Spending what feels like forever cruising around a crowded downtown area looking for parking can be highly frustrating, but there’s an obvious solution: take alternative transportation. Decades of car-centric culture around the world have made it difficult to pry people out of their vehicles and into the seats of buses, trains and bicycles, but what if those modes of transportation were a lot easier to access and enjoy? A new collaboration between Dutch bicycle brand Union and ad agency Natwerk aims to do just that with a fun mobile parking shed for bikes.

One could argue that there’s ample space to park bicycles all over the city of Amsterdam (and most cities, for that matter) while parking spots for cars are harder to come by, therefore the pop-up is taking up valuable space. But that’s part of the point. The project demonstrates how many more people could get around if there were fewer individual vehicles on the road, especially those with a single occupant. In fact, Union argues that there are still too man parking spaces for cars instead of bicycles in a city where cycling is so popular.

Though it hasn’t been approved by the city, the mobile bike parking shed gets away with occupying parking spaces through a loophole; as required by law, it has its own license plate so the operator can pay for parking like everyone else. The parking shed was quite a spectacle while in motion, but once parked along one of the city’s poshest shopping streets, it stirred up some controversy. Dutch news site Fonk Online reports that angry shopkeepers at adjacent businesses worried their car-driving customers would be put out, while passersby complained that “the motorist is already being bullied too much.”

Frank de Ruwe, the creative network of Natwerk, shrugs off these responses. “Cycling is simply better for the world than driving. Everyone agrees.”

Since cars are still so convenient, it might take more than a little “bullying” to prompt people to consider alternatives. While bicycling is not for everyone, and some people still need to drive due to cargo or disabilities, cities would be a lot more pleasant (and emit a lot fewer greenhouse gases) if they contained fewer cars. While occupying more parking spaces for other uses would undoubtedly upset a lot of drivers, it could also provide a bit of a helpful push toward a new way of thinking about urban transit.

Talk of bees usually conjures images of buzzing hives acting in concert, but most species around the world are actually lowners, hence this series of chic abodes for less social bees. Honey bees and bumblebees work together, and get most of the media buzz, while solitary bees work alone — not producing honey or wax, but still playing an important role as pollinators in the global food system.

“When we talk about bees, we usually imagine the European honey bee (Apis mellifera) when in reality, around 90 percent of the bee species are considered solitary,” explains Gabriel Calvillo of MaliArts, who designed these bee condos.

“The fact that solitary bees do not generate any ‘consumable product’ for humans has meant that they are not given much attention, but recent studies point to the fact that they are possibly the most efficient pollinators in nature.”

The ‘Refugio’ series contains three different structures, each designed around the preferences of different solitary bees. They feature pine and teak wood finishes, ceramic roofs and steel legs with integrated feeding and watering systems for maximum comfort.

Perhaps most importantly: nearby literature will explain to passing city dwellers what the structures are about, and the importance of bees to the world as we know it.

Most urban designs are at best useful for skaters as an afterthought, or more typically: specifically created to foil skaters, but not this set of signs.

The Drive Skate Shop in Vancouver created two of these, the first of which mimics a typical and ubiquitous “sandwich board” style sign, which normally consists of two planes angling out toward the bottom for stability.

By extending those surfaces onto the ground and adding a slight curve, a skateable sign is created — ride it at your own risk, however (it’s steep!).  Metal supports provide stability, too.

The second variant is crafted from curved plywood and slopes up a wall, imitating a typical pasted posters toward the top, but turning into an angled ramp near the ground, effectively turning the whole wall into a more skate-friendly surface.

As marketing strategies go, this one has it all: simple and clever, cheap but functional and to-the-point, letting passing skaters take a stab at riding the signage then maybe stopping for some supplies when they tank their landing.

The Denver International Airport has long been a hub of conspiracy theories, a number of which seem to be confirmed by signs put up by the DIA on walls blocking off areas under renovation.

Some theories hold that the DIA is the home base of the Illuminati, New World Order or Reptoids, citing everything from the layout of the airport and its runways to various bizarre murals, sculptures and engravings (argued to be secret codes or alien messages).

There have also been questions about extensive excavations of areas that seem to serve no obvious purpose, not to mention an array of really disturbing artworks (from militaristic paintings to giant glowing-eyed horse).

Tapping into this legacy, new marketing billboards reference lizard people, alien overlords, UFO sightings and other occult and extraterrestrial phenomena — maybe (OK: absolutely) this means the conspiracies are a fun joke, but of course, some will think they’re just hiding in plane sight.

Millions of years from now, will aliens visiting an earth free of humans (or future humans, on the off chance we survive that long) find a puzzling ‘amber’ fossil of a 1979 Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen? Of all the cars that could have been chosen to preserve as a time capsule, most people probably wouldn’t have chosen this one, yet here we are. The automaker has commissioned an incredible sculptural exhibition for the North American International Auto Show in Detroit (NAIAS) made of 44.4 tons of synthetic resin.

“The installation symbolizes the timelessness of the off-road legend and makes a conscious reference to the natural phenomenon of insects preserved in amber,” said Mercedes-Benz in a press release. “Like their genetic material the DNA of the first G-Class has also been preserved and is handed down from generation to generation. These genes are also in the new G-Class and they are carrying through the characteristic properties of the longest-lived model series from Mercedes-Benz into modern times: an iconic design, indestructible superiority off the beaten track and exceptional ride comfort on the road.”

It may be a stunt to promote a product release, but it’s certainly a memorable one. The resin block measures 18 feet long, 8.3 feet wide and over ten feet tall, and it took 90 days to create it layer by layer, with the block growing by about 1.1 inch in height every day.