While Amazon had already received City Hall approval to build a new HQ in Seattle, apparently they've had a change of heart with the design, perhaps inspired by the forthcoming Facebook West and the Apple Spaceship. The skyscraper part of Amazon's multi-building plan remains the same, but they're looking to switch up one of their low-rise structures for something a bit more eye-catching. Here's the previously-approved, now-scuttled building design:

#37: W.C. Rueck - "Daily Trophies" / #24: Ladies and Gentlemen Studio - "Mirage Shelving" / #36: Todd Isaacs (SPACECRAFT) - "Fir Horns" / #8: Christopher Specce - "Decoy" / #6: Brendan Mullins - "Princess Cut Diamonds" / #2: Andrew Sack - "Skate Wax Candles" / #9: Colleen & Eric - "Bonus Table (Podium Edition)"

For NY Design Week this year, our friends at the American Design Club presented their ninth group showcase, Trophy: Awards We Live With. Per the brief: "A trophy is a memento, token, or symbol, used to commemorate an achievement or victory. Whether they are awarded, stolen, or created, trophy objects can come in many forms." As with Noho Next (which included several of the same exhibitors), the exhibition occupied a basement café/bar space; unlike Noho Next, in which the work was distributed throughout the space, the trophies were cordoned off on a makeshift stage area—an oversized display case, if you will—framed by a kitschy slatwall backdrop.

#11: Craighton Berman - "Daily Aspirations" / #34: Taylor Mckenzie-Veal - "War Trophy" / #30: Muzz Design - "Ring of Approval" / #27: Made in Chinatown - "Stanrey Cup" / #5: Artin Yip + Chris Beatty - "Gnome" / #29: Misha Kahn - "Coatrack" / #35: The Office of Brothers - "Victory Shims" / #13: Egg Collective - "Badges"

Photos by Simon Markhof

With the help aerospace engineers at EADS, Somerset, UK-based Charge Bikes have refined and expanded their 3D-printed dropout production since we first came across them last August, as evidenced by a new vid from last week. However, German IDer Ralf Holleis does them one better with the VRZ 2 Track bicycle, developed under the VORWaeRTZ moniker. (Further details on Holleis's practice are scant; from what I can determine, he's connected to the equally mysterious designlab coburg.)

I recently hunted down and acquired Braun's classic Sixtant SM 31 razor from a source in Italy. The freaking thing was made in 1962 and it still works perfectly, but finding it wasn't easy. For those of you who don't want to spend your days scouring eBay and Etsy, here's a chance to pick up another Braun design classic without putting in the legwork: They've announced they're re-issuing their iconic ET66 Calculator, designed by Dietrich Lubs and Dieter Rams back in the '80s.

wants an Industrial Designer
in Cumberland, Rhode Island

Fred & Friends wants to give you the opportunity to work on a wide range of creative projects, and the satisfaction of seeing your ideas through from beginning to end. They design, import, and distribute fun and clever gifts, home goods, and personal items to specialty retailers worldwide and want you to join their in-house creative team as an Industrial Designer.

They do everything in house and encourage each person who works there to contribute ideas and collaborate in the production process. Spruce up your outstanding portfolio and click the link below. If you happen to have experience designing products for the housewares industry, you're ahead of the game!

Apply Now

As knitting, weaving, and other traditional methods of textile production have made the leap from old-age pastimes to mainstream DIY hobbies, designers have been pushing the boundaries of what's possible with stitched and woven fibers. This week we found a late-spring blast of innovative handmade textiles—plus one new collection that was woven by the wind.

Exhibited at New York's Wanted Design last weekend, the Guatemala City design studio Fabrica's Seat Ball has a soccer-equipment core surrounded by spring-suspended cushions made out of cotton rope. The combination, which can be used for seating, a yoga ball, or an ottoman, wraps up a current recreational preoccupation in an ancient crafting technique.

Now that our friends at Matter have firmly established themselves as purveyors of some of the finest contemporary furnishings this side of Houston St., they're looking to expand their house label. They launched MatterMade in 2010, partnering with designers to produce a new collection for every NY Design Week since (we took note in 2011). For this year's MatterMade Collection, Creative Director Jamie Gray called on New York's Roman and Williams to design a line of furniture and lighting.

At its core, the Roman and Williams for MatterMade collection is a marriage of two entitites with a shared vision of the American design landscape. The first commercially available collection of lighting and furniture by Roman and Williams, the line includes: Woodrum, a family of lighting, Hub, a coffee table and side table, and Reader, a sling chair and foot stool. The unifying theme within the collection is an emphasis on superior materials and exceptional craftsmanship. Standard wood species offered are reclaimed white oak, teak, and walnut, each with a simple and pure finish that highlights the wood. Custom unlacquered brass hardware adorns each piece and provides an extra touch of luxury and elegance.

After a decade of creating award-winning bespoke spaces, such as the Ace Hotel and the glamorous Boom Boom Room at the Standard Hotel, this line of furniture and lighting presents a gateway for bringing the unique world of Roman and Williams into a broad spectrum of interiors. Whether ultra minimal, contemporary, or the most classic of spaces, the Roman and Williams for MatterMade collection adds a necessary hint of familiarity, articulation and decandence.

Photo by Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

In New York City there are plenty of places to get drunk, starting with my kitchen. But most crave a more glamorous experience, and in a city of millions, glamor is often equated with exclusivity and secrecy. Faux speakeasys have become as much of a cliché as drunken fistfights in the Meatpacking District. Yet for a brief period earlier this year, a group of artists ran a true speakeasy in the most unusual of locations: A water tower atop an abandoned building in Chelsea.

Photo by Benjamin Norman for The New York Times

In his opening remarks at this year's Product Design + Innovation conference in London, Core columnist Kevin McCullagh challenged speakers and attendees to 'cut through the hype' so rampant in the industry in recent years, to identify the real opportunities for design in the growing number and increasingly complex fields in which it operates. Whilst many brands and corporations are wholeheartedly embracing design and its processes, a mounting wariness to the overblown claims and difficult to quantify results associated with the Design Thinking movement may indeed make hype dissection a key challenge facing the industry in the years to come.

In the charming surroundings of one England's oldest cricket clubs, the two-day event saw spirited debate as some of the most heralded futures of products and manufacturing were subject to scrutiny: Internet of Things, connected mobility, additive manufacturing, the maker movement, product-service systems, premiumisation, the consumerisation of healthcare.

In an attempt to capture some of the hearty discussion that ensued, we've picked out five of our top PD+I highlights:

Exhibitors at WantedDesign this year represented nationalities near and far, from just across the East River to across the pond and further afield. Now in its third year, Odile Hainaut and Claire Pijoulat's hugely successful satellite to the nearby ICFF has all but outgrown the Terminal Stores building at the northwest corner of Chelsea. If the jam-packed atrium proved to be a bit overwhelming at times, the peripheral galleries offered the luxury of space at the expense of foot traffic—making for an altogether more manageable viewing experience, as in the case of the Carrot Concept, presented by Bernhardt Design.

Led by a collective of savvy Salvadoran designers—Harry and Claudia Washington, Guillermo Altamirano, Josefina Alvarez, Jose Roberto Paredes and Roberto Dumont—the Carrot Concept is a platform to bring their country's creative efforts to the rest of the world, and expand both the domestic and global audience for design from El Salvador.

A grassroots movement is afoot to bring the country's burgeoning creative scene to the forefront. In 2012, a band of progressive and socially conscious architects, designers and entrepreneurs launched The Carrot Concept with the belief that celebrating and promoting creative industries in El Salvador will help fuel tehir economic and cultural growth.

As you might remember from earlier posts like this one or this one, an intense amount of woodworking used to go into furniture designed to hold sewing machines. But these beautiful cabinet-desks are now largely unneeded, and it is not uncommon for sewing machine collectors to literally break these things up and use them as firewood.

A similar object with a similar problem is the stand-up piano. Once the proud, previously-expensive possession of many a pre-radio music-loving family, these are now literally being given away on Craigslist. And after reading an article about how one Oregon furnituremaker was attempting to repurpose them, Instructables user phish814 got an idea of his own. "This project," he explains, "solves the dilemma of not having adequate workspace in an apartment or other venue in which an unsightly workbench would look out of place."

Ever since we looked into the history of Braun's audio products, I am not able to look at stereos the same way. I keep picturing Dieter Rams, Hans Gugelot, and the Ulm guys sitting at the drawing board trying to figure out what those then-new audio devices ought to look like, work like, feel like. And how they could do it all with a minimum of fuss. You look at a stereo from today and you just don't get the sense that most folks have that kind of focus and more importantly, restraint.

One guy who does, however, is Victor Johansson, who's currently going for his Masters in ID at Central St. Martins. With his Ceramic Stereo degree project that intelligently considers how we ought to use modern stereos, Johansson makes a trenchant observation that even major audio manufacturers overlook:

The observation that led to this concept comes from audio consumption and more specifically the mismatch between where content usually resides today (in smartphones) and what is being used to amplify the playback (stereos and speakers). In a typical audio-playback scenario a clash of interfaces occur. The smartphone that holds the content is connected either via an audio cable or [Bluetooth] to an amplifier. More often than not you get double volume controls, double playback controls and so on. This together with the smartphones' already existing interface duality, with some functions residing on the screen and some mapped to physical keys, makes for a complex interface system.

Johansson's solution is best explained via audio/video:

And now, the moment(s) you've all been waiting for! The time is upon us: our Live Announcement schedule is finally here! We saw a lot of great work during our judging month, and what better way to celebrate all of your hard work and incredible ideas than having the jury speak directly to you. We couldn't be more excited to announce our winners—LIVE—to the world! So set your alarms because our announcements are coming from ten different countries all over the globe. You won't want to miss out:

2013 CORE77 DESIGN AWARDS LIVE BROADCAST SCHEDULE
June 10–17
8 Days. 17 Categories. 10 Countries. 74 Jurors. Live!!
Please Note: All times and dates are based on Eastern Standard Time.

Following last month's successful DMI Conference: Designing the Next Economy in Madrid, the Design Management Institute's flagship event will make its way its stateside next month in Santa Monica, California, from June 17–19. In anticipation of three-day event, we had the chance to catch up with Javier Verdura, Director of Product Design & Project Management at Tesla Motors, who will be conversing with Laurenz Schaeffer, President of BMW Designworks, on the Convergence of Transportation, Technology and Tools for Living. Check out his thoughts and insight into working with Elon Musk, autonomous cars, his goals at Tesla and the future of the company as a whole.

Tesla made headlines last week for paying off a $465m government loan ten years ahead of schedule. Obviously, the company's success is attributable to any number of factors, but to what degree was this an investment in design or, more broadly, innovation? Or alternately, do you think that good design is a worthy investment (whether the funding is public or private)?

'Good design' has been proven to be one of the smartest investments a company can make. Companies that invest in design as a core function and as a fundamental business strategy experience undisputed ROI (Return on Innovation). Companies like Apple, P&G, Nike, Target and Tesla to name a few, use design as the foundation of their business strategy. Design is what differentiates their products from the competition; well-designed products make customers' lives better, and it keeps them coming back to the brand (i.e. brand loyalty). Good design can be directly responsible for increased market share, in many cases proving to be a better investment over ad spend.

Core77's Hand-Eye Supply Curiosity Club is overwhelmed with intrigue for tonight's presentation from Caitlin Porter and Olivia Fabrizio of Grays Harbor Historical Seaport Authority as they regale us with tales from tall ships on the high seas!

Tonight's talk starts at 6pm at the Hand-Eye Supply store in Portland, OR. Come early and check out our space or check in with usonline for the live broadcast!

Caitlin Porter and Olivia Fabrizio
Grays Harbor Historical Seaport Authority: "Adventure on the High Seas: Becoming a Tall Ship Sailor"
Hand-Eye Supply
23 NW 4th Ave
Portland, OR 97209
Tuesday, May 28th, 6pm PST

To sea with you! Did you know that right at this instant there are majestic tall ships sailing the worlds oceans? And that the deckhand steering the ship might be someone just like you?

Caitlin Porter and Olivia Fabrizio found this out three years ago and since then have sailed the entire west coast aboard the Hawaiian Chieftain and Lady Washington. They have learned the traditional skills of a mariner--from knots to wooden vessel maintenance, caulking a deck and tarring the rig. Their talk will explain what on earth all that means, teach you some extremely useful knots, and try to indoctrinate you with a desire to go to sea. No experience needed to start, and if you work hard you may find yourself traveling the world as a sea captain.

It is generally accepted that a Tall Ship is a large, traditionally-rigged sailing vessel. There are many different styles of Tall Ships; brigs, brigantines, barquentines, ketches, schooners, sloops, and full-rigged ships. For hundreds of years vessels such as these carried men and women around the world and served as the quickest form of mass transportation.

The Lady Washington and Hawaiian Chieftain will be docked in Vancouver, Washington from May 23rd to 27th as part of a Columbia River tour. With this lecture Caitlin and Olivia will invite the audience to a special Curiosity Club tour of the vessels on a later date (location and time TBA at lecture).

This is the first installment of our new Core77 Questionnaire. We'll be posting a new interview every other Tuesday.

Name: Ralf Groene

Occupation: I'm an industrial designer by training, and in the Surface brand I'm the Director of Design, overseeing the industrial design and interaction design teams.

Location: Redmond, Washington

Current projects: I only have one project: Surface. But it of course has many, many facets.

Mission: To build the Surface experience and brand

Surface prototypes

When did you decide that you wanted to be a designer? In 1989, when a friend told me that design is an occupation. I grew up in Wolfsburg, which is the German headquarters of Volkswagen. There I started to become a sheet-metal toolmaker. At some point, a friend told me that he was going to become a car designer. He showed me what design was about, and I immediately fell in love; I knew that this was what I had to do.

If you think shaving on Earth is a pain, try shaving in space. With no running water, your shorn whiskers will scatter and float around the cabin—which is bad news for the sensitive electronic devices inside. It's also kind of disgusting as you can accidentally breathe the hairs in. Here astronaut Chris Hadfield shows you how it's done:

Photography by Glen Jackson Taylor for Core77

Feeling a little smaller in scale this year, the 25th annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair was injected with some new energy from Rich Brilliant Willing, The Future Perfect, Tom Dixon's fabrication partner TRUMPF and their gigantic laser machines, the quirky high-end speaker systems from OMA, as well as the debut of the DesignX Workshops. Check out our highlights in the gallery here.

Related Galleries
» WantedDesign
» Satellite Shows
» NoHo Design District

As we've seen in earlier installments of this series, Braun revolutionized the product categories of audio entertainment, personal grooming and even time-telling. By the 1950s, they begun to expand out of the living room, the bathroom and the bedroom to transform the most crucial of household spaces: The kitchen, where every family's sustenance was prepared. It was arguably the space where the housewives of the era, and the children they minded, spent the most time.

It was also a room for work, where design had yet to make a significant impact in easing the burden of labor. Braun's designers tackled kitchen tasks with their characteristically superb analysis of what was needed, and how those objects should look and function. They began by introducing a host of diverse kitchen products, but it was the preparation of one hot beverage in particular—coffee—which allowed them to knock it out of the park time and again, in their relentless search of design perfection.

1957
KM 3
Gerd Alfred Muller

From the get-go, it became clear that Braun would forge their own design path in this category. The KM 3 food processor was radically different from then-dominant American mixers of the time, which followed that country's streamlined, chrome-heavy style and often look as if they were manufactured by Chevy. The sleek, simple KM 3, in contrast, looked as if it were related to Braun's electric razors of the era. But this was no example of trying to graft the design of one product category onto another; the smooth, largely featureless shape was easy to clean. Attesting to the successful design of the KM 3 is that it would see production, with slight modifications, for more than thirty years.