Set within the beds of small white Japanese pickup trucks known as ‘kei,’ these gardens are so lush and complex, they look like they’ve been established for many years. In reality, each one had been in place for just a few hours before these photographs were taken. The miniature gardens were created for the annual Kei Truck Garden Contest held by the Japan Federation of Landscape Contractors, held at the Nagai Botanical Garden in Osaka on April 29th and 30th. Thirteen companies participated, each one creating their own interpretation of the theme.

Other than the simple instructions to build a living garden within the truck beds using standard landscaping materials, the contest has very few rules and directives, and the participants are free to design whatever kind of garden strikes their fancy. As this year’s entries show, the results range from formal Japanese tea houses to more American-style gardens complete with decorative wagon wheels. Some integrated furniture, fencing or water features, and one even boasted its own glass-walled pond.

The judging criteria looked for “planning ability, expression power, design, enforcement and consideration of the environment.” First place went to a lush mossy garden entitled “Clear Flow Drifting in Autumn” by Landscaping Co., LTD, which features a dry creek bed and a softly hilly topography (top image), while the indoor/outdoor space with shoji screens called “Nishiki of Autumn Leaves” nabbed second prize and the mysterious “Secret Base of Green Tea” with its cave-like roof structure won third.

The contest is a fun twist on the “portable park” concept sometimes seen in cities like San Francisco, which reclaims parking spots as green space for urban residents. To see more, check out this PDF from the Hanshin branch.

Over a dozen installations are bringing Japan’s 5,000,0000-square-foot Mifuneyama Rakuen to life, combining nature with cultural traditions and modern technology in dazzling and moving ways.

Designed by TeamLab, this exhibition incorporates a sweeping landscape of lakes, mountains and forests as well as ancient structures, some predating the park (which itself is nearly 200 years old).

Their driving idea: create new immersive interactions with nature without doing any damage, using an array of lighting techniques to facilitate a unique nighttime experience. In some places, abstract lighting patterns contrast with or highlight natural elements, like koi fish swimming in a lake — in other instances, projections of scanned nature illustrate the cycle of seasons in underground caves.

“Winding promenades, a picturesque pond and an ancient villa-turned-tea house blend seamlessly with the natural surroundings, blurring the borders between wild and manmade,” reports DesignBoom. “High above, the monumental mifuneyama mountain watches over an active and lush ecosystem of sacred trees, ancient stones, hidden caves, and a diverse community of flora and fauna. It is a peaceful and poetic place that induces a deep sense of contemplation and calm. Serenity lives here.”

Visitors can journey through this hybrid wonderland moving from one exhibition to the next in sequence, or simply get lost in the trails that open each evening as the sun goes down. The project, titled “A Forest Where Gods Live,” is open through this fall.

Packing the environmental impact of as many as 275 actual urban trees, these multi-functional CityTree units are dense and efficient fighters of urban air pollution (the single largest environmental health risk). Each CityTree can remove 240 metric tons of CO2 per year, as much as a small forest.

Developed by Green City Solutions in Berlin, the CityTree is covered in moss cultures — their high surface area ratios help remove dust and other airborne gasses and chemicals at a rate much higher than normal trees. Each unit has solar panels providing electricity and automated rainwater collection systems to store and distribute moisture as needed. Sensors help monitor soil humidity, temperature, water and air quality in and around each unit.

CityTrees have started sprouting in places like Paris, Brussels and Hong Kong, occupying a few square meters on city sidewalks while also (optionally) serving as public seating. Of course, air pollution is rarely evenly distributed in cities, so placement in high-traffic/emissions areas is also critical.

Developed by an architect and an engineer, the CityTree has been in the works for over a decade. “Our ultimate goal is to incorporate technology from the CityTree into existing buildings,” one of the designers told CNN. “We dream of creating a climate infrastructure so we can regulate what kind of air and also what kind of temperature we have in a city.” Beyond this compact and mobile application, lessons learned from monitoring and growing dense mosses on individual CityTree installations could also be applied on larger structural surfaces down the line.

A single-story house in Vietnam echos an ancient world wonder, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but on a domestic scale and with minimalist contemporary design sensibilities and a functional purpose.

Created by MIA Design Studio, the home is both open to its surroundings but also shielded by a veil of greenery reaching up to the rooftop above.

“The boundary between the interior and exterior is being diminished, letting man sense the fluctuations of nature. Space is opened up but maintains the privacy of the individuals. This is the daunting problem of living in a metropolitan area with cramped space and pollution.”

The green screen is a theme carried between three distinct volumes of the house, lining a connective hallway that joins disparate living, sleeping and working spaces. A series of outdoor gardens between the interior areas and perimeter wall create a natural sanctuary for the residents, providing access to a personal forest within the a bustling built environment.

‘Piss in peace’ is the tagline for the Urintrottoir, a recent addition to the streets of Paris that’s part urinal, part composter, part mini garden. City officials are hoping that offering these urinals right out in the open will be a viable way to get men to stop peeing all over everything in sight, especially at night when they’ve had a few drinks. It would be cool if our cities could smell a little nicer, guys.

The problem is, most of us don’t want to stare at urinals as we’re walking down the sidewalk. The Urintrottoir design attempts to find a way around that and make use of waste products at the same time, by making each unit into a planter full of herbs and flowers. The top bins contain straw and sawdust, which help break down the urine into relatively neutral-smelling soil for the plants.

Larger versions of the device could potentially absorb the urine of 600 people before needing to be emptied. Two smaller versions are currently located near the Gare de Lyon station in Paris, and if the test is successful (and men really do choose to pee in them instead of in alleys or in the doorways of shops,) additional units will be rolled out to other stations in France.

Some European cities already offer public ‘pissoirs’ that are considerably less decorative, but there’s not always a recycling component involved. This option makes lemonade out of lemons, so to speak (sorry, that metaphor is almost too perfect.) Now, if only there were similar options designed for people with different equipment.

A previous effort to prettify public urinals came in the form of a rose-tinted marble fountain by Portuguese architecture firm Bureau A, attempting to make public pissing into an artistic act.