The Tangible Media Group from MIT has developed an approach to responsive design in physical space that is both conceptual and plausible, futuristic yet already a reality.

Displaying their work this year at Milan, the group unveiled Transform, an extension of their amazing interactive inFORM user experience invention from last year.

1,000 independently-mobile squares shift up and down to shape bowls and surfaces – with even more such ‘pixels’ of a soft material the same technology could be applied to chairs and couches, too.

The morphing surfaces in play can be manipulated in all kind of ways, from passively sensing your mood (and changing shape accordingly) to responding directly to commands, gestures, movements or remote control. Their approach grows out of a notion that we increasingly take for granted: computers are moving into everything, not just dedicated laptops or handheld devices but everyday objects all around us.

This last video shows where it all started, with inFORM, a “Dynamic Shape Display that can render 3D content physically, so users can interact with digital information in a tangible way. inFORM can also interact with the physical world around it, for example moving objects on the table’s surface. Remote participants in a video conference can be displayed physically, allowing for a strong sense of presence and the ability to interact physically at a distance.”

3D printers are now making it possible to quickly and economically ‘print’ everything from haute couture to full-scale architecture, medical prostheses to cars. Now, the technology has advanced enough to blend two different materials in a single print to make them stronger and more functional. ‘Blossom,’ a project by designer Richard Clarkson, not only produced 3D-printed flowers made from two materials with properties ranging from flexible to rigid, he also made them inflatable.

Believed to be the world’s first inflatable 3D print, Blossom is a series of flexible artificial flowers that can be inflated with air so they ‘bloom’ like real flowers. Completed in 2013 but just now released to the public, the project incorporates a rubbery black material called Tango Black for the petals and a clear, solid substance called Fullcure 720 for the center and stem.

While this project may not be as immediately practical as many other 3D printing demonstrations, it gives us an intriguing look at what might be possible in the future, pushing past limitations that have held innovation back in this field.

“As in nature, materials can be distributed seamlessly within objects for structural and functional advantage,” says Clarkson. “The variation offers an opportunity to generate complex forms and dynamic structures that are impossible to make by any other means.”

Like so many secret spaces of New York City, this one-room exhibit space (hidden inside an abandoned elevator) is not exactly on the beaten path.

This pop-up project is naturally camouflaged, set behind a pair of rusted metal doors along an inconspicuous alley between a pair of dull gray block walls. Only a few small rectangular punched openings suggest that something might lurk beyond the black steel.

Behind its unmarked entry lies a surprisingly pristine white room lined with red-padded shelves. These in turn support an array of contents, many of which city dwellers may find strangely familiar.

The Elevator Museum‘s collection sports a sampling of everyday urban objects, from discarded coffee cups and potato chip bags to tip jars, found dollar bills and losing lottery tickets.

The exhibits rotate, however, between temporary pieces and a permanent collection featuring some seriously unique and one-off objects. The latter includes the shoe infamously thrown at President George W. Bush during a televised 2008 press conference.

The museum founders Alex Kalman, and brothers Benny and Josh Safdie “want [the] museum to relay the intimate stories behind strange, colloquial items, finding beauty in absurdity.” To construct their secret museum, “the team gutted the shaftway [at the ground floor] and renovated it to include lighting and shelving.”

It has operating hours, but like most things in NYC, it is worth dropping by any time of the day or night: “Glass peepholes at the door allow passersby to marvel at the collectibles 24/7, and for those visitors who miss the museum’s opening hours, a toll free hotline has been developed that relays information about each exhibited artifact via phone. The 60 square-foot, free museum also accommodates a cafe and shop. It is a fitting microcosm of the essence of New York City, an unusual myriad of characters, quirks, and curiosities congregating in extremely small spaces.”

Brad Downey is familiar with both sides of the art world, with a fine arts degree and gallery exhibitions, on the one hand, and run-ins with the authorities about his sometimes-unsanctioned street art on the other.

His work is harder to describe that it is to simply see, since it is often in the most public places you could imagine (or documented via extensive photography) – erupting from sidewalks, disrupting bicycle lanes or literally ripping up cobbled streets

Per the pictures, sometimes these installations transpose ideas and objects from other contexts, but they also frequently warp existing everyday objects like bicycles, cars, signs, benches, shopping carts and garbage cans.

Sometimes he works alone – sometimes collaboratively. Some of his pieces are stand-alones and one-offs while others form sets, like Wedging (shown above), which is a series of experiments of balance and obstruction in alleys with ordinary household items.

He has had run-ins with police while working in cities ranging from London to Amsterdam, on both art and guerrilla marketing projects performed in that gray area of public and possible vandalism.

It would be entirely right and wrong at the same time to call this body of work realistic. On the one hand, the results look like pictures (which form the basis of these manipulations) – on the other hand, while not impossible, the reality they present is dramatically improbable.

This series by Robert Rickhoff is titled Out of Place and features all kinds of ordinary spaces and situations, from swing sets, crosswalks and roundabouts to railroad tracks, swimming pools and public bathrooms.

Yet in (almost) each case, there is something not quite right … or drastically wrong. It takes a little while to notice in each case, though, until you get the hang of it and start looking for the odd-man-out element right away.

Still, it is fun to imagine what would happen to people taking a speed-bump ramp, or encountering a raised crosswalk – certainly a surreal experience in reality, and at least something to trigger the urban imagination in photographic form.