NBBJ has submitted revised plans for Amazon’s downtown Seattle headquarters that include three glass and steel bio-domes.  The interconnecting spherical structures will house up to five storeys of office space surrounded by internal botanical gardens, hoping to provide, “a more natural, park-like setting,” for employees. Original plans were submitted in late 2012, comprising three 37-storey towers, two low-rise buildings, a new public park and a low, rectilinear, green-roofed building, which…

Onoffice speaks to Making Designers exhibitors Ab Rogers, Michael Marriott, Simon Pengelly, Ercol design director Ruth Wassermann and MARK founder John Miller about the importance of design education.

Onoffice and John Miller co-curated the Making Designers show at Clerkenwell Design Week, an exhibition that aimed to highlight the importance of design in schools, at a time when it is under threat. Here's Miller's plea for a rethink, together with pictures of our famous exhibitors' school projects. I realised a few years back that, while design is my profession and passion, my drive to design comes from a desire…

The French expression a priori (roughly translated as “at first glance”, or “with preconceptions”) is a dirty word for César Ruiz-Larrea, of Madrid-based architecture practice Ruiz-Larrea & Asociados (RLA) and one of the architects of the Andalusian Energy Agency in Seville, Spain. The agency was founded to develop policies established by the regional government to optimise its energy supply in terms of economics and the environment, and has set up…

Pinkeye Studio is a multi-disciplinary agency in Antwerp, Belgium, made up of product developers, graphic designers, interior architects and marketeers. Seven years ago, it set out with two product designers, and has gradually expanded to 19 people, plus interns, outgrowing its office space in a converted warehouse building in the centre of Antwerp. Fortuitously, the fashion label next door recently vacated the space, making way for an expansion. The studio…

One of the most exciting aspects of being in Milan is spotting the up-and-coming designers destined to grace many a furniture fair to come, and one of this year’s most promising finds is Tomas Kral. Strolling through Brera, onoffice stumbled upon his Ray lamps for Petite Friture adorning a corner of design boutique Spazio Pontaccio, and having heard his name on more than a few in-the-know lips recently, this discovery…

I like to think that I’m up on my social media. All over Facebook, you might say. Top dog of Twitter. But I have to confess that Foursquare’s delights have always eluded me. Checking in? Mayors? Badges? What’s that all about? Naturally, readers, to find out more, I crowdsourced the issue. “It’s about showing off more than anything else,” posted one friend; “look at my fascinating life and all the…

As reputations go, Philadelphia is known as something of an outsider. The city was a byword for the ghetto in the title song from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, the unlikely champion 1970s ice hockey team dubbed the Broad Street Bullies revelled in their notoriety and its most famous fictional son, Rocky Balboa, the biggest underdog of them all, is immortalised in bronze on the steps of the Philadelphia…

Onoffice editor James McLachlan will chair a panel discussion between Lady Frances Sorrell of the Sorrell Foundation, Ab Rogers, designer and head of interior design at the RCA, Richard Green, CEO of DATA (the Design and Technology Association) and John Miller of furniture brand MARK during Clerkenwell Design Week, called The Future of Design in Education.   Since education secretary Michael Gove threatened the exclusion of design and art from the…

Like the man himself, Werner Aisslinger’s studio appears a little off the beaten track. Located just north of the Tiergarten, the area captures that peculiarly Berlin condition where small clusters of galleries, record labels and design studios are buried among the lorry parks and used car lots. In London it would be unthinkable for somewhere like this to exist so close to a city centre train station without catching a…