Hasta La Ideas

The UK’s Museum of Youth Culture (an exclusively digital operation until they move into their physical space in 2023) has asked the public to peruse old photo albums and smartphone libraries for documentation of awkward teen moments, significant events, fleeting trends, and everything from childhood—shameful haircuts included. Called “Grown Up in Britain,” the project deviates from the museum’s original process for souring images,  prompting professional photographers to submit their images. In an effort to supplement the collection and to spotlight the more intimate moments of young adulthood, they’ve offered a helpful brief to conjure memories. “We wanted the story we’re telling to be as representative as possible,” Lisa der Weduwe (who is part of the museum’s Cultural Projects team) tells Atlas Obscura. Read more there.

We drink most of our favorite drinks in porcelain/ceramic. Tea, coffee, hot chocolate. They all taste better out of a good old ceramic mug or cup, don’t they? Ceramic has been favored for years for being good at retaining a drink’s temperature for longer, while remaining inert enough to not alter its taste. Their non-porous nature also makes them ridiculously easy to clean too… so here’s my question. Why are most thermoses and flasks made out of metal instead?

Metal flasks may be easy to mass-manufacture but storing drinks (especially mildly acidic ones) in metal containers can often alter their taste. It’s basically the same reason why you never drink wine out of a stainless-steel glass… and that should ideally extend to your coffee and tea too. Designed around that very distinction, Kokoro’s thermal flasks come with a porcelain interior, mirroring the very aspects of your at-home drinkware in a closed tumbler that’s easy to carry around with you. Unlike most flasks with chrome-plated metal inner vessels, Kokoro’s interior is made entirely from kaolin-clay-based porcelain. The inert material holds all sorts of beverages without altering their chemical composition. Porcelain clay can withstand extreme temperatures without expanding or contracting like metal, and most importantly, porcelain is incredibly easy to clean under running water, given how microscopic its pores are. That also means the Kokoro flask will never end up smelling like chicken soup because of that one time you decided to drink it out of a travel thermos.

The flask comes with a stainless-steel outer body that’s resistant to damage but fitted on the inside is the porcelain inner-vessel using a BPA-free fastener. This means you can easily clean the porcelain vessel or even replace it if something were to ever happen to your flask. The high-quality porcelain’s physical properties make it perfect for any sort of beverage – it keeps drinks hot for over 8 hours, and cold for a full 12 hours. Designed sustainably, the Kokoro flasks are assembled using physical fixtures (there’s zero glue used in the process) and can be unassembled and reassembled if you ever want to replace parts or clean the entire flask top to bottom. Each flask comes with an air-tight lid that uses a silicone gasket to seal the flask and an integrated handle to carry it around, along with a detachable porcelain strainer that lets you brew tea right within the thermal or infuse fruits into your water. The Kokoro is available across two sizes, a regular (440ml) and a large (550ml), and sports a variety of colors, including some pretty nifty looking print variants… perfect for a summer day, whether it’s indoors or out!

Designer: Joanna Christie Lie

Click Here to Buy Now: $42 $84 (50% off).

Kokoro – Porcelain Thermal Flask

The Kokoro is a stain and smell free thermal flask. With an interior made of replaceable 100% Fine Porcelain, keeping beverages hot or cold for over 8 hours.

Suitable for All Kinds of Beverages

Some beverages are not suitable to be placed in stainless steel flask. Common issues are metallic taste, change of smell or aroma of beverages and metal leaching.

Stainless steel thermal flask can leach chemical to acidic beverages, and will stain when used for long period of time. Iron, chromium and nickel were all found to leach into both alkaline and acidic foods and beverages such as coffee, tea, citrus juice, milk and many more. However, with porcelain interior, the Kokoro is 100% BPA Free and free from metal, chemical leachings.

Porcelain preserves your beverages authentic taste.

Naturally Easy to Clean

Porcelain are made from kaolin clay and fired at temperatures as high as 2,600°F. This makes porcelain pores extremely fine, making it easy to clean and prevent any stain and smell to linger on it.

Say Goodbye to Coffee Stains

What is the main difference between porcelain and ceramic? The difference is the size of surface pores. Ceramic has relatively larger pores compared to porcelain, resulting in stain might still occur in common ceramic. Which will not happen in porcelain.

No Peeling Off

Ceramic coatings is only a coating, it might peel off and having the risk of peel off residues to be consumed. The Kokoro interior is made of 100% Solid Fine Porcelain.

Replaceable Porcelain Interior

In addition of all, if something unfortunate happened and the porcelain is damaged, it is replaceable. Making Kokoro the most sustainable porcelain thermal flask.

100% Chemical Free

Using their Japan patented unique construction design, Kokoro’s assembly method is free from any chemical and metal leaching.

Integrated Porcelain Strainer

Kokoro’s porcelain tea strainer design allows users to drink tea without the mess. It is suitable to be used for loose tea as well.

Built-in Handle

It comes with a built-in handle. Making it easy to be carried and mobile.

Leak Proof Silicone Cover

Made of 100% baby safe silicone material. Able to withstand heat for up to 237°F / 113°C.

100% Leak Proof

Double Wall Insulation

Kokoro’s exterior is made out of 304 high-grade stainless steel with double wall insulation feature. It is able to keep your beverages hot for up to 8 hours and cold for up to 12 hours.

Durable Exterior Finishing

Kokoro’s exterior is extra durable with its stone finishing.

Click Here to Buy Now: $42 $84 (50% off).

Spanish practice Tuñón Arquitectos has added a white concrete extension to the Museum of Contemporary Art Helga de Alvear in Cáceres, Spain.

The project to renovate and extend the headquarters of the Helga de Alvear foundation was carried out in two stages.

Tuñón Arquitectos’ founder Emilio Tuñón worked on the restoration and extension of the original 1913 Casa Grande building for the first stage as part of Mansilla + Tuñón, the practice he cofounded with the late Luis Mansilla.

The latest extension has been built on a plot that sits between the Casa Grande and the old town’s medieval border, which is also the natural border of a valley.

The location is symbolically important, said Tuñón Arquitectos, because the land was once the place where the people transitioned between the inside and the outside of the city. The extension, the studio said, has returned the place to being “a permeable urban space”.

The design of the building was informed by Mansilla + Tuñón’s design for the Atrio-Relais Châteaux hotel, also located in Cáceres and shortlisted for the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2015.

“All the facades are made of white concrete with a construction system similar to that we used in the Atrio-Relais Châteaux ten years ago,” Emilio Tuñón told Dezeen.

“The hotel and museum are sibling institutions that have a very close relationship, hence the constructive and image connection.”

A total of 17,000 square metres of exhibition space have been added to the Museum of Contemporary Art Helga de Alvear in the new volume, which was designed to showcase the collection.

“The galleries are very wide and open, with a height of four-and-a-half metres,” Tuñón said.

“In addition, there are three galleries with a height of nine metres for large pieces. Spaces are very neutral so as not to downplay the works of art,” the architect added. “All the galleries can be darkened for video art and other formats that may require it.”

A system of ERCO lights on tracks was chosen for the ceilings, so that spotlights can be moved around to highlight the art when needed.

Tuñón used a white plaster finish for the walls and ceilings, and industrial-style concrete for the flooring.

“We wanted to build a very neutral space where art could feel comfortable,” he said.

The white reinforced concrete pillars of the exterior were chosen to establish an “accurate dialogue” with the Casa Grande.

“Both buildings are similar and different in dimension and shape,” Tuñón explained.

“One is from 1913 and the other one is from 2020. They are complementary in terms of volume and different in terms of construction and image. But the two together constitute the new image of Cáceres.”

A public promenade connects the extension’s main entrance to the Foundation, travelling down it’s sloping roof and backyard garden to the other side of the plot. The aim was to create another passageway for the city.

“Just like art, which in the past was a privilege and restricted for only a few, has now been made accessible to all, the proposal embodies the idea of creating an urban “trompe l’oeil”,” said the studio.

“The remaining limits and borders are twisted and diluted, so as to create an accessible public artery that crosses the sphere of the private.”

Administration spaces for the Museum of Contemporary Art Helga de Alvear, the temporary exhibition hall, the library and the workshops are now housed in the Casa Grande, with its own entry accessed from the inner courtyard.

Emilio Tuñón has been working in Cáceres on different projects since 2006. “Cáceres projects are like a family whose members are equal and different from each other,” Tuñón said. Tuñón Arquitectos recently completed a residential project in Cáceres, Casa de Piedra, which is formed of nine cube-shaped rooms.

Photography is by Alberto Amores & Pancho Matienzo.

Project credits:

Architect: Emilio Tuñón
Client: Gobierno de Extremadura y Fundación Helga de Alvear
Collaborators: Carlos Brage, Andrés Regueiro, Ruben Arend, Rosa Bandeirinha, Inés García de Paredes
Quantity surveyor: Sancho Páramo
Main consulting: Gogaite Engineering, Úrculo Engineering

The post Tuñón Arquitectos adds white concrete gallery to Museum of Contemporary Art Helga de Alvear appeared first on Dezeen.

If you’ve got an Apple Pencil and you find it too slippery, and the tip too crayon-like for your tastes, here industrial designer Eric Strebel shows you how he fixed both issues.

In the video he touches on a subject familiar to prototypers, where you often have to make a thing to help you make the other thing; he also leaves in some stuff going wrong on camera, so you can learn from it. (I always find that stuff incredibly helpful, as I feel like half of my time in my own shop is spent on fixing my own mistakes.)

While some states are starting to open up, not everyone’s eager to go out and risk infection. If you’re among the many Americans still staying at home, and you’ve got a creative teenager that’s bouncing off the walls, here’s a potential solution.

Fiverr is an online portal for freelancers, i.e. some company needs a logo, and they can pick from the signed-up designers pitching their services. (They offer other services too, but we’re only concerned with design here.) I was shocked to learn that their age limit for participating is 13!

I was thinking if I was 13 and trapped in my parents’ house, and interested in design, I could be talked into working on a portfolio (with some guidance) just to pass the time. The carrot would be if I could actually land a freelance project and earn my own money.

Fiverr competitor AnyTask‘s age limit is a nearby 14.

If you try this and it actually works, be sure to let us know.

“I’ll say it again, Robert: Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick TWO.”