Highlights from Monocle’s Quality of Life Conference and Manuel Aires Mateus on intelligent architecture

Monocle on Design

This episode of Monocle On Design features highlights from the Quality of Life Conference in Lisbon, including insights on sustainable mobil

Key takeaways

• Designing small everyday objects like cutlery can influence how people eat and live mindfully.

Main topics

• Intelligent architecture
• Sustainable urban mobility

Notable quotes

"I wanted to create cutlery that would encourage you to slow down. It can make you skinnier." – Manuel Aires Mateus

Conclusion

This episode underscores how thoughtful design—whether in buildings, cutlery, or urban

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) Range Rover is proud to partner with Monocle on Design on Monocle Radio. Speaker 3 (0:05) The original luxury SUV is now available to order with electric propulsion. Built in Solihull, home of Range Rover since 1970, the first ever Range Rover Electric heralds a new era of refinement with uncompromised capability. Quieter, more responsive and with more torque than any Range Rover to date, Range Rover Electric is a combination of peerless design and breathtaking modernity. Range Rover Electric. more Range Rover than ever. Speaker 4 (0:56) This is Monocle On Design, a show where we discuss everything from architecture and craft to furniture and graphic design. I'm Nick Manisse. On today's program, an in-depth conversation with one of Portugal's leading architects, Manuel Eirish Mateus. Plus, we discuss what we learned at this year's Monocle Quality of Life Conference in Lisbon and why the Portuguese capital continues to be a leading design city. All that coming up on Monocle On Design. Speaker 4 (1:28) Grace Charlton, Monocle's Associate Editor of Design and Fashion. G'day, what's going on? Hey, Speaker 2 (1:33) you're back. Speaker 4 (1:34) I'm back. Speaker 2 (1:35) Exciting. You've lost your voice a little bit. A little bit. It was sounding better today than it was a few days ago. Speaker 4 (1:41) It was really bad on Saturday, but I feel like I've recovered. Do you get any, like, is there any sort of jealousy for the team that's left behind in London? Or are you enjoying the peace and quiet of an office without half the team here? Speaker 2 (1:53) I would have enjoyed it if it hadn't been the production week for the October issue of the magazine. So that was a little bit hectic, sort of, you know, emailing the editor-in-chief while he's... very busy and trying to figure out stuff with the design team that was in London. But I'm glad you had a good time. Speaker 4 (2:09) You've been taking care of the fashion pages. Can you give us a little bit of a peek as to what you've been making for this? Because the October issue is a fashion special. Speaker 2 (2:16) Yeah, it was quite hectic. We did a top 25, which is our usual sort of October issue tone setting feature where we include brands we think are cool and pieces that we want for autumn, winter. And then I also had to do a business story all about fragrance, which has been great because I basically now have 25 new perfumes in my possession. Speaker 4 (2:40) Standout? Favorite? I Speaker 2 (2:42) really like Cyan Nori by Abel, which is a Kiwi brand. And it smells like, it kind of smells like salty sea brine. But I'm into it. It smells clean. So there's the perfume special. And then we did like a special how to get dressed illustrative feature, which you helped me out with. Thank you so much. And then we did big interviews with like a Japanese footwear entrepreneur, someone from Richelle Mill, the watch brand and the CEO of MyTeresa. So there's some really good stuff in there. And Speaker 4 (3:08) that is a packed lineup. Speaker 2 (3:09) I think. And then I also did a feature for the design pages and a few in the front of mags. So I think in all in all. I sort of had my hand or fingerprints over 50 pages in the next issue. Speaker 4 (3:20) Yeah, that's kind of amazing. Do you feel like you need a little bit of a break? Speaker 2 (3:23) Well, yes, but I'm not going to get one because we're going back to back. We're doing our annual business special this week, which is called The Entrepreneurs. But to be honest, anything feels like a piece of cake. After that. Speaker 4 (3:34) Hang on, I want to ask, let's just briefly circle back to Scent because that felt like it was a big, chunky feature. Did you talk scent design as well? Did you get kind of nerdy into how they create fragrances? I Speaker 2 (3:46) wish I could have gotten more into the actual design process because one of my passions in life is actually scent and I love meeting noses. I've met Celine Barel, who's quite famous. She did a lot of perfumes for Aesop, including Tacit and Above Us Diora, which I think you have a sample of. Speaker 4 (4:06) On my desk, yes. Very intense. Speaker 2 (4:08) She's like a legend and I've spoken to her before. And the way that she describes scent and sort of intellectualizes it is incredible. So the perfume you have sort of represents a shooting star. It has like a sort of smoky, fiery quality, but also like very ethereal. It's so fun. I love talking about Speaker 4 (4:24) it. So are we going to add this to your list of like potential late in life careers? So we've got obviously Carpenter. Are we adding Nose on there as well? Speaker 2 (4:32) I reckon I'd be so good at it. Can I hear about the Quality of Life Conference and what were the top three things you learned? Speaker 4 (4:38) This is a really... Great question. Top three things I learned. I'm going to give little nuggets from a few of the panels. So we had one panel from the team behind Amble, which are these electric vehicles which sit somewhere between a car and a golf buggy. So they're road legal, but they're like little EVs open to the elements, are intended to just kind of zip around, whether that's a seaside resort or a mountaintop village that was designed for a time before cars. But the way... that its co-founder and chairman, Jose Antonio Uva, described. He was developing this seaside hotel. He started to see cars almost, and these were his words, as a form of violence in certain contexts. They can be so aggressive, both in their noise, their size, their scale. So he wanted to find something that was a little bit more robust than a golf cart. It also had a very, very kind of light touch, both visually, which is why they have the kind of like open canopy style, but also, I guess, in terms of the environment. So I really like that. Do you reckon you would be zipping around in one? I'd Speaker 2 (5:40) love to. I don't think you need your Speaker 4 (5:41) license for this. Really? If you're driving it on private property. Speaker 2 (5:44) Oh, okay. Speaker 4 (5:45) So be in a resort. Step Speaker 2 (5:47) one, get a private property. Yeah, I like the idea. Golf carts freak me out. When I'm in the back of them, I feel like they're going to topple over and I'm going to die. Speaker 4 (5:53) So I think there's a stability that's offered by Amble, which I think is quite nice. Second one. Dr. Courtney Conley, she is the founder of Gate Happens and the author of Walk. She's a foot specialist. And we had a lengthy discussion about the importance of your feet. Did you know, and I'm curious if you can do this, you should be able to separate all your toes, like your fingers, and you should be able to lift each one of them individually. You should be able to play the piano with your toes. Speaker 2 (6:18) I'm doing it now. Speaker 4 (6:19) Are you like, again, strong visual, everyone just under there, under the desk with their little tootsies going, the little dogs going up and down. Speaker 2 (6:26) Yeah, this is a big thing in yoga. You're supposed to spread your toes. Speaker 4 (6:29) I've been using yoga toes, like this device. It's kind of like this rubbery device that slots between your toes. I've been putting them on each evening to try and improve my foot health. I think this is nice as a metaphor for a design show because we're talking about, you know, as humans to have a solid foundation, much like a building to have a solid foundation, you need healthy toes and you need, I guess, a healthy building foundation to make sure it stands up to the test of time thing. And then this one, and you'll love this, the last lesson, and this is forecasting or throwing ahead to our interview for today's show, but... On the panel with Manuel Arish Mateus, who's an amazing Portuguese architect, he was kind of talking about all these different things that he designed. So obviously buildings, but he's worked on things like cutlery. And I was kind of asking him what his approach to cutlery is like. What's he trying to achieve with it? Is it just something that's purely aesthetic? Speaker 4 (7:19) essentially was like, well, I wanted to create cutlery that would encourage you to slow down. This did feel a little bit targeted and we'll hear this in the clip, but he looked at me and he's like, and can make you skinnier. So he told me this at the dinner the night before, and then we