Google has rolled out a search engine with a specific target in mind: your house, more specifically how much area of your roof could be covered in solar panels, what that would save you and where you can look for companies to install a system for you.

Interested homeowners can input their addresses and get realistic illustrations of how many solar panels would fit and what their potential cost savings on energy bills are likely to be.

A complex data comprising everything from your home’s location and orientation to the presence of shade from adjacent trees or buildings – but this set is broken down into simple information for users.

Google, of course, is well-positioned to make this Sunroof tool effective, combining its Google Maps and Earth data that can sort out not just the footprint of a building but its 3D space too, and thus shadows. It also has all of the other information at hand, like average temperatures, sun exposure, cloud cover.

Users of the tool can tinker with variables, but ultimately are given a recommended installation that maximizes the potential output and thus puts more back in homeowner pockets long-term. For now it is limited to the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston and a few other locations, but they have plans to expand around the country.

Treating the seat and back as blank slates for expression, the Layer Chair allows its owner to slip in and slide out works of art and design, transforming the look of the furniture on demand.

The clear acrylic framework “allows for a see-through structure. Both the back and the base of the chair have a void where the user can fit three different layers of printed or colored acrylic, or even wood, glass, or any other material that comes in mind.”

The approach by South Korean graphic and industrial designer Sohyun Yun is intended to address aesthetic limitations of traditional chairs, which are locked into a single style or look. Instead, through layers, this seat is visually refreshed through user-driven modifications.

Anything is possible, from pairing a hologram back with an Andy Warhol seat print, to slotting in more conventional looking pieces and parts aligned with other furniture looks and styles.

The layers also allow for experimentation and playful interactions between sheets, since their patterns can be partial and/or semi-opaque. A number of layers come with the initial object, but others can be created or bought by users as well.

Unlike a mirage on the horizon, this quaint little abode is entirely real, even if it seems to half-disappear through alternating wood and (seemingly) see-through slats.

A project by Phillip K Smith III (images by Stephen King Photography and Lance Gerber), Lucid Stead modifies an existing abandoned home shape that is straightforward and familiar.

Through its materials, however, the artist makes the building interact with the landscape in mind-bending ways, reflecting its surroundings via long horizontal siding and framed rectangular (faux) windows that slowly light up at night. The effect is a strange partial vanishing of the structure.

Of the work, the artist writes: “Lucid Stead is about tapping into the quiet and the pace of change of the desert. When you slow down and align yourself with the desert, the project begins to unfold before you. It reveals that it is about light and shadow, reflected light, projected light, and change.”

From the portfolio page: “Composed of mirror, LED lighting, custom built electronic equipment and Arduino programming amalgamated with a preexisting structure, this architectural intervention, at first, seems alien in context to the bleak landscape.  In daylight the 70 year old homesteader shack, that serves as the armature of the piece, reflects and refracts the surrounding terrain like a mirage or an hallucination. As the sun tucks behind the mountains, slowly shifting, geometric color fields emerge until they hover in the desolate darkness.”