The Weekly Dispatch
A curated collection of happenings, thoughts, and cultural meanderings
Morning, friends.
It’s Fri-yay ~
The sun is shining (somewhat - this is England of course).
The cherry blossoms have peaked, my iced green tea is teaing, and I've been thinking about physical spaces more than usual this week.
Perhaps it's spring's tendency to pull us outdoors, or simply the fact that I've spent too many hours staring at screens. Either way…
From the Podcast Archives: Eudaimonia Explored
Episode 3: Languishing to Flourishing Eudaimonia in the Studio and the Street
Runtime: 30 minutes | Jump to David Dewane interview at 7:20
This week, I'm entertaining the radical notion that our workplaces needn't be soul-crushing productivity prisons. Architect David Dewane joins me to unpack "eudaimonia" – that delightfully unwieldy Greek term that might just save us from the tyranny of open-plan mediocrity.
David's "Eudaimonia Machine" concept proposes something truly revolutionary: what if offices were designed for human flourishing rather than human filing? Our conversation wanders through the fertile territories of flow states and architectural ethics while steadfastly avoiding PowerPoint-friendly platitudes.
I also take you through Milan Design Week's rare moments of restraint – including Ralph Lauren's impeccably calibrated Hamptons reverie and Swarovski's mobile crystalline garden. Both proof that "experiential" needn't mean "assaulting every sense simultaneously."
On a possibly quixotic note, I make the case for Universal Studios' Bedford development being something other than a conversation about tourism in fibreglass. The UK's immersive design sector might just get the incubator it didn't realize it needed.
Listen here, or on Apple or Spotify. Like, comment & subscribe if the spirit moves you so ~
Expo Excellence: UK Makes Its Mark in Osaka
The UK Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka is now open. Wild to see something you've had your hands on actually built. Full of people. Not as sketches, or renders, or in decks - but as a living, breathing exhibition filled with kids, families, sound, light, and emotion.
Even if only for a short time at the early stages, it's incredible to see where it's gone. I sort of feel like one of those trainers who raises seeing eye puppies before they go off and become adults... Odd metaphor, I know, but I'm proud to see it fully grown.
Great work from Immersive International. 誇りに思います!お疲れ様でした。そして、これからも応援しています ~hashtag#ComeBuildTheFuture hashtag#UKPavilion hashtag#Expo2025 hashtag#Expo2025Osaka Credit: Immersive International / HMG
I keep coming back to photos of people wandering through spaces that once existed only in meetings.
There's something slightly surreal about it; like watching your imaginary friend suddenly materialize and start chatting with strangers at a party.
And yes, I'm aware of how self-indulgent it is to marvel at a project I only briefly touched, but indulge me this once.
Why We're All Falling for “Vibe-tailing”
There's this shop in Tokyo I've heard about from a friend (although long estranged, I like to keep the vicarious fantasy of still being there), smells like a forest, plays vinyl records nobody can identify, and honestly?
Sells absolutely nothing you actually need.
Yet it's packed to the rafters.
Meanwhile, across town, a perfectly merchandised store with 30% off signs might as well have tumbleweeds blowing through. Welcome to what I've started calling "vibe-tailing," where the mood does more selling than the merchandise ever could.
I've been thinking a lot about how we've moved beyond just buying things, haven't we?
Let's be brutally honest about where we are too.
The game has fundamentally changed, when TikTok is awash with Chinese manufacturers cheerfully revealing that the £3,200 handbag you're coveting costs £90 to produce, the old luxury equation falls apart rather spectacularly. (I watched one such video yesterday over breakfast and promptly canceled a purchase I'd been considering. Sorry, Brand-I-Won't-Name.)
We're not really browsing anymore, we're feeling our way through spaces. Brands like Gentle Monster don’t really sell sunglasses; they're selling the experience of being the kind of person who walks into a Gentle Monster store. It's clever, if a bit existential when you stop to think about it.
The funny thing is, I'm not immune to any of this.
Last month, I found myself standing in a boutique, watching people (myself included) queue up to pay £42 for candles scented like old books.
What were we buying?
Not wax and wicks, but the feeling of quiet Saturday afternoons spent with paperbacks. I handed over my card knowing full well what was happening, and I couldn't even be properly annoyed about it.
Physical retail spaces have become less about shelves and more about signals. Have you noticed how Aesop stores have that lighting that's somehow both gallery-bright and womb-cozy? That's not an accident either - it's emotional engineering, and damn if it doesn't work on me every time.
They could sell me bathwater in a brown bottle and call it "Temporal Essence Hydration Fluid" and I'd pay £48 for it. (They essentially do, and I essentially have.)
Maybe this is capitalism's final, most elegant form ~ not selling us more stuff, but bottling specific emotions, slapping artisanal labels on them, and watching us line up to pay premium prices.
The most self-aware among us are often the most susceptible, aren't we? There's something about acknowledging the manipulation that somehow makes participating in it feel less like surrender and more like being in on the joke.
And for those who think this is all rather silly, that shops should just sell things efficiently and be done with it – I have news: that shop already exists.
It's called Amazon, and it's very good at what it does.
But it will never make you feel what that ridiculous Shoreditch concept store made me feel for forty minutes on a Tuesday afternoon.
That feeling – of possibility, of aspiration, of a slightly better version of reality – that's what vibe-tailing at its best delivers.
Next week I promise to write about something with more substance. Or not. The vibe will decide.
Next week we'll return to our regularly scheduled complaining about overstocking retail displays.
Over and out, K