Fields of floating paper hiraganas hang to create colorful screens and passageways in this spectacular work of installation art. Designed by Emmanuelle Moureaux, it is part of a larger 100 Colors series exploring a whole spectrum of intimate and thoughtful spaces.

The opening of the exhibit coincided with Tanabata Day, a Japanese star festival during which people traditionally write down their hopes and dreams on pieces of paper then suspend these from bamboo branches.

The result is a peaceful place made up over of 140,00 paper cutouts, draped from the ceiling to create rainbow passages and aligned to create opportunities for connection as well as isolation throughout the artwork. From some perspectives, the entire spectrum is visible, while in other places, a single color dominates.

Some sit individually in trees while are clustered in sets, branching out like leaves on a building facade or hung like ivy off the sides of structures, but all of these diverse birdhouses share something in common: a single creative mind that has been working on them for years.

Street artist and designer Thomas Dambo’s Happy City Birds project is an ongoing ode to both cities and their avian inhabitants. He specializes in recycled artworks for humans as well as animals, ranging from small interventions like these to huge climbable sculptures.

Started in 2006, “the idea for Happy City Birds sprung from Thomas being a former graffiti artist, and was looking for a way to do street art in a positive way, that everyone can understand.” As with his other projects, these “birdhouses are made from recycled materials and scrap wood.”

His artist statements, like his kid-friendly creations, are not without a sense of childlike wonder and good humor. “One day Thomas felt that he wanted to know how it was to be a bird, so he built a giant birdhouse that he could hang out in. The house he build solely using recycled materials and put it up near Dronning Louises bridge in Copenhagen.”

A lot of these birdhouses are located in Arken, Denmark but they are also spread across other cities including Copenhagen, Aarhus, Odense, Horsens, Beirut and Berlin.

Designer Fernando Abellanas has built a remarkable micro-dwelling in Valencia, Spain, that slides into position under a bridge, suspended safely out of sight from the traffic passing by above.

The clever construction of the room’s frame allows it to roll over tilted sections of beam, making its way between a lofted and secluded position and the top of a slope on the other side for entry and egress.

A hand-crank lets the dweller move the enclosure back and forth without any need for an external power source. Furniture and fixtures, meanwhile, stay put, attached to the vertical span of bridge supports where the room docks.

Embracing a minimalist approach and industrial palette, this urban refuge has flexible walls that can form an enclosure and act as privacy screens, allowing the occupant to hiding completely behind raised plywood surfaces.

A light-touch approach means the structure leaves essentially no footprint – it glides lightly around existing infrastructure. And its built-in mobility mechanism assures castle-like protection, vertical space acting as a natural moat.

Indeed, the designs were based on childhood fantasies and real-worldassociations with hard-to-access spaces like tree houses and table forts easy for children to access but hard for adults.

The dull hum of the road is a bit like the buzz of a family going about its business — the buffer of concrete also dampens some of the noise, making the space less loud than it would be to occupy a space alongside the highway.

Abellanas has long been fascinated with furniture as well as forts, and his work with other artists and architects reflects an ongoing interest in paradigm-challenging designs do-it-yourself guerrilla interventions.

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.

Even someone brave enough to overcome fears of heights and climb a mountain may not have the stomach to spend the night in this suspended shelter on the edge of a vertigo-inducing abyss.

Designed by OFIS Arhitekti (images by Janez Martincic), this precariously-perched space sits on Slovenian-Italian border and boasts 360-degree views over the landscapes of both countries. Inside, a series of resting platforms and a few pieces of minimalist rustic decor are the extent of the amenities provided.

Despite its fragile appearance, the cabin was (of course) constructed to deal with the extreme conditions of the location’s altitude and weather exposure on Mount Kanin. Indeed, it took multiple attempts for a helicoptered construction crew to get the prefab structure in place and tether it to the surrounding stone.

The cozy refuge from wind, snug and landslides (overnight guests may not want to know) is intended in part as a test of the materials, to see how they will stand up over time.

“The challenge is to install real objects remote sites … and study their response to extreme weather, radical temperature shifts, snow and rugged terrain” say the designers. “The harsh conditions of wind, snow, landslides, terrain, and weather require a response of specific architectural forms, structures and concept.” Despite those daunting challenges, the space is intended to “become a destination for hikers, climbers, cavers, mountaineers, nature lovers and romantics.”