Onoffice magazine

What makes an office building green? By most standards, it would be energy efficient and have features like ground source heating and cooling, photovoltaic panels and rainwater harvesting. It would probably boast top marks from a sustainability assessment body like BREEAM or LEED. But there is a new, quite literal, facet to the “green” trend emerging; architecture with luxuriant plant life embedded into the design. The latest built example is 18 Kowloon East in Hong…

It’s a warm evening in Barcelona. Probably warmer than we have a right to expect, but Spain and its tourist multitudes are enjoying a long, drawn-out summer. I’m here to meet Gabriel Teixidó, a man described as a “rock-solid survivor” of the Spanish design scene. Given the financial woes the country faces, surviving is a sought-after skill, but the description does him a disservice. Over his long career, Teixidó has worked with pretty much any…

In the grand scheme of Scandinavian design, Norway has generally taken a back seat. Denmark, Sweden and Finland pushed ahead in the region’s golden age of the 1950s and 1960s with the likes of Saarinen, Panton and Jacobsen, whose designs defined an era. Of course, in the 1970s and 1980s Norway turned out success stories of its own – Peter Opsvik’s Trip Trapp chair has sold in the millions and he also redefined office seating…

The world is increasingly paranoid. The irrepressible rise of CCTV suggests the revolution will indeed be televised, just on rather grainy footage. A timely affirmation of this came last March when tens of thousands marched in protest against government spending cuts. It was a passionate but generally well-mannered affair, concluding in Hyde Park where the Labour leader Ed Milliband addressed the crowd. But elsewhere in London trouble was brewing: global banks HSBC and Santander had…

Onoffice editor Elizabeth Choppin speaks to american designer Todd Bracher at the Milan furniture fair. Bracher explains Trea - a chair inspired by lobster shells and created for Humanscale. To view the inteview click read more below.