← The Monocle Daily
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- [00:00]
Marie Le Conte
You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 18th February 2026 on Monocle Radio.
- [00:07]
Georgina Godwin
Mark Zuckerberg takes to the stand in LA to defend social media. France's central bank tries to shore up the succession before the next election. And culture wars should politics bleed into sport and art? I'm Georgina Godwin. The Monocle Daily starts. Foreign welcome to the monocle daily, coming to you live from our studios here at midori house in london. I'm georgina godwin. My guests ash bhardwaj and marie leconte will discuss the day's big stories and we'll hear from patricia veal, co founder of acpv architects in milan. Do stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the monocle daily.
- [00:58]
Patricia Veal
Foreign.
- [01:04]
Georgina Godwin
Hello, hello and welcome. And a particularly warm welcome to my guests today. They are Ash Bardwaj, who's a journalist and the author of why We Travel. He's also a new father. We'll talk about that in a moment. And also Marie Le Conte, who's a political journalist and author of, amongst other books, How a Generation Shaped, Destroyed and Survived the Internet. Welcome to you both. She just had a baby.
- [01:28]
Ash Bhardwaj
Indeed. So he's our second. We've got a three year old daughter and now we have a six week old boy. So I've recently been in the trenches of nappy, changing and waking up at night. So I'm glad to be here and fairly coherent.
- [01:42]
Georgina Godwin
But. So listen, your book is called why We Travel. Can I just ask you why you think it's a really good idea to take a three year old and a three month old to Vietnam?
- [01:53]
Ash Bhardwaj
Once we'd had the first child, our daughter Lyra, I realized my travel was going to change and I wanted to see if I could still keep being adventurous and still keep doing interesting travel for myself and my wife, but also because I think travel's such a great way to give children skills, competence and confidence. We took her to Morocco when she was 2 and she just had a great time bibbling about in the souk and just chatting to people. We also took her to New Zealand when she was three months old, so obviously she won't remember a huge amount of that, but I was hiking up mountains with her. We took a jet boat and it's just a lesson that you can actually do more than you think you can and you kind of cut away the unnecessary stuff.
- [02:31]
Georgina Godwin
Can I just ask you a question? What do the people on the plane with you on the way to New Zealand think about this?
- [02:37]
Ash Bhardwaj
3 months old are pretty good. They tend to just sleep most of the time and then if they get a bit upset, you pick them up and cuddle them. I don't know what a three year old would be like all the way to New Zealand. I think she's pretty good. She's easy to entertain with stickers.
- [02:50]
Georgina Godwin
All right, but I mean, this is a serious question because we've been complaining about children on the shows today. How do you advise parents to deal with that? I mean, one heart goes out to the parent who's trying to calm down this screaming child, but it's unpleasant for the entire vehicle, the plane, the train, whatever it is. How do you advise people when you're talking about travel?
- [03:11]
Ash Bhardwaj
Well, I think we sort of have to deal with unpleasantness throughout the rest of our life and we have different forms of tolerance at different times. And yes, it is horrible when you're on a plane with a screaming child, but it's also really awful for the parents. So I think the first thing is to have some empathy for the parent. Consider, is there anything you can do to help? Sometimes simply a different person can change the way a child is behaving towards something. If you are a parent traveling with a child, I think prepping them in advance, if, if it's something they're not used to doing, if they're not used to being on a train, if they're not used to car journeys, then getting on a 12 hour plane flight is going to be a bit of a shock for them. And then just make sure you've got lots of things that keep them entertained. And that in our case is lots of stickers, lots of coloring books, getting seats that have a bit of space around the front of them. Those are the things that I think can help a parent. And also just accepting that it's probably going to be a challenge.
- [04:02]
Georgina Godwin
Well, good luck in Vietnam. Now you've been traveling too, Marie. You are in fact French, Moroccan. That's your background, I believe. Fluent in French. Obviously you've just been to Paris for an incredibly interesting reason.
- [04:16]
Marie Le Conte
Yes, a few weeks ago I went to Paris to interview Giselle Pellico, the incredible, incredible woman. You may have seen the trial. I think it was quite hard to miss a few years ago. So this woman who in her 60s realized that her husband had been drugging her and raping her and inviting other men to rape her and, you know, and she decided sort of at the last minute to make her to essentially lose her way of her anonymity and kind of do this very public trial. And, you know, and her message to the world was saying, actually, you know, shame has to change sides. I have no reason to be ashamed as a rape victim. It's, you know, those men who need to be ashamed. And obviously it turned into this incredible thing in France and then across the world. And, yeah, she's just released her memoirs, him to Life, which is actually very good. And yes, I interviewed her and she was just. I had no idea what to expect, to be entirely honest, you know, because she'd never really done big interviews. And, you know, she had this strength and she was incredibly friendly and also just very open in saying, you know, actually what I want people to understand is that I did have a good life for most of my marriage. You know, I wasn't a victim. I had quite a high paying job. I had kids with this man I loved who actually helped me raise them and helped cook and clean, which for that generation was an entirely. And, you know, and obviously her life kind of changed and essentially disappeared in 2020. But she. So she describes herself in the book as someone kind of going through a house that's burned down and kind of trying to go through the ashes, trying to find kind of pieces to hold onto. And that's how she talks about her past, which I found very poetic and beautiful. But no, I think the great news as well is that she has a partner. She has found love with this man called Jeanloo who I met. Tremendous, lovely man. They live together, he's a widower. And yeah, and they essentially were, I think, brought together by mutual friends. And naturally, at first, you know, they thought, well, obviously we're not. Nothing's going to happen. You know, I'm just looking for a friend. And then one thing actually did lead to another, and they seem to be genuinely very happy together, which is the loveliest thing.
- [06:16]
Georgina Godwin
And she seems to be such an extraordinary woman. Maria, of course, I'm familiar with your journalism, but I know you're also, or you were a prolific Twitter user, but you've left the platform now. The was obviously clearly known as X at that time. You wrote a very powerful piece about it about a month ago. Tell us about the process of leaving and what finally pushed you out.
- [06:38]
Marie Le Conte
Oh, yes, well, I. I mean, it's fair to say that I posted quite a lot. I think I tweeted essentially all day, every day for over a decade, you know, and it was entirely instrumental to my career, to a lot of my friendships, romantic relationships, et cetera. I think Twitter was a massive part of My life for a lot of my twenties and late teenage years. And, well, I suppose I think when Elon Musk bought it, at first I was, I think, in denial. And I thought, well, actually, you know, was it that that famous quote of, we're not stuck in there with him, with him, he's stuck in there in here with us? And I thought actually, you know, we had to stay and fight on Twitter as kind of liberals, as progressives. And, you know, when Blue sky launched, which was meant to be a kind of competitor to Twitter, I thought, well, I'll create an account, but without any kind of great enthusiasm. But no, in the end, what really made me go, oh, gosh, you know, I do just have to leave, never looked back, was covering the US election. And so I'd been kind of traveling around the US For a few weeks, and then on actual election night, I was in Washington, D.C. and it was just. And I remember so clearly I was writing. I mean, I was definitely a hostage to fortune because I was writing quite a fun sketch of kind of going from bar to bar around all the kind of bars where the partly the Hill interns and staffers kind of usually drink. So I thought actually it'd be quite a fun piece to be like, you know, among the elites, kind of seeing how they reacted to the election. Obviously one of the most harrowing nights of my life in the end. And the next morning I thought, I just can't do this. I can't be on Elon Musk's platform doing his work for him, making him richer. So I completely left and I now post all day, every day on Blue sky instead. So there's been no personal growth whatsoever, I'm delighted to say. And I use Instagram quite a lot more as well. So my relationship with social media hasn't changed a lot. But, yeah, I've just not posted at all on Lex in 18 months. I think now nearly.
- [08:28]
Georgina Godwin
Wow. So today, Mark Zuckerberg is being grilled in front of an LA jewelry and what a jury in what's been seen as a test case for social media companies. So the woman at the center of the case sued Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snap. She accused the companies of borrowing techniques used by big tobacco in decades past to target young people to get them addicted, all the while ignoring internal research that their products could cause harm to teens. Ashut, what's your opinion on that? Is she right?
- [08:58]
Ash Bhardwaj
I think she's right about the techniques that were used by big tobacco, which is this idea that you try and disconnect causation from correlation. And in the past when people were smoking, it became clear, or by anecdote, it was clear that people were becoming ill as a product of smoking. Some evidence came out and the big tobacco companies basically said, just because more people are dying who happen to smoke doesn't mean the smoking causes it. It took quite a long time to overcome that through scientific evidence or to convince people that there should be policies put in place and regulation put in place. And social media companies are doing the same thing. We were speaking about the impact of social media and Jonathan Haidt, who has written this book, the Anxious Generation, and his research, which I know is contested in places, is that if you look at the levels of unhappiness as well as depression, many other kind of psychological illnesses, there is a correlation with social media arriving in a country, the arrival of smartphones or even the arrival of fast Internet, because then you can watch more video. And they're effectively trying to say the same thing the social medias have said with tobacco, that just because you're seeing a higher level of mental illness amongst young people doesn't mean it's caused by social media. There's lots of other things that are happening.
- [10:16]
Georgina Godwin
I mean, the Spanish government's the latest one that's voted to investigate social media companies. Australia, of course, has already done it. Is legislating against social media the right way to go about it? And if it had been illegal, would you still have done it?
- [10:31]
Marie Le Conte
So I think that's a complicated question. My first thing is that I'm not convinced by governments across the world kind of rushing to ban social media for children and for young teenagers for a number of reasons. The first one is that actually, you know, I'm 34 years old, I was part of the first generation to really grow up online. And I genuinely think that's one of the reasons why I'm actually, you know, I've not let the Internet kind of drive me insane, even though I spend a lot of time on it, because, you know, I was able to phase myself in in a way. And I think that, you know, going the idea of going from zero social media until 16 to all of social media again at 16, you know, that's not an age at which I think you're entirely mature, et cetera. I think that's quite dangerous. But also I worry that the governments kind of trying to implement that are essentially finding easy solutions to hard problems because, you know, I do absolutely believe that algorithmic social media is a problem, but I think it's driving everyone mad. I don't think it is just making teenagers more anxious or teenagers more radical or teenagers or. I think it's making everyone that. And I think, you know, just saying, well, we'll just ban it for children is a way to say so we'll, you know, so we'll be able to avoid actually again, taking the hard decisions and taking on the kind of Silicon Valley giants.
- [11:43]
Georgina Godwin
Do you use, Are you on any platforms?
- [11:49]
Ash Bhardwaj
I do use social media, particularly Instagram, especially for the travel stuff. It's such a visually driven.
- [11:55]
Georgina Godwin
I mean, is that. I mean, I love Instagram, incidentally, Georgina C. Godwin, because I once created my account and then I forgot the password. So I can't now have Georgina Godwin because that's taken by me. But is it as bad for us Instagram?
- [12:13]
Ash Bhardwaj
I think it. I don't think it's. I would like to be using it less. And I find that I compulsively turn to it in ways that I am not happy that I'm doing. And I put restraints on myself to prevent myself from doing that. Turning off my phone for periods of time, putting a phone in another room, deleting the app every now and again. Because I do find that I use it compulsively, both to put my own stuff out, but also just looking on there. And I'm convincing myself that I'm doing research about travel or strategic communications or conflict in Ukraine, which is largely what's on my feed. And at the same time, I'm not always sure if it really is a particularly good thing for me. So I would like to be using less. But the point you make, and it's one I hadn't really considered, is that by banning social media for under 16s, we're not making the hard decisions, which is forcing those companies to alter the way they're doing things. And one of the things that's coming up in this court case that Zuckerberg is supposed to be appearing at is that the social media companies are making these platforms deliberately addictive. And if you hear what they were talking about years ago and hear these members of these tech giants talking about things anecdotally, that's obviously what they're doing.
- [13:25]
Marie Le Conte
Yeah. And briefly, I will kind of do. I'm not being paid for this, but I think one of the really good things about bluesky is that there's no algorithm at all, which is really weird actually, in 2026, because I think we've lost that habit. But it's a timeline. What people you follow have posted in real time and that's that. And if you run out, you run out and you never see anything from anyone you don't follow. And you know, and it's very self contained, so it's a bit like being online kind of 15 years ago. And it's very nice. That generally is, you know, I thought, I worry that it's going to be a bit boring, actually. It's lovely.
- [13:55]
Georgina Godwin
So, of course, the problem really started when Elon Musk bought Twitter, changing not only the name, but the very nature of the program. What happens when large institutions are subjected to the same forces? So the head of the central bank in France says he will leave before the election, the French election, to allow Emmanuel Macron to appoint his successor. And there are also reports that Christine Lagarde of the European Central bank will do the same. So it seems this is an attempt to insulate those institutions from possible populist influences should the political leadership change. Is this a good idea, Ash?
- [14:32]
Ash Bhardwaj
Well, I think we've seen what happens if you don't do that, and we've seen already the President of the United States, Donald Trump, trying to enforce this on the central bank in the United States. But as we were mentioning earlier, we do have a case study of what happens if somebody doesn't do this, which was the Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had the option to step down whilst during President Biden's term, but chose to stay on. And then when she did pass away, sadly, she was replaced by a justice elected by Donald Trump.
- [15:00]
Marie Le Conte
Is it Obama?
- [15:01]
Ash Bhardwaj
Oh, sorry, Obama. Obama's term.
- [15:03]
Marie Le Conte
And I think also it is worth saying that the populists have also been doing that. You know, I was in Hungary last year doing a report on the election which is coming in two months. And, you know, and a lot of people there were saying, actually, even if the opposition wins, which obviously we hope they do, Orban has done such a good job of stuffing absolutely everything, full of organists, essentially. You know, every institution is kind of full of people who like the governing party, who support Fidesz, that actually, you know, not a lot will be able to change. So I do think it's a slightly grubby thing to be doing, but also it is a slightly grubby game we are playing across the world at the moment and the other lot are doing it anyway.
- [15:43]
Georgina Godwin
I mean, could one argue, though that these public institutions should reflect the current political leadership? After all, we're assuming that the leaders have been democratically elected and therefore represent the will of the people.
- [15:55]
Ash Bhardwaj
I guess with some of these institutions, looking again at the Supreme Court in the United States, once you start to move them in a particular direction and move them away from a balanced representation of what the nation wants, then they end up accelerating the move in a particular direction, which is what happened with the Supreme Court in the United States and as you mentioned, Marie, with Hungary.
- [16:15]
Marie Le Conte
But it's also, I think briefly, I think that logic kind of works if we only ever oscillate between the center left and the center right or maybe the center. But you know, we are talking here quite often about fascist governments, kind of hard right populist governments who are seeking to entirely destroy those institutions from the inside. So it's not, I think, just a case of saying, well, actually those institutions, quangos, et cetera, should reflect the mood of the country. It's actually, do we care about our democratic institutions and their well being?
- [16:41]
Georgina Godwin
And I mean, it goes into the arts as well. Donald Trump's obviously taken over the Kennedy center, or to give it its full name and correct designation, the John F. Kennedy center for the Performing Arts, the National Cultural center of the United States. It's meant to serve as a living memorial to jfk. So it's now the Trump Kennedy Center. It'll be remodeled, much as the White House, another building that belongs to, belongs to the nation has been the idea, you know, if you think back to Obama or Biden or anybody, the idea that any future leader would do this simply didn't cross their minds. Because why would it, I mean, should it have done and should action be taken now by other countries to stop this kind of cultural takeover?
- [17:26]
Ash Bhardwaj
Well, I think it reflects the point about the difference between different sides doing it is there is an attempt by the current administration to effectively create a long term institution of almost state capture, so that even if this current president disappears, it'd be very hard for things to move back in the other direction. And as you were saying, if it moves between center left and centre right, that's fine, but this is something on the far right, really. How do you prevent it? I guess you can put legislation in place to try and prevent these sorts of things happening. But what Orban did in Hungary was he simply had such a large majority that even though any legislation being put in place to prevent that sort of thing happening, he was able to overturn.
- [18:06]
Georgina Godwin
And I mean, this is exactly what Trump has done. He's hollowed out Washington completely, hasn't he? All those big institutions. It is almost impossible to separate politics from culture and indeed sport. So Ukraine Says it will boycott the Paralympic Winter Games opening ceremony because Russian and Belarusian athletes will be participating under their national flags. Now they're encouraging other countries to also stay away. I notice they're not actually boycotting the, the sporting events themselves. This comes off the back of the Ukrainian skeleton racer banned from in the Winter Olympics because he insisted on wearing a helmet depicting his dead colleagues, people who had died in the Ukrainian war. Ash, I know this is something you know something about, you're in the reserves, you've written a lot about war and Ukraine is a particular interest of yours, but do you think that sport and politics can be separated in this way?
- [18:58]
Ash Bhardwaj
No. And the Olympics have never been separated from politics. They've always been used by the nations that are hosting them as a way to generate influence and credibility around the world. And there have always been a place of performance and soft power and impact as a product of the people who compete in them and the people who win in them. And the reason why Russia was banned in the first place was at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. They basically used it as an opportunity to dope all of their athletes in order to win. And it is important, I think, to not legitimize Russia and Belarus by allowing them to compete under the national flags, because that just says that what they've done is okay. And what they have done by invading Ukraine is a massive transgression of the rules and norms of not just the rules based international order of the west, but of the rules of the United Nations. And I do think there has to be some consequence to nations for doing that sort of aggression.
- [19:57]
Marie Le Conte
And I do think as well that, and I find it odd when people say you should keep politics out of X or Y in the context of kind of international contests, because, you know, we had a similar discussion over Israel and Eurovision of people saying I we should leave politics out of Eurovision, whatever you make of the war in Gaza, which I always found odd, you know, Eurovision is obviously very political. You just have to look at the patterns of who votes for whom every single time, etc. It is very obviously, as you said, kind of part of the soft power and part of kind of relationships between countries. And even, I mean, I think few listeners will probably know about this show, but I used to watch Arab Idol with my mom and my grandmother in Morocco, which is essentially a singing contest in the Arab world. And even that, you know what, the kind of political kind of schem between the Arab countries every single season, you'd see that as well. So I think any kind of international contest will have politics in it.
- [20:48]
Georgina Godwin
I mean, I see what you're saying. I wonder if it's right that athletes who've trained for years and may have no involvement in politics at all should be penalized just by dint of their nationality.
- [20:58]
Ash Bhardwaj
They're not being penalized. They can still compete, just not under the Russian or Belarusian flags. So the athletes themselves are not being penalised by being allowed to compete. It's simply that you're not giving Russia and Belarus, the nations, the legitimacy that they seek. And. And for Putin, his main strategic objective is to make the world respect Russia and think Russia is great again. It really hurts him that Russia is not allowed to compete under its national flag.
- [21:23]
Georgina Godwin
Let's look at where this spills into culture. At the Berlinale Film Festival, more than 80 current and former participants signed an open letter after the German festival jury president, that's Wim Wenders, said that they should keep out of politics. This was related to questions surrounding the Israel Gaza conflict. And of course, we're seeing that particular issue crop up a great deal with people canceling each other over very strong views on this. Can art ever be a safe space or is it meant to be exactly the opposite, in fact?
- [21:55]
Marie Le Conte
Oh, how long do you have? No, I mean, that's an incredibly tough question. I think my instinct would be to say that, you know, you can't. Not all art, I think, is political, but I don't think you could. You can ask of art to be entirely apolitical is probably how I do go about it. And I think it is definitely up to individual kind of artists choice, whether they want to involve kind of contemporary or historical politics in their work, in their practice. But I do think you have to be able to let them do it. So, no. So I think this idea of actually where artists would kind of stand outside the world is nonsensical in my opinion.
- [22:28]
Georgina Godwin
I mean, this letter also noted that the Berlin Ale had made clear statements in the past about other atrocities, including Ukraine. So are there double standards here?
- [22:37]
Ash Bhardwaj
Absolutely. It sounds like there's double standards. And for the artists themselves to be able to stand up and express themselves is what they do, whether they're musicians, whether they're expressing themselves through a different form of art. So absolutely, the idea that they can express their political views seems to be okay. And if that means that they then get banned from the festival for wanting to express these views, that's the festival's choice. But I don't think this idea that you can separate sport and politics or art and politics really makes a huge amount of sense.
- [23:08]
Georgina Godwin
And I mean, it's really spilled over into the book world. We've seen this happen time and time again. Baillie Gifford had to pull all their funding from 10 festivals in Britain, putting many of them at jeopardy because a group of people said no. They invest in fossil fuels. You can't have anything to do with them. I think there's quite a lot of pressure brought to bear on particularly young writers who feel like they have to comply with this pressure. And I wonder if it's fair on artists to put them in a position to have to walk away from publicizing their work.
- [23:36]
Ash Bhardwaj
I don't think it's fair on the artists or the authors. If some people want to express their opinions, that's fine, but I don't think you should then be forcing others. And of course, a lot of the authors or the artists or musicians who are being able to take those positions of great stance are ones who already have a lot of authority and maybe even a lot of wealth already. So it is very difficult, particularly for those young authors.
- [24:00]
Georgina Godwin
Absolutely, absolutely. There's a really good. Newcastle Festival is a festival in Australia, actually. And they've just, in the light of Adelaide Festival being cancelled, they've put out a thing saying that. That the artists are there on the strength of their work, it's their contribution to literary and cultural conversation and that the audience are there to engage with literature that offers a range of perspectives. And it says that an invitation to the festival isn't an endorsement of the sentiments in the work or a writer's views and opinions and that they support freedom of expression as a fundamental human right. And I thought that that was a pretty good statement to put out there. Just to say they're here, that doesn't mean we agree with them, but it's important that you hear lots of different views.
- [24:46]
Marie Le Conte
I find it hard to respond to this because I don't really know who they're talking about because I think again, even 10 years ago, I think wholeheartedly agreed with the statement and with the sentiment expressed in it. I think at a time when we have people like Steve Bannon whose game. And I feel like a lot of the right wing populace, I think, you know, essentially just game liberal institutions because all they need is a platform, you know, and actually lots of. I think liberals will say, you know, but actually it's fine because so much is the best is infectant and we have to invite them and debate them. It doesn't work. I mean a. It doesn't work. We've seen that Trump, you know, won the election twice and I think, you know, populists are on the march more or less everywhere, so I think it doesn't work. But also, this is what they do. That is part of the populist playbook. I think the platform is the entire point. So, again, I think the statement it depends on, you know, they're just talking about someone who happens to be a bit right wing, then by all means they should be able to have a platform. But if it's someone who is again seeking to dismantle democracy, then my sympathy is limited, I think.
- [25:45]
Ash Bhardwaj
I mean, one of Bannon's favorite phrases is politics is downstream of culture. So he set out to change culture. That was the reason why he set up his website. I can't remember the name of it right now, but, yeah, that's a specific objective and it ties into what we were discussing earlier on about the institutions. Yes, absolutely. The populist right would completely try and capture those institutions if they go into government, but beforehand they're quite happy to criticise the other side of double standards.
- [26:13]
Georgina Godwin
So sometimes things possibly should be banned on the grounds of, well, safety, price gouging, noise nuisance and, let's face it, taste. Transport for London, the body that regulates public transport in the British capital, has said that pedicab riders will have to be licensed. They'll need to meet English language requirements, pass a safety test and hold a driving theory test certificate. Have you ever been on one of those rickshaws?
- [26:37]
Marie Le Conte
I have not, but I think I once had an incredibly absurd moment. So not long after the kind of end of the pandemic, end of the lockdowns, and I was going home, walking through Soho, which was still entirely kind of like, silent and empty, because, again, it was the first few nights, I think lots of people were still staying at home and it was a bit tipsy walking home in the completely empty streets of Soho. And I turned around the side street and then there was this rickshaw which, as I started walking, started playing, like, deafening level Rhythm of the Night. And I was the only person there and I was like, am I having a complete mental breakdown? I have such a strong memory of, like, is this it? Am I just having an episode? So I think that that is the only, my only pedicab related incident.
- [27:15]
Georgina Godwin
You must have come across them, Ash.
- [27:17]
Ash Bhardwaj
Yeah, and I find them incredibly frustrating when I'm trying to cross Waterloo Bridge on my commute, because they tend to just park up in the bike lane and get in the way. And they are a really fun thing for people to do. You know, the most common people to use them are people who've popped up to London to go and see some musical theater. You see like mums with their kids on them pedaling around in central London having a great time. But the fact that sometimes they completely exploit people to charge them, in one instance up to £480 for a 10 minute ride, I mean, it literally should be criminal.
- [27:52]
Georgina Godwin
Is that a stupid tax though? I mean, you need to check the price before you getting the thing, don't you?
- [27:59]
Ash Bhardwaj
But it's also just, it's just not nice. And I'm quite happy to see that kind of regulation come in on them.
- [28:04]
Marie Le Conte
Yeah, not banned, we're just regulated. Is it? A pound a minute, I believe now, which is still, I would say that's not cheap.
- [28:11]
Georgina Godwin
I mean, sometimes I have to say, when you're in the West End, it does lift your mood to see a flash of pink neon and leopard skin and hear ABBA numbers being, you know, blasted out, doesn't it?
- [28:21]
Ash Bhardwaj
Yeah, it does. It's really, it is good fun sitting around and, you know, like I say, you see these families on them having such a great time, it's really, really lovely to see. And you can see them enjoying a great night out in London.
- [28:31]
Georgina Godwin
I am however, going to take the tube home, just to make it clear. Marie Le Conte and Ash Bardwaj, thank you so much for joining us. Finally, we're going to swap from London to take you to Milan. Earlier today on our daily Olympics show, Monocle in Milan, which has been broadcasting all week from Milan's tallest building, the Allianz Tower. We heard from someone who has contributed significantly to the city's architecture and skyline. Monocle's Andrew Muller spoke with Patricia Veal, co founder of ACPV Architects, and began by asking whether she could see anything she'd built from all the way up in the broadcast tower.
- [29:08]
Patricia Veal
Actually, not from that side. This is north side.
- [29:10]
Andrew Muller
Okay.
- [29:10]
Patricia Veal
On the south side. Yes. You can see growing up our tower, what we call the Torre Faro, which is on the south side of Milan, is quite unique. You see that the skyline is completely different, of course, so it's very visible.
- [29:27]
Andrew Muller
Okay, I will ask you to point that out to me perhaps after the show. It's all way over the other side of this floor. But on that thought, would you say that Milan does have a distinct architectural tradition? When you contribute to Milan skyline, do you feel like there's something already there that you're tapping into absolutely.
- [29:48]
Patricia Veal
Milano is a very special city in Italy, where modernity is very much embedded in the aesthetics of the evolution of the city. We call Lascuala di Milano a kind of design tradition that is actually maintaining very, very much intertwined rigor, elegance, architecture, interiors, sophistication in the relationship with the common ground, which is quite unique in the. I would say in the urban tradition in Italy also, because Milano is a very international city, very well connected with the rest of Europe. It's a very important metropolitan area in the plain, surrounded by mountains, close by the borderlines of the country. But it's a very small city, very dense. So the environment here is very much appropriate for very, very contemporary way of life in the urban environment. Meaning what we call the 15 minute city, the walkable distances, the polycentric and so on and so forth.
- [31:07]
Andrew Muller
But for a modern architect though, does Milan maybe give you a bit more freedom to operate than you might have, in other words, Italian cities? Is there a feeling here of not being quite so trapped by thousands of years of history?
- [31:24]
Patricia Veal
In a way, yes, again, because modernity is a tradition here in Milano. But I just wanted to say that the antique tradition and the historical city is not the only limit that you have. The urban environment is made by landscape, urban landscape. And of course, the height of the building, the density, the size of the streets, the alignments, the street walls, the materials, the colors are part of the urban environment that we want to respect and somehow, and somehow meant to. But the vertical city is becoming very much part of the idea of density here in Milano being a very dense city. The pressure of the economics, the culture, the capability of Milano to attract international champions in the economic world, like this one, for example, Allianz is pushing the city towards the verticality, which is very interesting because it's very much different.
- [32:38]
Andrew Muller
You are working on a number of projects right now which do involve buildings going very much upwards rather than outwards. I was looking earlier at something like the A2A tower, which is. Looks kind of like a very modern idea of a very big lighthouse. What are the challenges involved with a building like that now? How are you managing to integrate it into what's already there?
- [33:04]
Patricia Veal
The point with H2A tower was to freed the urban soil. Why this? Because we are exactly on the edge of the Scaro di Porto Romana, where the Olympic village is by instance. And the condition, the connection between the center of the city, which is very close by in that very specific position, and the south of Milano was really the goal. So the morphology of the building came out from that idea. So it's not about being a tower and that's it. It's about being small, touching the ground. But also the result is that south side of Milano is now getting a new identity. Historically, the south side of Milano was very much at the agricultural kind of edge of the city. We have a beautiful agricultural park down there and of course the mountains are on the other side side. So the relationship of this very much non homogeneous kind of environment, the flat land, the agriculture and the mountains was very attractive for the expansion of the city towards northeast and northwest. So the south side of Milan is the new far south like that. We are pushing very much for, for several reasons of course. For example, the arena, Santa Giulia arena is down in that direction, which is.
- [34:48]
Andrew Muller
Where we were last night in fact. But are you finding though that your clients are wanting different things from office space that they might have wanted when the company Was starting out 25 years ago?
- [35:00]
Patricia Veal
Of course now the space where you work is not just a piece of real estate, it's very much a tool to enhance the capability of people to build up relationships, to go through research, to share, to, I mean to enhance their skills. Because whatever you can do for your day by day work can be done from everywhere. What needs to be done together is of course what is driving today, the design of the office space. And it's not, I would say, any more related to efficiency. It's not any more related to, I would say the image of the company is more about the attitude, is more about the sense of community, the sense of, of to be permeable to the world outside the company, to be capable, to exchange and to be different and to change and to evolve. So it's not anymore to be established. It's something completely different.
- [36:19]
Georgina Godwin
That's Patricia Veal, co founder of ACPV Architects, speaking to Andrew Muller. Our Olympic show, Monocle in Milan will be live Again tomorrow at 9am London, 10 10am in Milan or wherever you get your podcasts. And that's all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. A big thanks to my panelists today, Ash Bhardwaj and Marie Le Conte. Today's show was produced by Hassan Anderson and Chris Chermak. It was researched by Anneliese Maynard. Our sound engineer was Elliot Greenfield. I'm Georgina Godwin here in London. The Monocle Daily is back the same time tomorrow.