Backyard Aeronautics: Chinese Farmers Who Also Make Flying Machines

According to photographer Xiaoxiao Xu, the Chinese farmers and other rural hobbyists building flying machines from scratch are not in it for fame or fortune. Mostly working out of their own backyar… | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 6 years ago

Intelligent Interiors: Robotic Furniture Retracts to Ceiling When Not in Use

Driven by an artificially intelligent butler, this smart furniture system promises to free up valuable floor space by lifting and lowering modular interior design elements as needed, putting them i… | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 7 years ago

Dystopia Now: Office-Oriented “Blinkers” Serve as Horse Blinders for Humans

As workers become increasingly packed in modern, open-plan offices and coworking spaces, designers keep working on high-tech solutions to allow employees to focus, often with the unintended effect … | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 7 years ago

Chinese City to Replace Street Lights with Orbiting Artificial Moon by 2020

Within two years, the city of Chengdu aims to swap out its ground-based street lighting with the soft glow of an artificial moon, casting light across 50 square miles of the urban landscape. Wu Chu… | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 7 years ago

Atlas of Atlases: Graphic Design Meta-Book Samples 1,366 Vintage Maps

The map is not the territory, but the exception also proves the rule, as in the case of this book, which samples over 1,000 different maps to deconstruct their design approaches and inspire designe… | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 7 years ago

Nomadic Futures: Self-Driving Cars Could Change How We Interact with Cities

“Location, location, location” might be the mantra of the real estate industry, but that mindset could change radically with the advent of autonomous vehicles. It may take a while, but … | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 7 years ago

Graphene Enables World’s Lightest Wheelchair Design

Working with Formula 1 race car manufacturers and employing aerospace materials, a Swiss firm has developed what they claim is the world’s lightest wheelchair, with a frame weighing in at jus… | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 7 years ago

Lego-Like Architecture: $5,000 Homes from Recycled Plastic Blocks

A company in Colombia is tackling plastic waste issues and affordable housing with a single ingenious solution: interlocking LEGO-like bricks that can be used to build houses for a few thousand dol… | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 7 years ago

Recycled Islands: Floating Dutch Park Constructed from Waterway Waste

A fresh new type of park-on-the-water in Rotterdam is turned plastic trash that once polluted the area into a series of hexagonal pods now open to the public. The design is built to scale, too R… | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 8 years ago

Wipe Left? The Roll-In-Front Toilet Seat

The Bog Standard Toilet Seat Roll Holder may be the sanitation solution nobody asked for but British designer Henry Franks really doesn’t give a crap. | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 8 years ago

Rendering Trends: Decoding Tired Tropes of Flashy Architectural Graphics

Look at architectural renderings on a regular basis and soon you’ll start to spot stylized elements that pop up often enough to be called cliches, every one of them inserted into the image for a sp… | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 8 years ago

Guerrilla Grafting: Making Ornamental Trees Edible

You don’t have to ask permission to make your city more abundant, growing food where once there was none. Sometimes this type of urban hacktivism is obvious to passersby and thus, susceptible… | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 8 years ago

Nano-House: World’s Smallest Home Built in a Vacuum by Micro-Robots

Standing just over one two-thousandth of an inch (.0006 inches), the world’s tiniest home sits on an optical fiber lot that is about a million times smaller than a typical two-story, single-f… | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 8 years ago

Tiny Trains: Neat Narrow-Gauge Rail Connects German Island to Mainland

The island of Nordstrandischmoor is connected to mainland Germany by a tiny narrow gauge railway, on which residents (at least those 15 years of age and older and holding a moped license) can drive… | Continue reading


@weburbanist.com | 8 years ago