As workers become increasingly packed in modern, open-plan offices and coworking spaces, designers keep working on high-tech solutions to allow employees to focus, often with the unintended effect of highlighting office layout shortcomings.

The latest of these gadget-based solutions is a set of “blinkers” from Panasonic’s “Future Life Factory,” designed to block out sights and sounds from the wearer’s sides so they can hone in on what’s in front of them.

These Wear Space units, they believe, will help keep work environments distraction-free. They were created in collaboration with Japanese fashion designer Kunihiko Morinaga. Somehow, though, the photographs just reinforce a sense of dread, with humans arrayed in front of small screens like captured cattle. But who knows: maybe they will prove useful barring other spatial redesigns.

“As open offices and digital nomads are on the rise, workers are finding it ever more important to have personal space where they can focus,” said the company. “Wear Space instantly creates this kind of personal space – it’s as simple as putting on an article of clothing.” The user can then adjust their field of view and reduce peripheral vision to desired levels. This is coupled with noise-cancelling technology for audio isolation. Of course, no such potentially dystopian, present-day design would be complete without a crowdfunding campaign, currently scheduled for late 2018.

Photographing real people in actual places, Serge Najjar manages to make the mundane seem strange and fantastical, highlighting the intersection of humans and the architectural spaces they inhabit.

His planned-looking portraits of people in urban environments are surprisingly spontaneous, appearing staged but usually featuring strangers he has never met and captured as he wanders cities.

Technically, Najjar, a lawyer by trade in Beirut, Lebanon, is not even a professional photographer, though the beauty and popularity of his work would suggest otherwise.

His work, which spans from his home city to Rome and Berlin, features both generic architecture and famous places, all with his eye for making the familiar stream foreign and fresh.

While there are common threads, themes and angles to much of his photography, it is impossible to describe the commonality strictly in terms of perspective, as various works break the very conventions he generally follows.

Mesmerizing as it morphs forms like some kind of architectural mutant, this latest take on the Walking City is a freshly-animated and anthropomorphic twist on a fifty-year-old concept.

The transforming shape at the center of this eight-minute short flexes between organic and artificial shapes and structures, shifting between forms that take the viewer through glimpses of Buckminster Fuller and Zaha Hadid, from Constructivism through Moderisnm and Postmodernism to Deconstructivism.

From its creators at Universal Everything: “Referencing the utopian visions of 1960’s architecture practice Archigram, Walking City is a slowly evolving video sculpture. The language of materials and patterns seen in radical architecture transform as the nomadic city walks endlessly, adapting to the environments she encounters.”

The result is neither precisely a historical tour nor an entirely artistic abstraction, but something in between that hints at bits, pieces, strategies and forms found in built environments and design approaches past, present and possibly future.

Its organic form fits its function as a Cité du Corps Humain (Museum of the Human Body) like a metaphorical glove – interlocked fingers were, in fact, part of the conceptual inspiration for this new museum in France.

With a medical school more than a millennium old, Montpellier is a fitting location for a nearly 10,000 square-meter place for people to “explore the human body from an artistic, scientific and societal approach through cultural activities, interactive exhibitions, performances and workshops.”

Working with local firm A+ Architecture, BIG was first shortlisted then selected to complete the project. Their ability to format compelling modes of visual communication no doubt helped improve their prospects with the jury.

Weaving together nature and the city, a series of indoor and outdoor spaces interlock to shape programmatic and public areas. “The museum’s roof functions as an ergonomic garden – a dynamic landscape of vegetal and mineral surfaces that allow the park’s visitors to explore and express their bodies in various ways – from contemplation to the performance – from relaxing to exercising – from the soothing to the challenging.”

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Pristine nature versus urban development seem ever at war, but this designer proposes a low-impact, small-footprint approach for cross-kingdom co-habitation between people and trees.

Konrad Wójcik of Aalborg, Denmark has modeled his design on the shape and functions of trees, envisioning a forest where these living modules are found interspersed within existing organic ecosystems rather than displacing them.

He notes that “for most of the animals, trees are the best natural shelters against predators, moisture and weather. Coincidence? We must remember that in nature nothing is accidental. Everything has a reason and a purpose. It all balance out.”

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