Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
Best new books for kids this fall, recommended by librarians - Washington Post: “When children are very young, they will — even if they’re wiggling — listen when a book is read to them. As they get older, this becomes more difficult, given the distraction of screens and other activities. What can parents and caregivers do? Keep trying. Also, give kids the chance to pick the books themselves. Fortunately, this fall’s crop of books for kids and teens offers some stellar possibilities.
Looking for a World War II spy novel? See “The Bletchley Riddle.” For something funny, try “Jax Freeman and the Phantom Shriek.” Teens who relish horror or vampires should check out “Ruin Road” and “Immortal Dark,” while adolescent romance fans will swoon to “Twenty Four Seconds From Now.” And young picture-book lovers can choose silly, “The Man Who Didn’t Like Animals,” or thoughtful, “When You Find the Right Rock.” So, let the choosing — and the reading — begin.”
See also Washington Post – What book should my child read next? A librarian offers suggestions. Hi, I’m Sylvie Shaffer, a children’s literature specialist living in Takoma Park, Md. Over the 15 years I spent working as a school librarian in the District, I noticed a lot of thematic repetition in questions from students, families and teachers.
So, when The Washington Post recently solicited queries from readers, I prioritized answering those I thought would help the greatest number of families, teachers and young readers. I hope my advice is useful…”
In an email sent to several DC-area art exhibition spaces on Monday, August 19, column author and critic Mark Jenkins announced the series would shut down after the last iteration runs in this Sunday’s print edition. - Hyperallergic
Artist and illustrator Andrew DeGraff makes maps that show where the characters travel during movies — imagine Billy’s trail maps from Family Circus but for films like Back to the Future, The Breakfast Club, Pulp Fiction, and Mad Max: Fury Road.
Another best-of-the-21st-century books-list is out, as The Conversation presents their Best Australian books of the 21st century: as chosen by 50 experts. (And they let us know that we can look forward to a New Zealand version soon as well. Hey, every country should do this !)
Gracing the top floor of the exquisite c1926 `Maranoa' building in an exclusive cul-de-sac, this grand house-sized apartment delivers harbourside elegance at its finest within footsteps of Redleaf Pool and Seven Shillings Beach.
Offering a wonderful sense of space and privacy with an extra-wide entrance foyer and peaceful leafy outlooks, it reveals an incredible layout with beautifully appointed interiors enhanced by polished timber flooring, high ornate ceilings and extensive custom joinery.
Generous living and dining rooms offer plenty of space to relax and entertain, while a gourmet stone kitchen features premium Ilve gas appliances. Accommodation comprises three well-proportioned bedrooms, the main is appointed with a built-in wardrobe and enjoys access to a sizeable sunroom/terrace balcony.
Gracing the top floor of the exquisite c1926 `Maranoa' building in an exclusive cul-de-sac, this grand house-sized apartment delivers harbourside elegance at its finest within footsteps of Redleaf Pool and Seven Shillings Beach. Offering a wonderful sense of space and privacy with an extra-wide entrance foyer and peaceful leafy outlooks, it reveals an incredible layout with beautifully appointed interiors enhanced by polished timber flooring, high ornate ceilings and extensive custom joinery. Generous living and dining rooms offer plenty of space to relax and entertain, while a gourmet stone kitchen features premium Ilve gas appliances. Accommodation comprises three well-proportioned bedrooms, the main is appointed with a built-in wardrobe and enjoys access to a sizeable sunroom/terrace balcony.
Property Features:
-Grand house-sized layout with separate living/dining rooms
-Gourmet stone kitchen with premium Ilve gas appliances
-Generous bedrooms, two with built-in desks and storage
-Huge master with built-in robe adjoins sizeable sunroom
-Fully-tiled main bathroom, second bedroom with ensuite
-Polished timber floors, high ornate ceilings, custom joinery
-Wide arched windows frame leafy bayside vistas throughout
-Extra-wide entrance foyer, no common walls, gas outlets
-Large internal laundry, extensive storage, video intercom
-Only two apartments per floor, two permit parking available
-Landmark c1926 building of seven in exclusive cul-de-sac
-Stroll to Redleaf Pool, Seven Shillings Beach, Steyne Park
-Walk to cosmopolitan Double Bay Village, ferries, buses
-Easy access to prestigious schools and Edgecliff Station
-Potential for x2 parking permits via Council (stca)
Michelle Nicol and Rudolf Schürmann have always had a taste for exceptional architecture.
The Swiss couple, who are currently based in Basel, are partners in both work and life and have spent decades seeking out distinct and unique properties to call home. They have lived in a concrete abode built and owned by Brutalist architect Hans Demarmels, a diminutive split-level unit in a housing co-op known as Kraftwerk1, and a remarkable 1970s mountainside property that followed an entirely octagonal theme, from the floor plan to the door handles, to the enormous black Bisazza mosaic bathtub.
“Since I was a child, I’ve had very good memories of spaces,” says Schürmann. “They are my fantasies. I always made it possible to live in wonderful architectural spaces: owned houses, apartments and even a co-operative.”
When we meet, in the Serpentine Pavilion designed by Minsuk Cho, the pair has just returned from a trip to Mallorca, where they have been scoping out new possibilities for property development on the island. This nascent venture is part of their new business, Poeticwalls, which focuses on brokering the buying and selling of architecturally distinguished homes, consulting on renovations (they prefer the term “transformations”) and collaborating with architects to conceive small-scale, well-considered new builds.
People have always known that we’re into special architecture,” says Nicol. “So over the years friends and acquaintances began seeking our advice and recommendations.” But in shifting gear to handling real estate, the jump from friendly suggestion to professional expert guidance was significant, to say the least.
Before building a career in advertising with the likes of Saatchi & Saatchi and Euro RSCG, Schürmann trained in painting and sculpture at the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts under the tutelage of renowned artists including Gerhard Richter — an experience he draws from when conceiving concepts for properties. Nicol, meanwhile, studied art history with the architectural theorist and Le Corbusier specialist Stanislaus von Moos, before working as a journalist and curator.
In 2001 they set up their own creative agency, the Zurich-based Neutral, which they still oversee. “We began by bringing together great minds from across architecture, art, fashion and design,” says Nicol. Schürmann adds, “It was quite a new concept at the time, and people didn’t really understand what we were doing.”
The company has since worked with clients including Credit Suisse, Cartier and Art Basel, while seeking out the expertise of thought leaders including architect Rem Koolhaas and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. Among their most distinctive projects was a collaboration between Ai Weiwei and the DIY retailer Hornbach, which featured a series of downloadable instructions so customers could buy everyday materials and construct their own Ai-approved work of art. In a somewhat prophetic move, the agency also produced the launch campaign for Switzerland’s major online property portal, Homegate.
The pair had some practical experience in advance of embarking on their new venture. “Before we even had the idea for Poeticwalls, we sold a house for the artist Ugo Rondinone,” Nicol recalls. “He had built a beautiful property just outside Zurich and I suggested we take care of the process.” This astonishing property, known as House No.1, was designed by Fuhrimann Hächler Architekten. It is based on traditional Japanese principles, complete with interconnected rooms that stretch out on to elevated terraces. References to the artist’s work are peppered throughout, including a functioning replica of the sculpture “Still.Life. (John’s Fireplace)” and elegant lattice windows, a recurring motif in his practice.
The gesamtkunstwerk was originally sold to a Parisian fashion designer. When they decided to move on, Nicol and Schürmann once again handled the sale. The new owner, Marcela Velez, was delighted with the way they described the house to her, through storytelling. “They are brokers with taste and style, with a very curated list that makes buyers like me trust their offering, as they will only be selling special houses,” she says.
Spending time with owners and their families, to learn about the many iterations a property might have taken and the memories it holds, is an important part of the selling process. “It is always emotional to sell a home, particularly if you have lived there a long time and even more so if your family built it,” Nicol says. “Our clients want someone who understands and recognises great architecture.”
In the UK, one need only consider the success of The Modern House and its sister platform Inigo (as well as more recent contenders such as Aucoot) to understand the appeal. Sellers are hungry for agents who understand the value of their design decisions, while employing architectural editorial and high-spec photography to secure a sale. Prospective buyers are equally keen to deal with a well-informed and judicious broker (while occasionally finding they need to sell themselves as the perfect new owners in order to sweeten the appeal of their bid).
Such companies celebrate discernment. Poeticwalls enlists an expert jury, consisting of architects Santiago Espitia Berndt (of Herzog & de Meuron), Mia Hägg (of Habiter Autrement) and conceptual artist Rosemarie Trockel, which decides whether a home or prospective development lives up to the company’s core principles.
These tenets revolve around the rather expansive Swiss concept of Baukultur, which is ultimately concerned with a symbiotic relationship between people, the built environment and nature. Poeticwalls breaks it down into three fundamentals: does the building fulfil its purpose? Does it contribute to the wellbeing of its residents and neighbours? And — rather more intangibly — does it hold that “poetic” factor?
The standalone, single-family home is not the future. The more densely we live together, the better we need the architecture to be
While the company undoubtedly has its roots in Swiss Modernism, it will consider any property with a profound architectural personality, anywhere in the world. Enormous, banal and boxy buildings, referred to as “non-architecture” by Schürmann (and with a nod from Nicol to the portfolio presented on Netflix’s hit reality show Selling Sunset) are absolute anathema.
Perusing the current offerings, it is easy to see how high the bar is set. The recently listed home of Italian architect Carlo Cocco, built in 1973 in the lakeside city of Lugano, is an amalgam of Modernist formalism and curvaceous, sculptural lines. Raw, linear concrete is softened by elegant wood panelling, handmade Florentine terracotta tiles, and a delightfully unexpected rose-pink kitchen.
In bringing this home to market — thanks to another personal recommendation, from architect Nicola Navone — the couple hopes to not only find new owners but help share Cocco’s legacy. “He was a very private person, but we have some amazing photographs of the property throughout the years,” says Nicol. “It is so wonderful to shed light on a complete[ly] unknown [space],” Schürmann adds.
Given the pair’s experience with brokering high-end, highly individual homes, it might come as a surprise to hear that their earliest ventures into development include more collective forms of living. Plans for two buildings that encompass a series of duplex apartments in the Swiss mountain village of Isenfluh have been conceived with the Basel-based architecture practice Christ & Gantenbein. There is also the possibility to rent.
“The standalone, single-family home is not the future. The more densely we live together, the better we need the architectural quality to be,” says Schürmann. “It needs to be resilient for future generations and it needs to work with nature, too. Architecture can even enhance the quality of the landscape. It’s rare, but it is plannable.”
This is the hope for another development envisaged for the sparsely populated hamlet of Mittel Arni. Designed by Valerio Olgiati, it consists of three properties intended to blend into the black pine forest beyond. Sweeping pyramid structures offer alpine views, once again fulfilling an alliance of building and nature, favoured by Baukultur.
According to Olgiati, Nicol and Schürmann’s collaborative attitude has been a distinct asset. “In the most common case, the developer explains the wishes of his clients to the architect and in this way forms a work as a customer service,” he says. “With Poeticwalls it is different. They look for architects with visions and then communicate them to clients.”
Following our conversation, Nicol and Schürmann will travel to Scotland to visit a friend’s private estate near Dundee, which is undergoing renovation. They have been working with contemporary sculptor Martin Boyce to create a “contemplation structure” that will be embedded in the grounds, serving as a prototype for possible future editions.
This foray into a more conceptual form of architecture has echoes of James Turrell’s meditative “Skyspaces”, of which there are more than 80 throughout the world. In the same vein, this project will be as much about introspection as it is about convening with nature.
“You can lose yourself in the ancient trees and the vista is astonishing. The space will serve as a place to look outward, but also inward,” Schürmann says. Ultimately, this is the balance the pair are always looking for. “Good architecture makes you happier, more open — it’s good for your mental health and your creativity, too,” Nicol adds. “It has the power to inspire. That’s what Poeticwalls is all about.”
Yes indeed. I see it is time for your 10th annual “I’m quitting Twitter” moment. (Already, the FT’s senior editors are limbering up to inform me that house style requires us to refer to the site as X.com, or X, as per its new name, but that simply doesn’t work as a statement of intent. If I tell you that I am quitting X, you will just assume that I haven’t quite decided what to quit yet and will simply be filling in the X at a later moment.)
Furthermore, no one who is about to qwit calls it X. If you do, then you are probably still happy with the place and would not be leaving. So it is Twitter we are leaving, although, of course, if you were foolish enough to ask why, we would tell you that, actually, Twitter left us some time ago. Incidentally, don’t under any circumstances ask anyone why they are leaving Twitter, because they’ll tell you, and it won’t be in fewer than 140 characters. In any case, you don’t need to ask, because they are going to tell you whether you do or not.
But the question is: is it finally time to quit? Elon Muskhas given us a few more reasons to go. He’s let Donald Trump and Tommy Robinson back in, says civil war is inevitable in the UK and was jolly rude about Sir Keir Starmer.
So by all means quit, but let’s be clear: you can’t just leave. You have to proclaim your departure, probably at great length, explaining how it was once the greatest party on Earth, but now it is full of nasty rightwing riffraff or furious leftwing riffraff or riffraff with no discernible political views, but who are still furious and nasty in some other way.
The good news is that you could do it on Twitter. “Oyez, oyez, oyez (isn’t that the new congestion charge?), on the 24th day of August, the honourable whoever you are, boasting 25,000 followers, at least 4,000 of whom are not bots, has decided to quit this sphere. He/she will slink back some time in September.”
But you are simply not allowed to go without the long, heartfelt goodbye. The last post needs to talk about how much you loved the place, the good friends you made, the gossip, how central it was to your life . . . but that now it is even more awful than it was when you chose not to notice all the racism, misogyny and insane bullying. You cannot just slope away quietly. You must declaim.
There are many excellent models of the last letter before you leave Twitter, but can I recommend my own version from 2011, or perhaps the one from 2015 (or was it 2017?), though the last one at least recognised that I would probably give in and return before too long. It is not enough simply to tell your followers where to find you in future, so just forget for a moment that you are not Taylor Swift and that no one cares what social media you use and that we all think you will be back. Put your whole heart into it. It’s time for your “I had a dream” post.
I did toy with departing again when Musk took over. Several of my Twitter pals (I know I should call them X pals but that might imply we have fallen out) announced they were off to a site called Mastodon. I did take a look and reserved a Mastodon name but it was immediately obvious that the site was rubbish, unnecessarily nerdy and would never take off in the way Twitter had. I then looked at Facebook Threads and reserved a name but it was immediately obvious that the site was rubbish, insufficiently nerdy and would never take off in the way Twitter had. Nowadays, there is Blue Sky, which is full of people I agree with but much smaller, less informative and mostly very polite, and where’s the fun in that?
Anyway, what could be better than watching fanatical idiots enraging each other and knowing that you don’t care who loses. This is the digital equivalent of bear-baiting except without sympathy for the bear.
It’s true that X’s bonehead-per-capita ratio is depressingly high but then that’s true of a lot of places these days. Have you ever watched Love Island? X is now a cesspool of racism, misogyny and rage but, again, there have to be some alternatives to the Daily Mail.
So look, go if you want but be sure to make a meal of your departure. Draw it out, or in other words, Elongate it.
In 2025, the Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša starts work at Covent Garden as music director of the Royal Opera. He is already known in the UK, conducting at Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and the Philharmonia, but the two Proms filled with Czech music which he and the Czech Philharmonic gave this week demonstrated the context from which he comes.
Certainly in his hands the Czech Philharmonic is one of the world’s superlative orchestras. Throughout these pieces — Dvořák’s cello concerto and Suk’s second symphony in Prom 49, Dvořák’s piano concerto and Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass in Prom 50 — it showed distinctly melodious and sensuous qualities all its own, ranging from the harsh to the sweet. It was often at its most spellbinding in quiet music; the high strings created lingering magic.
The orchestra excelled in judging special sound alchemies: a brief blend of harp and trombone in the piano concerto created a poetic frisson, while the spacious Modernist opening fanfare for brass and drums in the Glagolitic Mass spoke arrestingly of history and the universal. The overall Philharmonic sound often seemed to derive colour from the blends of its wind playing.
Hrůša’s conducting was invariably energetic, without flamboyance. Even in the slowest passages, there was a propulsive quality. There seemed no ego in his direction: he was just fully engaged.
Anastasia Kobekina was Tuesday’s captivating soloist in the cello concerto. She shaped Dvořák’s melodic lines with a wide variety of vibrato and portamento; her manner alternated engagingly between the private and the public, drawing us in and giving herself out. Mao Fujita played the taxing piano part in the piano concerto in an entirely private manner. Much of Dvořák’s piano writing is gorgeously wound into the orchestral texture: Fujita was enchanting in many quiet passages. Even the most brilliant sections had a reflective tone.
Corinne Winters (soprano), Bella Adamova (mezzo), David Butt Philip (tenor) and Pavel Švingr (bass) joined the Prague Philharmonic Choir for the Glagolitic Mass, the heroic oratorio in which the pan-Slavist, pantheist, agnostic Janáček turned to Old Church Slavonic and the Glagolitic alphabet. (The only technical flaw of these concerts was that the choir, placed behind the orchestra, did not project entirely clearly, though I confess my command of Glagolitic is deficient.)
Like so much of this composer’s work, his vocal writing is often challenging in the extreme: he asks soloists and chorus to enter vocal lines on exposed high notes, with attack. The effect is often strange — but the element of strain becomes rewardingly eloquent, tying into Janácek’s larger lyricism.
These concerts’ two least known works were Suk’s second symphony (“Asrael”), an imaginative five-movement work that powerfully took the soul on a large metaphysical journey, and Vítězslava Kaprálová’s Military Sinfoniettain Prom 50. Ours is an era when the women composers of both past and present are newly honoured, but Kaprálová (1915-40) achieved much in her own short life, even conducting this sinfonietta at the Queen’s Hall, London, in 1938. It is a confident, impressive, versatile work, military but never martial.
The richness of these two concerts makes you want to immerse yourself in more Czech music for months
