Lisbon neighbourhood offering the best of urban living and green space

The 15-minute city might sound like a contemporary idea but Alvalade has been living it for generations. At central Lisbon’s northern edge, this neighbourhood is home to quiet residential enclaves and bustling commercial streets, avenues lined with modernist buildings, as well as stretches of small, detached homes. There are schools, hospitals, post offices and markets and plenty of tree-shaded pedestrian streets in between. It’s hard to imagine that just 80 years ago this part of town was undeveloped, dotted with rural estates and manor houses.

The 1945 urban plan that gave rise to Alvalade was an answer to a major housing crisis in Lisbon. In 1938 city mayor Duarte Pacheco commissioned Russian-born French urbanist Étienne de Groër to plan the city’s expansion northward into its peripheries but it was Portuguese architect João Faria da Costa who was later entrusted with shaping the 230 hectares that would become Alvalade.

Inspired by the garden-city movement, Faria da Costa conceived the neighbourhood as a low- to medium-density area with mixed land use. Large avenues were cut across the terrain, boxing in eight areas each given a purpose – residential, civic, industrial and commercial. “The plan took from a utopian urban ideal,” says Nuno Lourenço, an architect working in Alvalade who walks Monocle through the area. “The idea was that it would allow one to simultaneously enjoy what’s good about the city and the countryside so that there was a social and economic harmony of man with nature.”

Designed to house 45,000 people – newcomers from rural Portugal and those displaced by urban renewal elsewhere in the city – Alvalade was to offer a spectrum of affordable housing, from social units to rent- controlled apartments. To fund the development, the local town hall partnered with the country’s social security funds. Under the Estado Novo dictatorship, Faria da Costa’s plan was implemented swiftly: land expropriations had previously begun and construction started in 1947.

In the first residential zones, three- and four-storey buildings line tree-shaded streets. With simple salmon-pink or yellow façades, these model homes were designed with private backyards so that residents could cultivate small plots. Primary schools, accessed via pedestrian pathways, served as the gravitational pull. “We used to leave for school through the back garden, meeting children on the next street, until we arrived as a group,” says Fernanda Santos, who has lived on one of the U-shaped streets here since 1949. Though many backyards have since been converted into annexes and cars are now much more common, these early plots continue to offer a rare dose of tranquillity in Lisbon. “People still greet each other and when the tangerine tree in our garden bears fruit, it is shared among neighbours,” says Santos.

In a telling reversal, these homes, which once commanded the most affordable rents, are now sought-after addresses. “It shows just how relevant the garden-city principles have become again – urban gardening, walkability, proximity,” says Lourenço.

A stone’s throw away, the pace of the neighbourhood shifts. Walking across Avenida de Roma, the broad artery that cuts through Alvalade, Monocle arrives at its commercial core, with Avenida da Igreja as its boisterous high street. Stationers, hardware stores, florists, opticians and plenty of bakeries offer a diversity and density of brick-and-mortar retail.

“Even with plenty of supermarkets around, I buy all my fresh produce from specialty shops – the butcher, the fishmonger, the fruit vendor,” says Filipa Corrêa Mendes, a 35-year-old who moved across town to live on this busy side of Alvalade with her family in 2024. Some businesses, such as ice-cream shop Gelados Conchanata, have been here almost as long as the neighbourhood itself. Others, such as the fashion boutiques of Avenida de Roma, have given way to a more familiar landscape of franchise establishments.

The market, foreseen in Faria da Costa’s plan but only built in 1964, still anchors daily life here. The original master plan also reserved a corner of Alvalade’s commercial zone for crafts and niche industries. Small warehouses, once home to typographers and carpenters, now house art galleries and even the newsroom of online daily Observador – the scale perfectly suited for modern-day industries. “There’s something of old Lisbon here,” says Corrêa Mendes. “But there’s also this lively cultural scene.”

If Alvalade’s conviviality seems to have been inscribed in a blueprint from 1945, part of the neighbourhood’s charm also comes from areas that deviated from the original plan, with successive generations of architects and residents reshaping the neighbourhood over time. A key turning point was the first National Congress of Architecture, which took place in Lisbon in 1948, marking a break with the traditional style of build associated with the Estado Novo regime. Modern architecture began to rise in Lisbon that embraced the principles of Le Corbusier’s Athens Charter – a blueprint for modernist construction.

In Alvalade, Avenida Estados Unidos da América remains one of the city’s most striking testaments to this era, with elongated apartment blocks raised on pilotis. “The plan’s original, more conservative rows of houses were reimagined by architects who were often in opposition to the regime,” says Aquilino Machado, who was born in Bairro das Estacas, a pioneering residential complex built in 1954 at Alvalade’s southern edge. Instead of private backyards, the gardens – designed by landscape architect Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles, who was later jointly responsible for the gardens at Lisbon’s Calouste Gulbenkian Museum – flow freely from one block to the next.

Shifting social and political tides in the years leading up to, and following, the Carnation Revolution in 1974 left their mark on Alvalade, as residents began to inhabit the neighbourhood in new ways. Boosted by the arrival of the Metro in 1972, Alvalade evolved from a quaint peripheral district into a vibrant hub, drawing visitors from across the Portuguese capital to its shops, cinemas and theatres. Local cafés emerged as cultural fixtures, frequented by filmmakers and intellectuals. Some remain, such as the iconic Vá-Vá, though its sleek, renovated interiors now cater to contemporary dining rather than heated political debate.

A social renewal is gradually taking place here, with young families living alongside established residents. “If we can, we try to buy homes for our children and grandchildren here,” says Santos. “They want to stay in Alvalade.” Mário Serrano and Margarida Fonseca, for instance, inherited their apartment on Avenida do Brasil from Fonseca’s grandmother. In 2021, the couple, both architects, renovated the space, removing walls to create a light-filled, open-plan apartment. “There’s not much reason for us to leave Alvalade. Our work is here, our children’s schools, the shops and restaurants,” says Serrano. “Everything is within walking distance.” A short distance from their home is José Gomes Ferreira Park, a large green space shaped in the 1950s by Ribeiro Telles but dating back to a time when Alvalade was mostly rural. “It’s a pearl within the city,” says Serrano.

An 18th-century palace stands in the heart of one of Alvalade’s first residential developments as a reminder of the land’s rural past. Today, it houses a library, where long-standing residents such as Santos regularly meet to work on a project that shares and safeguards the area’s memories. Surrounding it, the Ateliês dos Coruchéus – two town-hall-managed buildings – contain artist studios and host exhibitions. Children fill the adjacent playground, creating a generational mix that feels vital. Despite being conceived under a radically different social and political order, the life that continues here is a tribute to 80 years of design and construction for conviviality and community.

Village Green: The leafy Los Angeles neighbourhood that puts communities first

When a coyote appears on the lawn outside the window of John Florance’s home, neither seems surprised. “They’re a nightmare for the cats,” says the 63-year-old. “But it speaks to just how close to nature this place is.” This is life at Village Green, a car-free oasis of 629 homes in southwest Los Angeles. Here, across 28 hectares, a network of pathways and gardens lined with trees creates what feels less like urban housing and more like a small town that happens to be 15 minutes from downtown.

The development was born of early 20th-century ideas about how cities should be built. In 1898, British urban planner and social reformer Ebenezer Howard founded the garden-city movement, an approach to urbanism that placed space, light and nature at the heart of town planning. By the 1920s, US planners had begun emulating such developments across the Atlantic.

Among them was EG “Lucky” Baldwin, a developer who commissioned a team to create Village Green. Its design featured interconnected, light-filled apartments and park-like grounds, with more than half the development’s footprint dedicated to greens and garden courts. Opened in 1942, the project demonstrated the beauty of one of the defining features of the movement: the superblock. Here, cars were banished to perimeter garages. Soon after opening, the project won a distinguished award from the American Institute of Architects’ southern California chapter.

When the first residents moved in, they were middle-class professionals attracted to what the Los Angeles Times described as a “new and finer style of living” that resembled “the quiet and beauty of the country”. Today’s residents are drawn here for similar reasons.

1.
The Florence Residence
Love thy neighbours

John Florance moved to Village Green in 2009 after a friend invited him to visit. He had been living in a downtown loft and immediately noticed the contrast. “The temperature drops at least two or three degrees because of all the trees,” he says. “It’s our own little microclimate here.” His home has no air conditioning but Florance manages fine. “There are about two weeks out of the year when you’re kind of miserable but just turn on the fans and you’re good. It’s the leafy trees, providing shade, that are a blessing.”

Inside his compact home, sunlight pours through metal-framed windows. In the living room he opens a closet to reveal a floor-to-ceiling record collection. “For such a small space, there’s a lot of storage,” he says, putting on a record. “It’s the details – the doors, the windows, the generous proportions – that show how much thought was put into the building. You wouldn’t get such details today.”

What keeps Florance at Village Green is the social element. “I’ve lived all around southern California and I’ve never known so many of my neighbours as I do now,” he says. “People are happier among trees and greenery and that is conducive to getting to know your neighbours.”

2.
The Creighton residence
Breathing space

Across a lush lawn is the entrance to the home of the Creighton family. Here, a pomelo tree heaves with fruit, its giant citrus weighing heavily on the branches. Scout, a miniature Australian shepherd, provides an enthusiastic greeting, as Heidi Creighton, 50, an architect and fellow of the American Institute of Architects, stands by the doorway. Inside is her husband, Robert, also 50, an industrial designer and professor, and their teenage children, Samantha and Alexander.

“We live in a two-bedroom townhome, which is cosy for the four of us plus our dog,” says Heidi, explaining that most of the development’s homes are compact. They range from 84 to 150 sq m, which was typical for the 1940s in southern California but small by today’s standards. “In this country, we’re obsessed with space and needing big things but it isn’t necessary. This house is more than enough. It’s about how it functions and how you use the space.”

The dining room opens onto a patio with a vegetable garden where lavender, passion fruit, lemons, blueberries, lettuce, tomatoes, beets and carrots are growing. “It’s special to have that connection to outside,” says Heidi. “We have the sounds of hawks calling during the day and owls hooting at night.”

As an architect, Heidi’s favourite design element is the home’s stairwell. The architectural intervention creates a spacious void filled with art and photographs – much of it created by family members, including a large painting by Robert’s mother, Diana, who once lived in Village Green with her parents. “Technically, our children are fourth-generation Village Greeners,” says Heidi.

When the Creightons are asked about their favourite memories, each family member offers something different. For Robert, the charm lies in its sense of quiet. “I love how when I go for a morning run and walk through the Green, afterwards there are no cars or planes or helicopters – rare in this city,” he says. “What is left are the quiet sounds of nature.” Heidi recalls jazz concerts on the main green, Samantha remembers community pasta nights, and Alexander’s answer is simple: “It is everything, honestly.”

3.
The Hawken residence
Family values

Walking from the Creighton residence, past a pair sitting on a bench under a canopy of carob trees, Monocle reaches the Hawken family’s residence. Inside the 92 sq m home are Aidan, 50, a musician; his wife, Andrea, 43, a creative director; and their three children, Gabriel, Raphael and Anya. The couple explain that while their home might be small, its compact nature has shaped family dynamics for the better.

“Everything is close and privacy is limited but this has contributed to us being a close-knit family,” says Andrea. “Our children are used to sharing space, conversation and daily life. At the same time, our expansive outdoor environment gives them a sense of freedom and healthy independence. They feel safe roaming freely, experiencing a childhood that feels reminiscent of another era.”

The Hawkens moved to Village Green in 2012 and say that they would have left Los Angeles years ago without it. “The community we have built here has been pivotal to our thriving in the city,” says Andrea. “Los Angeles is a notoriously lonely place. The constant driving, traffic and physical distance between people make it difficult to connect. That loneliness is simply not present when you live within a true community.”