Journal
The Budapest Café
Filmmaker Wes Anderson’s distinctive visual style provided the inspiration for The Budapest Café in Chengdu, China. The design draws on Anderson’s meticulous, memorable and magical worlds to create an inviting destination with whimsical character and international appeal. Much like Anderson’s mythical Budapest Hotel, The Budapest Café is designed to offer an experience that detaches patrons from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. The interior incorporates symmetry, precision and nostalgic colour palettes; and the sentiment that infuses his films. He tends towards one-point perspectives and peering down from above; gives attention to the edges of a set as much as the middle; and frames stories with proscenium arches. Layers, elevations and design features encourage customers to explore the space. A mezzanine level provides a view from above; symmetrical arches frame recessed seating and shelving; and stairs and steps lead upstairs, lead nowhere, and are integrated into shelving, fireplaces and the long marble bar. The Budapest Café is designed to feel feminine, light and fun, despite its loftiness and exposed structure. A ball pool, neon signage and original Eero Aarnio Bubble chair inspire playfulness, and the bathrooms surprise with speckled pink terrazzo to complement and contrast with the nostalgic-green hues of the café. Designed & branded by Biasol Photography by James Morgan
Cinematic Cuba by Stijn Hoekstra
'The Jurassic Park for cars' When Fidel Castro came into power in 1959, he placed a ban on foreign vehicle imports, making it nearly impossible to buy a brand-new, foreign-made car. As you navigate the roads of Havana, you'll find a rolling museum of classic '50s American automobiles. Vibrant paint-jobs and those iconic space-age tail fins are seen at almost every turn - each booming reggaetón from aftermarket speaker systems. Dutch photograper & cinematographer Stijn Hoekstra spent 3 weeks in Cuba capturing its cinematic land & cityscapes, but what particularly caught our eye was his photoset on these beautiful classic cars. We at Tens maintain a love for all things retro, and this photoset is simply bathed in nostalgic warmth. American cars were previously considered something of a burden; gas guzzlers whose parts were impossible to replace thanks to the US economic embargo, which makes most commercial transactions with the island illegal, and has effectively limited ties between the US and communist-run Cuba for much of the last half-century. Some of the smoke-belching monsters had so many adapted Chinese and Russian parts inside that Cubans nicknamed them "Frankensteins." They were rusty beasts that almost no one thought about painting or fixing up. Few people could afford to do much else but keep them running. But as tourism to the island increased and the island's government loosened restrictions on travel and car ownership for Cubans, more and more mint-condition beauties emerged from their long state of abandonment. Cuban entrepreneurs realized there was money to be made in offering vintage car tours and fanned out across the island in search of old cars to repair and fill with paying customers. It's easy to fall in love these cars that possess a style and vision that automakers lost long ago. They act as a gleaming testament to Cuban ingenuity and perseverance rolling down Havana's potholed roads. Check out more of Stijn's work via Instagram here, and his Website here.
Best of the Month - Vol. 10
Is may be too late to say happy new year, and we know we're a bit late on this month's instalment - but we've been busy! The Tens team has just returned from beautiful Lithuania where we were shooting our 2018 campaign at a studio in the country's capital. All indoors of course, the -15ºC climate outside wasn't particularly suitable for a sunglasses shoot. Alas, we found some time amongst preparing for what's set to be our most ambitious campaign yet, to share some of our favourite STUFF over the past month. Find the usual music, stories & feeds below to get you through the week. Enjoy! Best of the Web Oscar-nominated stop-motion animator PES just released three new super-short films. They feature fishing, some still life fruit and this one below of a Nikon zoom lens being smashed through primes to just a cap. Check them out on his YouTube channel here. This Wes Anderson inspired cafe 'Budapest' has opened its doors in Changdu, China. It was imagined by Australian design studio Biasol. Photography tech company Kodak announced that they'll be releasing its own photographer-oriented blockchain cryptocurrency used for payments for licensing photographs. It's called KODAKCoin! Russian photographer Slava Semeniuta captured these abstracted street puddles in Sochi. The series of dramatically-colored photographs isolates neon shop window reflections in puddles and potholes and transforms the captured moments into otherworldly landscapes. Check out more of his work here. Whilst we're on other-worldly photography, Tom Blachford's 'Nihon Noir' series looks like it was taken straight out of Blade Runner. The 'Hangover Box' contains everything you need to survive the morning after the night before. Order yours here before regretting you didn't. Tens Soundtrack Here are some of our office favourites, both new and old. Who else should we be checking out? Visit our profile on Spotify to check out our previous months' soundtracks. Who to Follow - Female Edition Here are some of our favourite accounts to follow on Instagram, this month it's all women, because why not? If you know anybody that we should be following, especially the female creators then let us know! This month we've got @simotto, @ramenpolanski, @mi_kae, @thisisaliceskinner, @katemoross & @lalorilori. Best of the Community At Tens we put our community first, no matter what it is that we're up to. Here's where we share some of our favourite customer photos with Tens from the last month. We love seeing your tags with Tens, so be sure to tag us in them for your chance to be featured! Photos submitted (in order) by @trailofus, @thatshitsbuttery, @hanphn, @samsbowl, @ellisdonaldson, @lukesbeard & @louisanastrilytto.~What things have you discovered this month? Are we missing anything? Message us on Facebook with suggestions!
Our Top 100 Tracks of 2017
At Tens, our music tastes are admittedly a bit all over the place. Not one musical genre can be classed as our favourite, but we're open-minded to anything appropriate to get the creative juices flowing at HQ. Our Sonos selections tend to range from '90s dance classics, Ethiopian jazz - even the productivity-inducing soundtracks of the Sim City franchise. However, surprisingly not much of that has been released in 2017... Despite 2017 being one weird year, it redeemed itself by bringing with it some of the best music we've come across this decade. So, in no particular order whatsoever, here are 100 of our favourite tracks from 2017. We'd also like to give a special shout out to our friend mtbrd. He's provided the soundtrack to pretty much all of our video pieces in 2017, and his album Smoovies can be streamed via Spotify below. Follow us on Spotify for future monthly playlists in the new year. Shop Tens this Christmas - visit store.
Fairytale of New York - by Enzo Iriarte
I suppose that is the thing about New York. It is always a little more than you had hoped for. Each day there, is so definitely a new day. "Now we'll start over," it seems to say every morning, "and come on, let's hurry like anything." London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it. There is excitement ever running its streets. Each day, as you go out, you feel the little nervous quiver that is yours when you sit in the theatre just before the curtain rises. Other places may give you a sweet and soothing sense of level; but in New York there is always the feeling of "Something's going to happen." It isn't peace. But, you know, you do get used to peace, and so quickly. And you never get used to New York. Photos by Enzo Iriarte. Follow his visual journey on Instagram here. Words from "My Home Town", an essay from 1928 by American poet Dorothy Parker. ~ Shop with Tens this holiday season. Free gift wrapping and worldwide delivery in time for Christmas (order before 12pm 15th December) - visit store.
The Search - by Freddie Hare
How many times trying does it take to find what you're looking for? An adventure opportunity arose when my girlfriend invited me to join her on holiday with the family. As a coast kid, I always loved to pursue something with a little water, and a little thrill - so Portugal was a great place to let loose. Straight off the plane we managed to grab a taxi and cram in two 9ft longboards and 5 shortboards which was an over-dramatic start for our journey to the south. After at least 2 hours of this hectic, hot and stuffy car journey full of smells (which I can’t say from who and where but it wasn’t pleasant) we finally made it to the villa (which was PIMPING!) Not messing around, Lucie (my girlfriend) & I took full advantage of the van and drove off to explore the coastline. It was Christmas come early, just pure waveporn. We were gifted with a lovely 3-4ft wave with not a soul in the water.... WINNING! After a week of constant surfing and terrible tan lines, I thought we should give the shoulders a rest and find some of Portugal’s hidden gems. There's only a certain amount of minutes I can sit still for... I dragged Lucie and the others on a hunt for a possible cliff jump I had been shown by a friend of mine on Instagram. It took us three attempts to find this cliff, I was orienteering from google maps which was a little unconvincing to the others as we were scrambling over rocks and bushes in the blistering midday heat. Finally on our third attempt to find this place, we got there. We began the descent down and placed our valuables in a safe area. You know when you show someone an image and it just doesn’t do the place justice? Well that was very true in our case, this jump was fucking HUGE! I made my way down to an obvious ledge to scout where we could jump in and exit safely. There was nothing visible and it was a huge 50ft+ drop into a dark cave at high tide. Lucie looked at me as if I was mad, so we called it off and headed back to our safe cosy villa to indulge ourselves with wine and pasta for the night. It was too big and sketchy, we needed at least a warm up jump before attempting such a sickening drop. A couple days on from our failed attempts, we decided to take a boat tour around the coastline of southern Portugal (Sagres). What happened next was bloody typical; the captain was telling us about all these amazing places that we could jump from and the first jump just so happened to be the one we had been looking for! How fucking annoying is that? The end of the tour we headed round the bay to find the big ass jump we had failed the previous week. I explained to the captain how we had attempted to jump this and he laughed and said “You're just jumping to your death, there’s no way out - once you're in, you're in”. How very happy we all were that we didn’t have the bollocks to go through with this idiotic jump, as this would have been a very different story. We opted for a smaller, safer one instead. See more on Freddie's Instagram here.
Best of the Month - Vol. 9
As we delve deeper into this year's warm autumn colours, we're back with a roundup of our favourite stories, images and music from the past month. Enjoy! Best of the Web Lego celebrated the women of NASA last month with new minifiguress, featuring Nancy Grace Roman, Margaret Hamilton, Sally Ride, and Mae Jemison. Donate Your Tab uses your computer's CPU via browser tabs to mine cryptocurrency. This is then all donated to charity! You can simply flick the switch and run this in the background to help out various causes. Find out more here. Tens team member Richard Branson has built an 80-foot steel octopus to sink one of the remaining boats involved in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour — The Kodiak Queen. The historical navy ship, which was sunk off the coast of Virgin Gorda, is now an underwater art installation and marine life habitat. The Yashica Y35 is a new ‘digiFilm’ camera that shoots digital photos with the help of pretend rolls of film. Styled after Yashica’s original Electro 35, which had the world’s first electronic-controlled shutter, the Y35 features a 1/3.2-inch CMOS sensor that shoots 14-megapixel photos and a 35mm f/2.8 glass lens. The camera is designed to “recapture the joy and meaning of analogue-photography” while “eliminating the time and expense required for film development.” London-based photographer Rich McCor, or paperboyo travels across the globe giving creative updates to buildings, bridges, and signs through the use of simple paper cutouts. By placing a black design in the foreground of his image, London’s Tower Bridge is instantly transformed into a looping roller coaster. See more on his Instagram. Tens Soundtrack Here are some of our office favourites, both new and old. Who else should we be checking out? Visit our profile on Spotify to check out our previous months' soundtracks. Who to Follow Here are some of our favourite accounts to follow on Instagram. If you know anybody that we should be following, let us know! This month we've got @arnaudmontagard, @laurentkronental, @mr_bingstagram, @robertgoetzfried & @mariano_pascual. Best of #FilterYourWorld At Tens we put our community first, no matter what it is that we're up to. Here's where we share some of our favourite customer photos with Tens from the last month. We love seeing your tags with Tens, so be sure to tag us + #FilterYourWorld for your chance to be featured! Photos submitted (in order) by @sibylle87, @ktlphotog, @sir_hare, @michelezandanel & @anto.agos. ~ What things have you discovered this month? Are we missing anything? Message us on Facebook with suggestions!
Kegelbahns - The Aesthetics of 9-Pin Bowling
“I like to show places in ways people don’t usually see them, Kegeln was a big deal when I was a child. These days, the bowling alleys are becoming rare and traditional ones are about to die.” Robert Goetzfried is an professional photographer and graphic designer currently based in Munich. For his project “Bowling Alleys”, Robert has traveled all over Germany to capture the country’s vibrant bowling alleys or 'Kegelbahns'. The sport was huge in '80s Germany, and the halls served as extremely popular hangouts. Most of these alleys are found underneath restaurants, beer taverns and town halls, so groups would gather to laugh, drink and bowl (think Big Lebowski). Goetzfried commented on the juxtaposition of wild weekends against the clean lines of the walls meeting the lanes. Very #AccidentalWesAnderson. Mesmerised by the shapes of the Kegelbahns, Robert has captured everything from single-alley spots under Italian restaurants, to Europe's largest American bowling center at 52 lanes. View the gallery below, and check out more of Robert's work via Instagram.
La Fabrica - 45 Years in the Making
La Fabrica (The Factory) is a 5,000 square feet cement factory located near Barcelona, Spain which serves as the unique backdrop to local architect Ricardo Bofill‘s studio and home. Bofill stumbled upon the cement factory in 1973. It was an enormous compound of silos and buildings that covered nearly two and a half miles of underground tunnels. He decided to purchase La Fabrica, and over the past 45 years his team have been renovating the structure. The dream was to create a living work space that would unite the Surrealist, Abstract, and Brutalist elements found in its original industrial form. Original construction to transform the sprawling series of buildings took a little over a year and a half. After the dust cleared from the jack hammers and dynamite, Catalan craftsmen worked to add gardens and purpose back into the abandoned compound. Today the factory holds a cathedral, model workshop, archive rooms, residence, and studio, a workspace for Bofill’s firm spread over four floors in the factory’s silos and connected by a spiral staircase. Despite nearly forty-five years in the making, the entire project is constantly evolving and is one that Bofill never sees as being fully completed. With continuous tweaks, Bofill has created a perfectly programmed existence, a ritualised lifestyle that goes against his previously nomadic early life as explained in the above video from Nowness. “I have the impression of living in a precinct, in a closed universe which protects me from the outside and everyday life. The Cement Factory is a place of work par excellence. Life goes on here in a continuous sequence, with very little difference between work and leisure.” You can view more details of the project on Bofill's website here.
