Thanks in part to heat-absorbing materials and colors, cities tend to be warmer than their natural surroundings, and in hot places with lots of dark roads like Los Angeles that can prove a serious public health hazard.The mayor has pledged to reduce temperatures in the city by 3 degrees over the next 20 years, in part by dealing with urban heat island effects in new and different ways.

As part of this promise to help make bring down temperatures for its millions of residents, LA is trying something that could dramatically change its urban landscape: repainting roads in white. The aim is to reflect rather than absorb heat and so far the results are extremely promising.

“We found that on average the area covered in CoolSeal is 10 degrees cooler than black asphalt on the same parking lot,” said Greg Spotts, the assistant director of the Bureau of Street Services for San Fernando Valley, an area with particularly severe heat problems.

It’s not just about open public spaces either: reducing exterior temperatures has impacts on adjacent interiors. Heat reductions outside and mean cooler spaces inside area homes and businesses. In turn, this can help residents and owners save on cooling costs. It also isn’t just a daytime problem: heat captured during the day is released into the night air, keeping things hotter around the clock.

The process doesn’t come cheap, however: each coat lasts for around seven years but prices out around $40,000 per linear mile. If it works, though, the cost could be offset in part by savings on other fronts, in addition to making for a more healthy metropolis all around. Meanwhile, other strategies are also in play — the city is looking to make roofs brighter, for instance, and bring more green into the mix. (via Inhabitat and L.A. Times, images by Greg Spotts and Giuseppe Milo).

The 90s are back and better than ever, with Hypercolor-style material science now making its way onto exterior surfaces, robust enough to withstand external weather but with the same color-changing properties you know and love from those once-cool t-shirts.

Potential applications of Olikrom are many, from tracing air paths across model airplanes wind tunnel simulations to creating buildings that change color, brighten or darken by night or day.

Prefab panels could be installed, or existing buildings repainted to create desired effects in all kinds of different conditions, from wall-touch interactivity to colors optimized around sky conditions or times of day.

Of course, there are many fun possibilities as well, like adding color-sensitive paint to coffee mugs to determine how hot and full they are, or creating a really cool every-changing car paint pattern as show in the video above.

Taking the playful side a bit further, variants on Neverwet-style, appear-on-demand graffiti are also possible – hidden appear-after-dark messages or stealth art on sidewalks and walls, or more on the practical side: touch-or-temperature-activated warnings when streets are wet.

Laser engraving wraps all the way around these clever and customizable pins, creating anything from robots and dinosaurs to mazes and words to liven up your edible creations.

In addition to animal, geometric and typographical themes, Valek Rolling Pins offers fully-custom options as well as designs sorted by holiday and season, including Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day.

The pins are placed on a rotating spindle and then laser-engraved with a choice of patterns, the process leaving the wood char-darkened in the resulting voids against the lighter starting surface.

Aside from the appealing marks they make on dough for cookies, pies and otherwise, the patterns also add a display dimension for those who keep their rolling pins visible when not in use. In addition to the cute effects in this case, this array of options is also a good reminder of the non-standard creative possibilities for laser-etching technologies.

Able to reduce cooling costs by up to 30% and heating expenses by as much as 60%, this series of temperature-regulating furnishings stores thermal energy without requiring an external power source, helping maintain room temperatures both during the day and at night.

Designed by Raphaël Ménard and Jean-Sébastien Lagrange, designs in this series such as the Climactic Table are composed of a combination of solid oak and corrugated aluminum with phase-change materials (PCM) sandwiched in between.

The wood contributes to desired thermal properties while the shaped aluminum provides structural support and conductivity. As a passive heating and cooling strategy, these objects can augment existing systems or replace them entirely in moderate climates.

A familiar phenomena in the realm of architecture, the idea of using materials to store and discharge heat or cold naturally is an old one. Stone, concrete or brick, for instance, are often placed to pick up warmth during the day then mitigate the temperature change at night, releasing that stored heat energy. While there is no specific control mechanism in play, such systems naturally create a level of equilibrium that reduces the next for external active (HVAC) systems.

Employing natural processes to illuminate and warm interior spaces, this series of algae-based furnishings combines beautiful glass vessels and organic matter to create lovely yet functional home objects. Each fixture generates light, heat and oxygen using methods similar to those seen in bio-adaptive architectural facades.

Designed by Jacob Douenias and Ethan Frier (photos by Tom Little Photography LLC.), objects in the Spirulina series utilize cyanobacteria, “chosen for its rich green hue, light absorbency, and culinary qualities,” set in alkaline water and housed in shapely glass vessels. Found all over the world, this versatile algae can survive and thrive in all kinds of environments and is already widely used in other forms of biotechnology.

In this commissioned series, a set of spaces show off the various ways these organic home furnishings can be deployed in living and dining areas, popping up from tables, sprouting from walls, sitting on the floor or hanging from the ceiling. The various units are linked by a half mile of hidden plumbing and wiring and controlled via a concealed computer system that both analyzes results and controls each appendage.

Living Things is now installed at the Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania until March 27, 2016. While these experimental installations remain artistic prototypes for now, they and other similar endeavors continue to explore the range of near-future applications for organic matter in everyday domestic settings and built environments.

But how does it work? “The 3D printed nylon knobs embedded in the surface of this workstation actuate eighteen valves which allow for the harvesting of Spirulina when the culture becomes dense enough, and the supply of fresh liquid media to each vessel. Inside the cabinet the pumps, tubing, manifolds, LED drivers, air pumps, heater connections and filters which comprise the heart of the life support system”

More from its creators: “The morphologies of hand-blown glass vessels function both as lighting and heating elements for the human occupants, and high functioning photobioreactors which provide heat, light, agitation, air supply, nutrient and waste control to the living algae inside.”