Parabolic dreams. The Design Museum by OMA + Allies and Morrison

Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. 

OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.

OMA’s completed projects include Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux (2024), LANTERN in Detroit (2024), Mangalem 21 in Tirana (2023), Aviva Studios – Factory International in Manchester (2023), Apollolaan 171 in Amsterdam (2023), Buffalo AKG Art Museum in Buffalo (2023), Toranomon Hills Station Tower in Tokyo (2023), Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).

AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. 

AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.

Allies and Morrison is an architecture and urban planning practice based in London. They operate from our own studios at 85 Southwark Street – the 2004 RIBA London Building of the Year.

They have completed projects throughout the UK and overseas, and are currently working on projects in the Middle East and in North America.

The work of the practice ranges from architecture, interior design and conservation to planning, consultation and research.

39 of their completed projects have won a RIBA Award and they have twice been shortlisted for the Stirling Prize – for the revitalisation of the Royal Festival Hall in 2008 and for New Court Rothschilds Bank in collaboration with OMA in 2012.

In 2015, they were awarded the AJ120 Practice of the Year.

John Pawson was born in 1949 in Halifax, Yorkshire. After a period in the family textile business he left for Japan, spending several years teaching English at the business university of Nagoya. Towards the end of his time there he moved to Tokyo, where he visited the studio of Japanese architect and designer Shiro Kuramata. Following his return to England, he enrolled at the Architecture Association in London, leaving to establish his own practice in 1981.

From the outset the work focused on ways of approaching fundamental problems of space, proportion, light and materials, rather than on developing a set of stylistic mannerisms - themes he also explored in his book Minimum, first published in 1996, which examines the notion of simplicity in art, architecture and design across a variety of historical and cultural contexts.

Early commissions included homes for the writer Bruce Chatwin, opera director Pierre Audi, contemporary art dealer Hester van Royen and collector Doris Lockhart Saatchi, together with art galleries in London, Dublin and New York. Subsequent projects have spanned a wide range of scales and building typologies, from Calvin Klein's flagship store in Manhattan and airport lounges for Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong to the new Cistercian monastery of Our Lady of Novy Dvur in Bohemia.

In May 2006, two decades of visits to the twelfth century Cistercian monastery of Le Thoronet culminated in an exhibition, 'John Pawson: Leçons du Thoronet', the first such intervention ever to be held within the precincts of the abbey. Two weeks after the exhibition opening in Provence,  celebrations in London marked the completion of the Sackler Crossing - a walkway over the lake at Kew's Royal Botanic Gardens. The same year also marked the practice's first stage design, with a set for a new ballet choreographed by Wayne McGregor for the Royal Ballet which premiered at London's Royal Opera House in November 2006.