Robb Report Singapore June 2022

AFTER SEVERAL ABORTIVE attempts, it finally feels as though dawn has broken onto the darkness of border and travel restrictions. The world, bar a few countries, is now welcoming travellers again. And from many reader accounts, it would seem that we are rapidly rediscovering the joys of travel and its restorative effects on our being. With this month’s Travel issue, let us take you on an exploration of the lesser-known lights of global destinations. Wild At Heart (page 32) is a deep dive into the Nimmo Bay fishing lodge in British Columbia, where ultra-luxe means being enveloped by nature’s majesty while getting shiatsu massages on floating sauna docks, and being served by Linnéa LeTourneau, a Canadian chef whose career and cuisine has been shaped by Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris. Across the Atlantic,…

A Tribute To Speed Captain George Eyston’s three landspeed records, set between 1937 and 1939, were accomplished in the purpose-built Thunderbolt, an eightwheel, three-axle machine that was powered by two Rolls-Royce V12 aero engines. Each had a 37-litre displacement and an output of over 2,000bhp, and the Thunderbolt ended up reaching almost 580km/h. This remarkable engineering achievement, and the remarkable personality who drove it, forms the inspiration of the Landspeed Collection. Selected for this purpose is Rolls-Royce’s most powerful current offering: the Black Badge Wraith. As a Bespoke collection car, it is meticulously decorated to tell its story. For example, the wood veneer fascia is patterned after the Bonneville Salt Flats, the venue of Eyston’s records. Other interior elements reference the Thunderbolt’s aluminium construction and the bright yellow markings that increased its…

WHEN THOMAS FLOHR founded VistaJet with just two aircraft in 2004, he had no understanding of the market – which, he says, can sometimes be a good thing. It certainly worked out for VistaJet. The business aviation company offers access to 80 aircraft, which form part of the 350-aircraft fleet of parent company Vista Global, and services several thousand subscribed customers. “Before VistaJet, you had to buy a full aircraft or you didn’t know what you got until you get to the airport, ” the 62-year-old says. Now, his company provides a seamless, flexible private aviation experience with none of the downsides – or the cost – of private jet ownership. “The addressable market is 23,000 business jets in the world and they fly on average only 250 hours a…

Untitled, 1960 by Mark Rothko Auctioned by Sotheby’s in New York for US$48 million The top lot of the The Macklowe Collection sale in May – a tantalisingly rare one – was a never-before-seen late masterpiece by Mark Rothko, viewed as a quintessential example of the American artist’s signature abstraction. As one of 19 paintings on canvas executed in 1960, it encapsulates a pivotal period of artistic development in Rothko’s career, during which high-keyed colours were replaced with a more tonal, richer palette of darker reds, purples and deep blues. The work’s remarkable provenance was such that it had never been publicly exhibited, having remained in The Macklowe Collection for nearly 40 years before coming to auction. Landscape after Wang Ximeng by Zhang Daqian Auctioned by Sotheby’s in Hong Kong for HK$370 million An influx…

WHEN CRAIG MURRAY initially motored his boat through Kenneth Pass and into Nimmo Bay, a remote inlet deep within British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest, it wasn’t love at first sight. The grey fog was so thick that summer afternoon in 1980 that he could barely see his boat’s bow, let alone the surrounding untamed swathe of ancient cedars. But when he cut the engines, he heard the gentle rumble of what he was seeking – the waterfall local loggers had told him about. A quick wander on shore led to the source of the sound: a powerful cascade coming down from 2,655m Mount Stevens. At the time, he wasn’t thinking of its beauty so much as its potential to provide power and drinking water to a fishing lodge and family home.…

From a dock at Bjørvika in central Oslo, a man rows into the fjord, following a ribbon of silver water as sunset flames the clouds. His wooden boat is naggingly familiar to anyone from northern Europe: high, pinched bow and stern; as slippery as a fish. In such designs, from this very fjord, the Vikings conquered and traded from Constantinople to Newfoundland. What’s extraordinary about this image, though, is what’s behind him. The dock bristles with a panoply of doubletake architecture. There’s the glassskinned Deichman Bjørvika public library, its upper storey fanned out at an implausible angle. Jostling for space behind is a design book’s worth of office and apartment blocks: cubes, cantilevered rectangles, ziggurats. There’s also the Opera House I’m standing on, beside a young family having a picnic, gaggles…