Volkswagen Gives Classic 1972 Type 2 Microbus An Electric Upgrade
Volkswagen has replaced the original internal-combustion engine of this 1972 Type 2 Microbus with an electric powertrain. The German automaker commissioned EV West — a company that specializes in electric conversions on the west coast.

Crumpled, Highly Realistic Drawings By Bella McGoldrick
Bella McGoldrick has a series of hyper-realistic drawings, using crumpled bags, boxes, and concert tickets as subject matter. The wrinkled, smashed, and folded material presents a complex web of shadows and reflections, making the drawings all the more difficult to compose.

Studio Precht Designs A Fingerprint-Shaped Park For Physical Distancing
Austria-based studio Precht — previously known as Penda — has unveiled the design for a lush green park envisioned for physical distancing and short-term solitude. Dubbed Parc de la Distance, the open air space has been shaped in the form of a fingerprint, evoking human touch.

A Mid-Century Modern Shipping Container Home
This midcentury-inspired container home is located in Salida, Colorado, on the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The house was designed to serve as a vacation rental and you can check it out on Airbnb. The eye-catching structure with bright orange exterior contrasts with everything else around it.

Tiny Houses Look Marvellous But Have A Dark Side
Tiny houses are often put forward as a more sustainable housing option. They are certainly a potential check on the continued pursuit of bigger houses and greater consumption of energy, building materials and so forth. Yet reducing your environmental impact by going tiny is not as simple as some have claimed.

In South-East Asia, Grab And Gojek Bring Banking To The Masses
Both started with ride-hailing and expanded into other logistics businesses, such as deliveries and food-ordering. The story of two South-East Asian “deca-unicorns”—fintechs valued above $10bn—is usually told in terms of their rivalry.

XTU Architects Imagines Offshore Oil Rigs Transformed Into Radical Housing Of The Future
No stranger to an unconventional project, XTU Architects presents their latest fantastical proposal titled ‘x_lands’. The concept looks at life after oil, and in particular, what to do with all the offshore platforms that have been built in the last century to drill for the earth’s natural resources.

The Impossible Architecture Of Dreams
Where do we go when we dream? This surreal territory has proved fertile ground for a new generation of contemporary artists working at the intersection of architecture, interior design, and technology. The dreamscapes of these creations offer an intriguing insight into a new movement in digital art.

The High-Tech Vertical Farmer
In the kale-filled facility at vertical farm startup Bowery Farming, it’s a piece of proprietary software that makes most of the critical decisions — like when to harvest and how much to water each plant. But it still takes humans to carry out many tasks around the farm.

How We Can Cool Our Cities
With intensive development in urban areas and the impacts of global warming becoming ever more apparent, numerous cities around the world are now taking steps to reduce their temperatures and develop a more sustainable urban environment. Here are 3 innovative ways to bring temperatures down.

Skinny Home In Toronto As Prototype For Parking-Space Homes?
When Cyril Borovsky bought a 16-foot-wide strip of land in Toronto sandwiched between two bungalows, he knew the only way to fit more than one bedroom on the tiny footprint was to think cubically. Using a steel frame and performing much of the work himself- with just a boom lift and makeshift pulley-, he went up four floors.

The Beautiful Hidden Logic Of Cities
Driving around your city, you’re probably somewhat aware of Avenues and Boulevards and Streets and Roads and so on. However, it’s hard to get an overall view of how all these road designations knit together. By coloring them, we can suddenly see a new, stunning view of what we normally take for granted.

The 737 Max Skyscraper Vertically Stacks Boeing’s Planes To Turn Them Into Residential Complexes
Designed as an entrant for the 2020 eVolo Skyscraper Competition, the 737 Max Tower turns one of the world’s most controversial aircrafts of modern times into housing.

A New Start-Up Wants To Use AI To Replace “Expensive, Architect-Designed” Homes
Tech start-up Higharc aims to “reinvent home design for the digital age.” The company uses iterative design to create “custom” 3D models and plans. Algorithmic design isn’t new to architecture, but it looks like Higharc seeks to do away with “expensive, architect-designed plans that take forever to produce.”

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.

Urban Miniatures: Over Forty Artists Create A Mini Village Of Contemporary Art
Artists Pam Glew and Emily Paxton joined forces to curate Urban Miniatures, a unique pop-up exhibition focused on a subversive model village entirely “bombed” by well-known artists from the urban contemporary art scene.

Farmer’s Fridge Wants To Make Eating Healthy Food As Easy As Getting Money From An ATM
Farmer’s Fridge retrofits vending machines to serve up healthy foods — salads, sandwiches, granola, etc. — for people on the go. In order to ensure restaurant-quality food, Farmer’s Fridge has a chef on board who receives feedback from customers to constantly tweak the menu and the food.

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.

A Vision For Agriculture
Allowing cows out to harvest their own feed and spread their own manure is the most profitable means of producing meat and milk. But, somehow, agricultural science has encouraged farmers to mount a treadmill of increasing yields of milk or meat by increasing the amount of production per unit input.

Dracula Bosses Erect Billboard That Comes To Life At Night
The BBC decided to give Dracula fans a fright with two billboards of the show that come to life at night. A shadow of the infamous vampire appears in the center of the advert, which looks as though it has been cast by a number of wooden stakes plunged into the advert.

Chopvalue Gives Chopsticks A Second Life As High-Quality Design Material
ChopValue, a Vancouver-based company, creates high-performance designs made entirely from recycled chopsticks. Collected from restaurants, discarded chopsticks are transformed through a carbon-neutral micro-manufacturing model and reintroduced as high-value engineered products.