Teenage Engineering’s 3D Printables Transform IKEA Speakers Into Something Cool
IKEA’s spirited Frekvens collection designed in cooperation with Stockholm-based audio geeks Teenage Engineering was already unlike anything out there in the consumer audio category. Teenage Engineering are now offering 13 additional customization accessories to 3D print gratis, adding an extra level of the practical and occasionally wonderfully weird to the IKEA line.

Hacking Darwin
We are on the verge of perhaps the greatest innovation in the history of our species — a genetically altered future in which many of us will conceive our offspring in labs. If we want to control this future, now is the time to question what we want it to be.

On Walkman’s 40th Anniversary, Sony Opens Retro Exhibition In Tokyo
Sony Corp. opened an exhibition Monday in Tokyo’s bustling Ginza district to mark the 40th anniversary of its signature Walkman. The handheld audio player debuted on July 1, 1979, offering portable music to ears across the world. In the years that followed, over 400 million units would be sold.

Why Amazon Is Betting You’ll Buy A Million Dollar Prefab Home
Prefab has long been the unattainable unicorn of architecture, the ideal marriage of high design, efficient building, environmental consciousness, and affordability. Designers have long tried and failed to take modular mainstream. Can this Amazon-backed entrepreneur make prefab more than just a fad?

‘The Countryside Is Where The Radical Changes Are’: Rem Koolhaas Goes Rural
“There has been no architecture of a similar vigour in the last 100 years. It is based strictly on codes, algorithms, technologies, engineering and performance, not intention. Its boredom is hypnotic, its banality breathtaking.” For Koolhaas, the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center embodies a new kind of sublime.

AR For The Naked Eye Transforms Outdoor Advertising
London-based media technology startup Lightvert has created a new method for using unexpected and unusual locations. Lightvert’s ECHO technology projects images into the air. Moreover, the images are particular to that location and cannot be seen even a few feet away from the optimal viewing position.

Human Terrain, Visualizing The World’s Population In 3D
Kinshasa is now bigger than Paris. Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen are forming an epic, 40 million-person super city. Over the past 30 years, the scale of population change is hard to grasp. How do you even visualize 10 million people?

Speedgate, The Sport Invented By Artificial Intelligence
A team of designers in Portland, Oregon, tasked their artificial intelligence system with building a new team sport for us humans. The result of that pet project, Speedgate, is being heralded as the first viable AI-created field game. It has since become an indie sports phenomenon, with proposed leagues in more than 50 countries worldwide.

Banksy Crashes The Venice Art Biennale With Unlicensed Street Stall
A minute-long video documents a concealed man setting up a tableau of framed oil paintings on the streets of the Italian city. When assembled, the group of images depicts the ever-controversial cruise ships that dwarf Venice’s spectacular cityscape as they make their way past the grand canal.

Zaha Hadid Architects’ Morpheus Hotel Opens In Macau
Designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, the 150,000-square-metre, 40-storey Morpheus hotel is the final chapter of Melco Resorts and Entertainment’s sprawling City of Dreams resort development, combining casino gaming, shopping and four other hotels located on the Cotai Strip.

GauGAN: Changing Sketches Into Photorealistic Masterpieces In Seconds
A deep learning model developed by NVIDIA Research turns rough doodles into highly realistic scenes using generative adversarial networks (GANs). Dubbed GauGAN, the tool is like a smart paintbrush, converting segmentation maps into lifelike images.

How Designers Engineer Luck Into Video Games
Fairness is the unspoken promise of most video games. Controlled by an omniscient and omnipotent designer, a video game has the capacity to be ultimately just, and players expect that it will be so. And yet, when video games truly play by the rules, the player can feel cheated.

Climate Tile Designed To Catch And Redirect Excess Rainwater From Climate Change
The Climate Tile is a pilot project designed to catch and redirect 30% of the projected extra rainwater coming due to climate change. Created by THIRD NATURE with IBF and ACO Nordic, the project will be inaugurated on a 50m pavement stretch at Nørrebro in Copenhagen.

How Typefaces Influence You
A typeface choice could influence your perception of people running for school board seats, the lawyer opening a new law office, or the coffee shop you never noticed before.

The “New” Trend Of 8D Audio Explained; What Is It And How Is It Achieved?
The reality is that there’s no new technology but a technique that allows hearing sounds as if you were in the middle of it. That feeling of music that runs through your head, thanks to the use of headphones, is the result of equalization techniques, panning and effects combined together.

3D Printing Homes For The Homeless In Austin
ICON, the 3D-printing construction company, has partnered with Mobile Loaves & Fishes (MLF) to build 3D-printed homes in Austin. The only neighborhood of its kind in the nation, Community First! Village provides affordable, permanent housing and a supportive community for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness.

China Is Building An Artificial Sun
China has announced advancing plans for its nuclear fusion device known colloquially as an “artificial sun.” The extremely high temperatures of 360 million degrees Fahrenheit lead to the titular effect: literally, the nucleuses of two or more atoms are fused, and the process generates energy.

Ashes To Ashes, Dust To… Compost? An Ecofriendly Burial In Just 4 Weeks
Also known as “natural organic reduction,” composting burial is the brainchild of Katrina Spade, CEO of alternative burial company Recompose. The process involves decomposition of the corpse in soil—but not within a traditional cemetery.

‘Chronicle Is Dead And Google Killed It’
In early 2018, Google’s parent conglomerate Alphabet announced the birth of a new “independent” startup that was supposed to revolutionize cybersecurity. Chronicle, Google’s moonshot cybersecurity startup that was supposed to completely change the industry, is imploding.

Precht’s The Farmhouse Concept Combines Modular Homes With Vertical Farms
Architecture studio Precht has developed a concept for modular housing where residents produce their own food in vertical farms. Precht developed The Farmhouse as a way to reconnect people in cities with agriculture and help them live in a more sustainable way.

MI.MU Gloves: Music Through Movement
MI·MU Gloves are the world’s most advanced wearable musical instrument, for expressive creation, composition and performance. Express yourself through gestures using wearable music technology, connect movement to sound in your own way and discover new forms of expression.