Designers are always trying to reinvent the chair or improve the shoe, but zippers have stayed largely the same for a long time, which begs the question: is there room to innovate on this simple fastener?

Nendo has designed a series of alternatives titled Zippppper for manufacturer YKK. Their work challenges the notion that a traditional set of interlocking teeth is all zippers have to offer a piece of apparel or other material product.

The team wanted to do more than change the color, size or handle. “In lieu of focusing on superficial finishings or decorations, it was important to take a step back and delve into the fundamental question, ‘what exactly is a zipper?'”

They are made to close gaps and open easily, but beyond that there are a lot of possibilities. Their solutions include: (1) a three-way zipper that could be used for things like interior tent partitions, (2) a version with a gap to let through headphones or cords, (3) a one-handed variant with a rotating easy-grip clip, (4) a right-angled set of intersecting zippers and (5) a self-connected loop (purpose unknown).

“The basic concept of a zipper is to open and close the opening between two pieces of material without any gaps,” explain the designers, “but by thoroughly assessing each component individually and through further reassessment – five new zippers were created.” Really, though: any zipper that doesn’t stick would be an improvement.

Designed to reduce real estate needs for runways in ever-more-crowded cities, this “endless runway” system encircles a central terminal building and lets multiple planes take off and land at the same time.

Developed by Dutch scientist Henk Hesselink, the two-mile-circumference shape also lets planes land or take off in alignment with the wind (rather than fighting crosswinds) since they can line up with any point on the strip.

In theory, the system would improve the flying experience for both passengers and pilots, making for smoother departures and arrivals. They would also save energy and space, increasingly an issue for once-suburban (or rural) airports now encroached upon by growing cities.

Critics have expressed skepticism regarding the difficulty of landings and take-offs in such a setup, but big backers seem to believe in the potential. Also, even if not immediately feasible, increased automation could make it increasingly viable over time, since computer systems can coordinate ideal landing and arrival trajectories for optimal safety and comfort and across multiple planes.

Each such setup provides the length of three airstrips and could be deployed or at least tested at scale in Europe soon — participating backers include the Netherlands Aerospace Centre (NLR), along with DLR Germany and ONERA in France.

From the designers research report: “The results of the literature survey in this document are promising and suggest that a circular runway can be developed with current and expected technology. Today’s aircraft characteristics allow to take off and land with speeds and low altitude bank angles compatible with the operation on a circular track. The Endless Runway fits in future concepts that specify improved planning of operations, new navigation equipment, and intermodal transport.”

Ocean cities are a longstanding Utopian dream, but the majority of such schemes fail to address the immediate need of cramped urban centers, many of which around the world are bordered and constrained by large bodies of water.

Blue 21, a Dutch architecture and design group, aims to sustainably extend such cities into adjacent lakes and oceans, alleviating the stress on existing metropolitan areas and providing vital resources (like space to grow food) in close proximity to urban cores. The team has experience building floating homes in the Netherlands but wants to take their experience global and work at a larger scale.

These modular buoyant extensions can be added to over time and used to grow algae, veggies, crops and seafood, producing food and biofuels to support existing populations on land.

At the same time, they can serve to productively process and recycle city wastes and absorb emissions, becoming a productive rather than consumptive part of the regional ecosystem. “As an integrated concept it proposes floating development that can be ‘plugged in’ to existing cities and help them recycling waste nutrients and CO2 that often end up in the environment, polluting it.”

While Blue 21 may not be a solution on the immediate horizon as yet, it represents an approach that bridges the gap between fantastical floating cities and more realistic solutions that engage accessible stretches of ocean. “We are Blue21, starting a Blue Revolution. This is how: by building world’s first floating city with a positive impact on nature. Because we believe our future is on the water for seven reasons: 1. We are running out of land, 2. Cities on land are vulnerable, 3. Water will save us from our addiction to fossil fuels, 4. Water is the new oil, 5. Water is an innovation playground, 6. We can actually have a positive impact, 7. We can do this, now.”

Danish firm BIG Architects has a feasible strategy for converting four iconic smokestacks in the center of London into a series of gigantic pedestrian-powered Tesla coils. These would be the tallest of their kind and their visual effect would be nothing short of stunning, generating arcs of energy to bridge between the 300-foot-high towers at predetermined times.

Bjarke Ingels Group was commissioned to create a sizable public plaza space adjacent to the disused building as part of a larger redevelopment plan, but announced during a lecture that they had much larger design ambitions in mind. Going public with this plan may have come as something of a shock to their client, who had not yet be apprised of the scheme. In defense of the architects: they wished to make sure what they were proposing was actually possible before any announcement. “We’re working with experts in Tesla coils, looking into how to incorporate it into the chimneys so essentially we might celebrate the transformation from carbon footprint to human footprint.”

Currently, the world’s largest Tesla coils are in the 100-foot-high range, so depending on how much of each tower was turned toward this function, these could conceivably become the tallest coils ever constructed (in addition to being the highest-reaching).

Piezoelectric pavement would slowly generate energy from those passing through the square (estimated at 50,000 people per day), which would be collected and deployed in periodic bursts. “We imagine it like Big Ben, when the clock strikes the hour, we can have this celebration of human energy and human life.”

The two pairs of towers are extremely tall relative to their surroundings and arguably an iconic part of the neighboring urban landscape, jutting up out of a power plant complex that is nearly a century old. The Battersea Power Station will be rebuilding the chimneys regardless, so it is just a matter of whether they will adopt this enhancement in the process. Already populated with colorful enhancements and unusual architecture, bolts of electricity arcing across the sky would still certainly stand out in London’s bright nighttime cityscape (tesla coil image by Clarence Risher).

Gravitationally unbound to any star, resource-rich extrasolar comets could be the key to manned space flight beyond our solar system, providing a way for resourceful astronauts to hitch rides, mine supplies and ultimately travel far beyond the heliosphere.

Inspired by the Rosetta mission and drawing on images from the NASA, Caltech and the European Space Agency, this Comet Runner concept explores the idea of tethering expeditions to comets and using their materials to support long-distance journeys. The idea also dovetails with research by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory into the possibilities of leveraging comet momentum to propel or potentially slow down spacecrafts.

Indeed, “many contain compounds such as water, methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide — which can be converted to things useful for a long distance space mission, such as fuel, oxygen, plastics, refrigerant and fertilizer.”

The proposed system from Clouds AO, a New York City architecture firm, involves a modular space station carrying with it the means to sort, process, store and build from raw materials mined from a given comet, 3D-printing from surface dust and inducing artificial gravity by augmenting the object’s natural axial rotation.

Just like a reluctant space vehicle (or Sandworm from Dune), inertia could be fought and adjustments could be made to the trajectory, providing the means for directional control or at least minor course corrections. Consider the architectural implications of this strategy and the forms it might take: not so unlike buildings on Earth, the driving idea is to create a structure that works within its physical context, adapting to while best utilizing elements of its surroundings.

Comets would be screened for suitability in terms of composition and stability before being boarded, as it were. Billions of comets are hypothesized to exist in the Oort cloud surrounding our solar system are estimated to be miles in diameter, “some of which are nudged into long-period orbits through the inner solar system, while many others are ejected from our solar system through gravitational scattering caused by passing stars and the galactic tide.”

Of course, this is just a thought experiment and design concept for now, but the constituent elements are there: comets abound, rich in materials and tracing all kinds of paths through and beyond our solar system – the question is not whether but when we might be able to harness them to suit our ends, or perhaps whether we will find better means in the meantime.