Amsterdam-Oost is precisely the kind of neighbourhood that unsettles Geert Wilders, the populist leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV). It is multicultural, mixed-income and on the up. But when the Netherlands’ four-party coalition collapsed on Tuesday, prompted by Wilders’ withdrawal from the government, this diverse eastern district was not perturbed. In an area that’s home to people of more than 100 nationalities and where the PVV won less than 10 per cent of the vote in 2023, life along Javastraat carried on as usual. Here, where Wilder’s ire is centred, this rhetoric merely amounted to headlines and hot air – failing to impact a happy and diverse community. 
 
The coalition’s collapse came after the Dutch government refused to heed Wilders’ demands for a draconian asylum plan, which included border troops and a halt to new refugee accommodation. Upon being refused, he walked. The coalition had always been fragile – prime minister Dick Schoof, appointed last July to steady the ship, resigned shortly after.

Recent polls have placed the PVV at second or third place, which is normally enough to secure a spot around the coalition table. But not this time: though Wilders continues to command support outside major cities, Dutch politicians are troubled by his unreliability. So he has returned to the role that suits him best: outsider in chief.
 
Javastraat was once a working-class area full of Turkish bakeries and North African grocers but is now also home to minimalist cafés serving iced lattes. A barista sums up the mood with typical Dutch bluntness. “Wilders is a toddler and now we all have to clean up his mess,” he says. Relief, mingled with disbelief, defined the day: relief that the coalition has finally crumbled and disbelief that it lasted this long. 
 
Yet the optics are awkward. In less than three weeks’ time, the Netherlands will host the Nato summit in The Hague under a caretaker government. Former prime minister Mark Rutte, whose resignation led to the formation of this coalition, now serves as Nato’s secretary-general. As one Dutch commentator noted, the country risks looking less like a stable partner in the Atlantic alliance than “a butler to a once-noble family fallen into decline”.
 
The Netherlands will vote in a national election for the ninth time this century on 29 October; in Europe, only Bulgaria has held more. The famously pragmatic Dutch just sigh, climb on their bicycles and carry on. Despite the PVV’s polling numbers, its leader’s credibility as a coalition partner has eroded. The likely outcome? Another centrist, multiparty government – a familiar Dutch solution and one that will quietly end this populist experiment. But Javastraat’s tepid relief is indicative of a world where Wilders’ rhetoric is not going anywhere. The street absorbs the chaos and adapts, quietly sweeping up the pieces left behind by a would-be strongman gone brittle.

De Vries is a journalist and regular Monocle contributor based in Amsterdam. For more from the Dutch capital, read our interview with its mayor, Femke Halsema, who talks sex, drugs and tourism. 

There was plenty of innovation on display at Orgatec Tokyo, the city’s largest office-design fair, which concluded yesterday (writes Fiona Wilson). Crowds gathered to see how the big Japanese brands are planning to spruce up the workplace. There were queues at Kokuyo’s stand for its Ing Cloud, a mesh-backed chair designed with gamers and traders in mind. Itoki had furniture in bold colours that would take pride of place in a chic apartment. Meanwhile, Muji showed its soon-to-be-launched all-cardboard office, which can easily be assembled and dismantled, and even comes with a sliding door. International brands were present too. Finnish firm Framery, the originators of the soundproof booth, came to showcase pods that offer flattering lighting for screen calls.

Office culture has changed in Japan. Remote working and hot-desking have shaken up the grey, spartan spaces of old. Instead, there are back-friendly stools, long shared tables and a multitude of stylish soft furnishings to smarten any waiting area. One of our favourite pieces is Plus Furniture’s Office Nap armchair, featuring a pull-down hood for a commonplace occurrence in Japan: the snooze. 

To catch up on the lessons that we learned from Orgatec in Köln late last year, including how comfort is not always king, click here.

Landscape architects make beautiful parks and places where office workers devouring their lunchtime sandwiches can be surrounded by buzzing bees and chirping birds (writes Andrew Tuck). But there’s a lot more than that behind any project by Los Angeles and San Francisco-based studio Terremoto. The company’s work is underpinned by a radical manifesto that seeks to challenge how the discipline works – and even what its remit should be.

Among its recent projects is a plaza in Denver, on the corner of 17th Street and California Street. It’s a privately owned but publicly accessible space. Here, surrounded by skyscrapers, Terremoto has made a curvy garden with large trees, giant boulders, chunky wooden benches and grasses that move with the breeze. It’s a slice of rewilding in a bustling downtown.

David Godshall, a principal at Terremoto, is one of its creators. While he’s content with the outcome, he says that there won’t be too many more schemes of this kind in the studio’s portfolio. The reason? He believes that the first thing that’s wrong with his discipline is that its practitioners unwisely stray too far. “We believe that landscape architects and designers should mostly be local,” says Godshall. “The work is inescapably regional. If you were to put me somewhere in Europe, for example, I probably wouldn’t be very good at my job. Landscapes should be by, of and for the creatures and communities that they serve.”

A longer version of this article is on monocle.com. Click here to read Tuck’s piece on how to fix urban parks and gardens. And to listen to his conversation with Godshall, tune in to the latest episode of ‘The Urbanist’.

Lisbon’s glazed tile work is an important part of the capital’s distinctive charm but some façades stand out among the rest. Artist Maria Ana Vasco Costa’s tiles jut out in geometric, three-dimensional forms, transforming flat surfaces into urban sculptures. For Konfekt’s summer issue, on sale now, we took a walk with Vasco Costa through the city’s streets and visited the factory where her craft comes to life.

Her work can be seen on the walls of Cartier’s Barcelona and Los Angeles boutiques but it’s here in the artist’s home city that they look their best. “For me, tiles are alive,” she told us. “There’s absolutely no way that I can map out all of the different ways that they will look once they’re out in the open. I only really get to see the final work with everyone else, when the scaffolding comes down.” 
 
Though Portugal has spent centuries perfecting this craft, Vasco Costa fears that a construction boom is causing a standardisation of the ceramic industry and dulling the city’s architectural identity. “I am fully aware that I only do what I do because I am Portuguese,” said Vasco Costa. “I grew up in Lisbon surrounded by all of this inspiration from artists such as Maria Keil.” 
 
To learn how Vasco Costa is acting as an ambassador for Lisbon’s ceramic craft, pick up the summer issue of ‘Konfekt’ today.

We explore an innovative pay-to-grow scheme that is helping to encourage tree growth in Sierra Leone’s capital city. Plus, Stockholm’s Battle of the Elms and making a greener Denver.