There are many people who will tell you that being cool just doesn’t matter. That, while style might be a nice add-on, it’s really not something that you should be spending too much time thinking about. That appearances are fundamentally irrelevant.

But they are wrong. How things look and making places that are cool can be a positive, potent driver in everything from economics to architecture and urbanism. One place that seems to have cottoned on to this is New Zealand’s largest city.

Poor old Auckland has been the target of some rather waspish comments over the years. Travel writer Paul Theroux described arriving in the city a few decades ago as like “touching down on a distant star”. When former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew came to town in the 1990s, he’s said to have described Auckland as “shut”. Now, I’m sure that many Kiwis were indifferent to these arrows and the city was happy to be the urban equivalent of a dad in flares but other residents understood the damage that this inflicted – including a brain drain that saw numerous people leaving to find fun and opportunities in Sydney, London and Los Angeles. Change was needed and, over the past 20 years, the city has been rebuilt, with its post-industrial waterfront taken back for public use. As we go to press, it’s also preparing to open the largest infrastructure project in the country’s history.

The City Rail Link is New Zealand’s first underground metro system and comes with a series of beautiful stations that have been attracting thousands of visitors on special preview days. Its imminent unveiling was a good cue for us to send reporter Gordon Peake to assess how the city got its new look and how being a bit cooler is changing perceptions.

The often-surprising impact of beauty in the things that we build and make is a recurring idea in this issue. It certainly runs through a wonderful interview by Grace Charlton with Lebanon-born, Paris-based architect Lina Ghotmeh.

I first met Ghotmeh when she participated in our Quality of Life Conference in the French capital in 2022. I was transfixed by her ability to rise above the fray to talk about what architecture can do for people and countries; coming from a nation scarred by wars and infighting had clearly given her both clarity of thought and a determination to deliver change. It’s a mindset that has resulted in Ghotmeh winning competitions to design everything from a perfect factory (for Hermès) to national exhibition pavilions (for Bahrain at Expo 2025 in Osaka). Now, she’s redesigning the Western Range galleries of the British Museum in London that house objects from ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome.

Reading her interview, you will immediately sense her ability to harness design to deliver so much more than just an efficient exhibition space. “How do we allow a piece of architecture to become a place that builds our knowledge, that allows you to experience the work better but also to open up to dialogue?” she asks. “The museum is not a static place that just showcases objects from the past. It’s also a contemporary place that has to allow for debate and learning from our ancestors.” It’s designed as a Trojan horse to deliver big ideas that will stay with visitors forever.

Debate and learning have been common threads in Monocle since our launch in 2007 – the first issue went on sale on 14 February that year. Over the coming months, in the run-up to our 20th-anniversary celebrations, we will be putting the spotlight on some of our own history.

This month’s Expo pages document what has become a key part of our brand: our annual Quality of Life Conference, which this year unfolded in Lisbon. The event is the magazine brought to life; a display of all the topics that we care about but also a moment when we are able to underline some bigger ideas – that listening is good, that we can find some of the best answers in fields beyond our own. And that, yes, being cool can be a good thing.

If you would like to send me ideas, thoughts or style tips, I can always be found at at@monocle.com

The post Looking good and feeling great: Our October issue examines the rewards of a sharp appearance beyond mere aesthetics appeared first on Monocle.

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