Hasta La Ideas

This family house in Athens by Greek office Tense Architecture Network comprises a boxy concrete upper floor perched atop a glazed living room and kitchen (+ photographs by Filippo Poli).

Tense Architecture Network designed the residence with an industrial aesthetic, featuring exposed concrete walls, basalt-cobble flooring and a folded steel staircase suspended by wire cables.

The ground and first floors are offset from one another and dark-tinted concrete columns support the overhanging bedroom floor.

“The main volume is vigorously elevated – nearly four metres high – in order to liberate the ground floor,” architect Tilemachos Andrianopoulos told Dezeen. “The top floor’s austerity towards the public facade realises an intentional contrast to the receptivity of the ground-floor spaces, which open up completely to the garden through the sliding glass panels.”

A system of wires is strung up around the house, intended to encourage climbing plants around the building. “The industrial material character of the house is advantageously complemented by the greenery,” explained Andrianopoulos.

A pivoting door provides the entrance and leads through to the living room and kitchen, which are divided on split levels. The steel staircase ascends towards three bedrooms on the top floor, while a concrete staircase descends to the basement.

Athens studio Tense Architecture Network also recently completed another concrete house in the Greek countryside. See more architecture in Greece.

See more photography by Filippo Poli on Dezeen or on the photographer’s website.

Here are a few words from Tense Architecture Network:

Residence in Kato Kifissia, Athens

The residence’s plot is small and an adjacent building almost blocks the southern sun. The complete “colonization” of the suburb has almost eliminated the previously exuberant vegetation in the rush to meet individualistic private housing.

As a first act, the desire to reside defines an area and makes a house, in it: a cubic shell of plants creates a limit for the residence, as area. In order to reside, one withdraws inward.

The residential space claims the whole field, as well as the sun; two parallelepiped volumes, one small and attached to the north, the other cantilevered and central, free the ground and enable the sun to enter.

When the plants are fully grown the green facade will be penetrated only by the black, central column of the shelter by exposed concrete. The basalt-watery surface on which it is anchored reflects the light in the interior.

Project Team: Tilemachos Andrianopoulos, Kostas Mavros, Nestoras Kanellos

The post Residence in Kato Kifissia
by Tense Architecture Network appeared first on Dezeen.

Bud’s new beer can comes out in May, and Sly Fox’s 360 Lid can is out now. Recently there’s been word that a major brewer is introducing a yet another new can this summer. How much more design variance is possible in an aluminum beer can?

Samuel Adams’ parent company, Boston Beer Co., hired IDEO to find out. The Sam Adams brand has famously eschewed cans for years; company founder Jim Koch, displaying a Steve-Jobs-like asceticism, felt that cans offered an inferior customer experience and refused to deal in them. But beer sold in cans is some 57% of the U.S. market, and are the only way beer can be served in certain places, like airplanes and stadiums. That translates to millions of dollars’ worth. So two years ago, Koch decided he’d consider cans and contracted IDEO to design a better type.

The Boston Globe’s got the skinny on what the subsequent research turned up, and it might surprise some of you beer drinkers:

The big discovery: Conventional cans don’t allow enough air into people’s mouths as they drink. Turns out much of what consumers believe they taste is actually smell…. Increasing exposure to the beer’s aromas of hops and fruit can make a big difference in taste, said Roy Desrochers, a professional beer taster at GEI Consultants in Woburn.

So the team began looking for ways to improve air flow. Over several months, IDEO proposed dozens of designs and created eight prototypes that expanded the size and shape of the can’s opening. Larger apertures—one shaped like a bell, another like a peanut—were supposed to enhance the air flow and access to aromas. The most promising idea, according to Koch, was a design that allowed drinkers to tear off the entire top.

…But there were problems [with the open-top design]: the tear-off top violated litter laws in most states. And the gaping opening made people nervous. They were worried about cutting their nose or lip on the edge, afraid of bugs flying inside, or the drink spilling.

What IDEO finally came up with is a can with a wider lid (as seen at right, below):

The wider top pushes the aperture closer to the rim (again, below at right), which means beer tips more readily into the mouth.

(more…)

News: Danish firm Henning Larsen Architects has designed a headquarters for software giant Microsoft as part of plans for a new university and business district north of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Commissioned by the council of Lyngby-Taarbæk, the project will see Henning Larsen Architects develop a 40,000-square-metre cluster of buildings containing student residences and shops alongside the Microsoft offices.

The software firm also plans to make its facilities available to the community. “The citizens can use our open cafe and technology area, students can use our allocated study area, and we will regularly host different events that will connect us even closer to the local area and Denmark,” said Niels Soelberg, CEO for Microsoft Denmark.

Located in the area of Kanalvejsgrunden in Lyngby, the buildings will form part of the council’s vision for the Lyngby-Taarbæk City of Knowledge and Urban Development 2020, an initiative to promote the district as a leading university town and centre of creative business.

“The project reflects an interesting urban development strategy. Knowledge-intensive businesses are connected to urban life and the local study community,” said Lyngby-Tarbæk’s mayor Søren P. Rasmussen. “The building will create a lot of new jobs and provide a welcoming, dynamic urban space where city centre and green areas meet.”

The architects will collaborate on the project with financial firm Danica Pension, engineering consultants COWI and project managers Alectia.

Construction work is expected to begin later in 2013.

Henning Larsen Architects’ recent projects include proposals for a public square and offices in Trondheim, Norway and a concert hall and conference centre in Reykjavik, Iceland – see all architecture by Henning Larsen Architects.

Last year Microsoft opened a Vienna office featuring themed meeting rooms, artificial grass and a huge slide – see all news about Microsoft.

Here’s more information from Henning Larsen:

In the heart of Lyngby situated north of Copenhagen, Danica Pension in collaboration with Henning Larsen Architects, COWI and Alectia have developed the area of Kanalvejsgrunden with a new building that will comprise student residences, retail and Microsoft’s new Danish headquarters. The project will create a new unique urban space accessible to everyone and will bring citizens, students and businesses closer together.

The municipal council of Lyngby-Taarbæk looks forward to seeing an open, innovative building rising in the city centre. The project marks an important step in the realisation of the municipality’s visions for Lyngby-Taarbæk City of Knowledge and Urban Development 2020 – a locally developed initiative aiming at making Lyngby one of the leading university cities and centres of knowledge and creativity in Northern Europe.

Mayor Søren P. Rasmussen says: “The project reflects an interesting urban development strategy. Knowledge-intensive businesses are connected to urban life and the local study community. In addition, the building will create a lot of new jobs and provide a welcoming, dynamic urban space where city centre and green areas meet.”

Microsoft’s new headquarters forms part of the organisation’s overall vision to create the workplace of the future – where employees are supported in their different ways of thinking, working and collaborating through a flexible interior layout, based on state-of-the-art technologies. Henning Larsen Architects has had a close dialogue with Microsoft in the space planning process.

The municipality’s ambition of positioning itself as a leading knowledge city has been a determining factor for Microsoft’s decision to consolidate its activities and employees from their two companies in Denmark in Lyngby.

“Microsoft is already well-established in Denmark with our 900 employees and more than 3,700 partner companies, and we also look forward to becoming an active part of the knowledge and university centre of Lyngby-Taarbæk. The citizens can use our open café and technology area, students can use our allocated study area, and we will regularly host different events that will connect us even closer to the local area and Denmark,” says Niels Soelberg, CEO for Microsoft Denmark.

The new building will be located on a 16,350 m2 plot in the centre of Lyngby, in the street of Kanalvej between Klampenborgvej and Toftebæksvej. The building will cover a total of 40,000 m2. The first sod is expected to be cut already later in 2013.

The post Henning Larsen Architects plans Microsoft
headquarters outside Copenhagen appeared first on Dezeen.

Colors magazine’s News Machine takes your tweets and puts them through the modern media mangle. Built to launch issue #86, Making the News, potential news generators can see it in action at the International Journalism Festival in Italy…

The News Machine has been constructed to simulate the contemporary 24-hour news cycle. Simply tweet a ‘headline’ to @colorsmachine and the text will be transmitted through various filters and regurgitated as a piece of printed ‘news’.

The machine itself is made up of several components. Firstly, a megaphone reads out the tweet, a tape recorder then converts the sound into text, it’s displayed on a television, which is then filmed, and the video is turned into a radio signal, which broadcasts the tweet – a microphone then interprets the radio message as text again and, finally, it’s printed out.

All is explained in this film (shown below) which demonstrates the journey of the tweeted headline, highlighting the way that facts can too often go astray in the midst of relentless reporting.

*UPDATE: I tweeted the headline of this piece to the News Machine and received a fairly laconic, if honest, tweet back. Apparently, this is what the machine printed out (below). As with some of the best news stories, it’s so often all about the timing…

As the magazine mischievously states on its Vimeo page, “tweet a headline to @colorsmachine and see what happens; after Italian news hoaxer Tommaso De Benedetti tweeted the (fake) death of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2012, crude oil prices rose by US $1.17 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.”

Colors’ News Machine will be in action at The International Journalism Festival which is on from today until April 28 at various venues in Perugia, Italy. More details at journalismfestival.com. Colors #86, Making the News, is out now. More at colorsmagazine.com.

The April print issue of CR presents the work of three young animators and animation teams to watch. Plus, we go in search of illustrator John Hanna, test out the claims of a new app to have uncovered the secrets of viral ad success and see how visual communications can both help keep us safe and help us recover in hospital

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