Looking at everyday built environments with an eye toward artistic adaptation, Oakoak turns exhaust pipes into elephant trunks, wild shrubs into micro-farms and more.

Pablo Picasso’s famous Don Quixote drawing, for instance, pops off the drawing board, wielding an antenna and prepared to tilt at chimneys on top of an old building.

Oakoak has a knack for seeing the hidden potential in planters, pipes manhole covers and other overlooked elements found on, around and above city streets.

An urban planner in a previous professional life, he is used to taking stock of everything around him, including those things that are rarely included in artistic endeavors, like fence post and fruit weeds.

Anything from a crooked cinder block to an ephemeral beam of light falling across the street can inspire a playful interactive scene by this quirky French interventionist, making passersby stop on the sidewalk for a moment to smile.

A Berlin art collective has taken to the streets, inking urban infrastructure and laying down shirts and tote bags to create a line of unique prints … their patterns directly lifted from city streets.

Raubdruckerin (AKA Pirate Printer) press apparel to painted manhole covers, utility grates, etched signage, vents and other objects that have depth differences (and thus themselves to the relief-printing process, like woodcuts or letterpress).

The group rolls out different colors of ink, much as one would with any kind of etched or raised printing process, then lays cloth down and applies pressure. Depending on the size and type of the object in question, the prints are partial or complete pictures of a given urban artifact.

The crew has traveled to Amsterdam, Lisbon, Paris and other iconic cities to capture some of their least-noticed but still-beautiful urban artifacts, transferring overlooked parts of these places to a new style of streetwear. Naturally, each one is a little different – even when the same street fixture is used, the re-inking process results in variegation from one print to he next (via Colossal).

Pencils require sharpening, run out of eraser and turn into unusable stubs as they near the end of their lifespan, but this clever gadget aims to change all of that, solving all three issues at once.

Even in today’s digital world, artists, designers, writers and musicians still fall back on this traditional tool. The Pencil+ helps on multiple fronts, but functions first as a pencil holder, enabling the user to tuck various lengths of pencil into a central void.

What keeps the pencil from slipping too far in? An adjustable eraser serves as a backstop, letting you move the pencil portion backward to fit and forward as the pencil gets shorter. Meanwhile, the back of the holder (normally where one would find an eraser) doubles as a sharpener, keeping it always on hand for reworking broken or worn tips.

“Worry no more because with pencil+,” say its creators, “you can now have a sharpener, extender, eraser holder and transporter for your favorite tool” which is available in Teak, Ebony, Wild Olive, African Padauk and Indonesian Redwood”

A few potential critiques come to mind: first, someone employing this device will have to deal with an additional step to access an eraser. Second, the holder is necessarily wider than a pencil, so it will require some getting used to in terms of grip and function. Third, the eraser length is a function of pencil length, so storing a lot of extra eraser could be an issue (though easily longer than a normal one). Still, one can be sure, at least, never to lose track of one’s sharpener, and also that a single pencil will last a lot longer.

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.

Converting almost anything you find into a household furnishing, from discarded doors and shelf boxes to dart boards, these clip-on supports can be added or removed in seconds.

Initially experimenting with cards, clips and coat hangers, a pair of Spanish design students in Barcelona, Maria Roca and Erika Biarnes (together: Be-Elastic), developed this system to be elegant, efficient, strong and flexible, combining slim steel supports with straightforward usability.

The real challenge was to make something robust that could also be easily converted on demand. While other clamp-based furniture systems exist, this solution represents a more versatile and expressive aesthetic and a much faster method of assembly and disassembly.

A set of four legs can support a few hundred pounds, making surface selection a more likely weight limitation than the capacity of the supports. As few as two units, however, can create a working piece of furniture, like a side or television table leaning against the wall. The units come in 16 color combinations (4 colors of cable and 4 colors of steel).

The clamps can be attached to essentially anything less than a few inches thick, including recycled objects of various shapes and sizes: “SNAP is designed to fit all shapes and sizes: triangular, rectangular or irregular boards. You can also place the SNAPs wherever you like in corners, on the sides in a disorderly way, or wherever you’d like! It’s up to you.”