A series of sleek but whimsical models blend photorealism with fantastic concepts for treehouses, hilltop homes and even dwellings mounted on the sides of cliffs.

Santi Zoraidez is an art director and designer from Buenos Aires who does visual, graphic and architectural work, sometimes real and sometimes conceptual.

In this set of summer homes, he bends, twists, warps and cantilevers wood in amazing (if sometimes implausible) ways, putting houses on spindly stilts or hanging them from steep rocky surfaces.

The results are at once daring and provocative while retaining a sense of minimalism, that core feature common to Modernist Scandinavian designs.

By maintaining a simple palette of colors and textures, the artist manages to accomplish a natural aesthetic that makes sense for countryside dwellings while letting the details of designs – long horizontals and asymmetrical shapes – define each work.

Technology to assist visually impaired people is progressing far beyond the dog and cane. These technology concepts  – all of which are still in the design stages and not available for purchase – could someday bring the world into focus for those who can’t necessarily see it unassisted.

The Tactile, Temperature-Enhanced Wristwatch

Watches for blind folks are all about feeling, rather than seeing, the time. This concept from designer Jung Hoon Lee is known as the Rub Feel Know watch. It puts a rather unusual twist on the expected raised bumps on the watch face. The hour hand is represented by an indentation near the center of the watch. The minute hand is a small bump which is situated closer to the outside of the face.

If feeling the positions of the indentation and the bump doesn’t give enough haptic information, there is another helpful element. The hour indicator feels warm when you touch it, and the minute hand feels cool – along with the concave and convex indicators, the temperature lets users feel exactly what time it is.

The Finger Mounted World-Seeing Camera

The 3D-printed EyeRing, developed by a team at MIT, is worn on the finger like a ring. It’s equipped with a tiny camera, a processor, a Li-ion battery, and a Bluetooth module.

To identify an object, the user only has to point the EyeRing at it and then press a small button on the side of the device. It snaps a picture, which it then sends to the user’s smartphone. After giving it a simple voice command, the app can then identify colors, currency, text, or price tag information and relay the information to the user’s Bluetooth earpiece.

The concept still needs a lot of development to be viable as a real-world product, but the creators think that they’ll be able to produce the module at a consumer cost of less than $100.

The Solar-Powered Retinal Implant That Could Restore Sight

Retinal implants are nothing new, but current iterations aren’t perfect. They’re often painful and need to have a physical link between the implant and a pair of sunglasses – an arrangement that doesn’t sound pleasant at all. Researchers at Stanford took the traditional retinal implant idea a step further by making the implant wireless.

The user still needs to wear sunglasses which contain a small camera. The camera projects images directly onto the user’s retina so – while they won’t be able to see perfectly – it will restore at least some of their vision. As a bonus, the entire setup is solar-powered so there’s no need to wear a bulky battery.

The Smart-Talking, Walk-Guiding Brick

Using a white cane to navigate sidewalks is a huge help to people who can’t see well enough to navigate by sight alone, but the cane can’t tell you where you are or how to get to your destination. The Blind Guider concept works by embedding “smart bricks” into city sidewalks that work with sensors on an electronic cane.

The cane comes with a Bluetooth earpiece that fits into the cane’s top when not in use. When the earpiece is in use, it relays information from the smart bricks. Each brick is equipped with an RFID tag that transmits information when the cane makes contact. It tells the user what intersection they are standing at and, when moved around to other parts of the brick, can give information about the surrounding areas as well.

Using this system, visually impaired walkers could easily find their way around a city with minimal knowledge of its layout. It seems that this product is just a dream, though, because the infrastructure needed to make it work would be expensive and complex for cities to install.

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Blind Ambitions 11 Game Changing Visual Assistive Concepts

A few are far-fetched, but most of these notices are shocking in part because they are nearly believable – some may be an accepted reality within the next few years (click to enlarge).

Collected on signsfromthenearfuture, a Tumblr blog, their subjects range from driverless cars and solar roadways to cryogenic stations and hyperloop trains.

Some are clearly tongue-in-cheek commentary on current social behavior and perceived threats to privacy, or based on science-fiction principles unlikely to materialize, but who knows. Others you may be seeing very soon on streets and in other public places (alas, probably not the one about jetpack rentals).

In a handful of pages in a book the size of a fingernail, this book artist tells a minimalist story of life on Earth, illustrating pivotal moments with brief text and tiny images.

A beautiful bit of hand-bound book art, The Mini Book of Major Events is just one of a series of micro-volumes made by Evan Lorzenzen, all of which pack large ideas into the smallest space possible.

Of course, selectivity is key – which events warrant mentioning when space is at a premium? Then, how does one illustrate these most effectively at such a minute scale?

Along similar lines, The Little Book of Big Ideas tackles large and important concepts from war and death to love and infinity, again with lovely drawings alongside each.

Noxious odors are an inevitable part of life in the city, from rotting trash and cigarette smoke to the sweaty guy sitting next to you on the subway eating Chinese take-out. It’s even more of a problem if you’re particularly sensitive to smells, and a colleague’s over-application of perfume can trigger debilitating headache. This air-purifying collar, a finalist in the 2013 Electrolux Design Lab, aims to eliminate unwanted smells and provide aromatherapy, too.

The OZ-1 is a portable air purifier that sits around your neck, looking a bit like a pair of headphones. The device has a built-in ozone generator and HEPA filter to clean the air in the immediate vicinity of your face, so you never have to smell anything bad. Of course, it’s also going to block out good smells, like the food you’re about to eat, so you’d want to take it off occasionally.

The HEPA filter also traps dust and particles, so it’s good for allergy sufferers, and the device releases an oxidant to neutralize harmful gases in the air. An integrated smoke sensor detects smoke so it can trap and neutralize cigarette odors before they latch onto your hair and clothing.

It also includes perfume cartridges, so you can walk around with your favorite scent in the air at all times. A series of decorative skins makes it almost like a piece of jewelry. The OZ-1 is just a concept, for now, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see it on shelves someday soon.