More than anything, the owners of a new transforming house in Poland wanted constant, direct access to sunlight. They commissioned the local firm KWK Promes to realize their unusual vision, and the result is definitely one of a kind.

“Quadrant House” sits on a grassy suburban plot surrounded by trees. The name comes from both the word referring to the quarters of a circle and a historical instrument used to determine the angle of the sun’s elevation in astronomy. Even without a moving element, the house stands out from its neighbors with its stacked white volumes, blind facades facing the street.

But of course, the star of the show is definitely that kinetic terrace. When it’s flat up against the side of the house, it almost doubles the living space. Moving silently and automatically, the volume swings out a full 90 degrees, allowing more or less sunlight to reach the indoor living room as desired. Sliding glass panels make it possible to open this entire section of the home to the outdoors.

“Clients wanted most simple, sunny and relaxing house, somehow reacting to the movement of the Sun. They also liked our Safe House, its changeability and mechanisms that create relations with the surroundings. The starting point was a regular shape unbuilt site, located in the suburbs among the average single-family housing. We placed a rectangular solid on it, corresponding to the wishes of investors in terms of the functional program.”

“Then we turned the part belonging to the ground floor to get as much privacy as possible from the side of the road. In the ‘cut’ space was located a living room, roofed floor and open to the garden – a similar solution can be found in Living Garden House, where the night zone is on the floor and the day zone becomes part of the garden – the boundaries between architecture and the landscape are blurred.”

Though they hoped for a flat roof, local code requires a gabled shape. The architects found a compromise by angling the gable toward the street-facing facade so that its back edge tapers down toward the yard, giving it a flat appearance from that angle, at least.

And if you’re wondering whether it might actually be dangerous to have a section of your home automatically changing positions according to the movement of the sun across the sky, don’t worry – the architects thought of that. Sensors make sure nothing is in the way of the movable volume, stopping the motion when obstacles are present.

Designed to help citizens of Wroclaw, Poland, reclaim neglected parts of their city this site-specific “microinstallation” provides comfortable urban furniture for an otherwise hard-to-occupy staircase.

Developed by No Studio for DoFA (AKA the Lowersilesian Festival of Architecture), padded bed-chair combinations made for sitting and lounging were placed along public steps near an historic bridge.

The normal stairs are not only made of uncomfortable concrete, but they are spaced for walking, not sitting, making it uncomfortable to spend time in any position other than standing at and leaning against the riverside railing.

Visitors, who would normally pass by with few excuses to stop, were suddenly encouraged to have a seat in the sun, all thanks to rather simple but fit-for-function works of urban seating.

Part practical project, the endeavor also reflects an subtle thesis: small and low-cost moves can radically transform our experience of public open spaces.

No Studio aims to turn temporary changes into memorable experiences and lasting inspiration: “We create spaces, design for a while and a little longer. We have fun working on serious things. We try to solve problems rather than create monuments.”

Designed around an aging shipyard and its crosscrossing maze of leftover railroad tracks, these series of expandable little dwellings can be rearranged or even moved entirely on demand. Each unit is small enough to fit multiple on a standard cargo truck, then undergoes a simple expansion once deployed on rails to create more living space.

Polish architecture students Tomasz Zablotny and Pawla Maszota are following in the footsteps of other great designers and speculators. The idea of a city on rails has origins both in conceptual architecture as well as science fiction, with authors like China Mieville imagining an entire world made up of ever-moving trains (Railsea).

Designed for a specific site in Gda?sk, Poland, the project could of course be expanded to other places, but begins with a real location that could use a productive urban intervention. The ease of mobility inherent in these units makes it possible to reconfigure them for events, creating clusters that in turn leave open spaces for gatherings, festivals or exhibitions.

In the past two decades, the number of workers along the docks has dropped by 90%, from 20,000 to just 2,000, leaving plenty of space for such an influx of new inhabitation and activity.

There are still some issues yet to be resolved, like indoor plumbing and electrical connections, but some of these (like showers) have already been considered, with auxiliary buildings to be created around this community. Should more permanent transformations ever be called for, the entire place essentially be packed up and moved along, traveling along the tracks or closed up and put back on trucks.

Five distinct styles come together in a duo of massive geometric murals with ‘Recycles,’ a collaboration created for the street art curation project Urban Forms. Artists Tone, Proembrion, Sepe, Chazme and Cekas (photos by Marek Szymanski) all lent their own particular approaches to the diptych on a pair of apartment buildings in Lodz, Poland in nearly-identical compositions that create a mirrored effect when seen from afar.

Stylized human figures are seen against a backdrop of both geometric and organic forms, which look like architecture and trees at first glance, but are actually more abstract. One mural shows the figures walking toward the viewers, and the other shows them walking away.

According to one of the artists, the process of bringing such disparate styles together for such a large project wasn’t easy. Tone tells Brooklyn Street Art that getting a harmonious effect that represented each of them equally presented a challenge, but they ultimately found a synergy that allowed each of them to shine.

Having worked together in the past helped, says Tone. “We have never had a chance to work together in such a configuration, but our knowledge about each others styles helped us separate our separate roles. We began with a very rough concept for the general idea; make the composition somehow integrated with the landscape of Lodz suburbs.”

Urban sidewalks, sewer grates and dingy underpasses aren’t exactly the most likely places to find beautiful large-scale ornamental lace, but for artist NeSpoon Polska, that’s exactly where it belongs. The Polish artist creates both spray-painted street art and crocheted installations for interactive displays in all sorts of public spaces, from street lamps to abandoned houses.

Calling it ‘illegal city decor’ and ‘public jewelry,’ Polska wanders around Warsaw, swiftly painting parking meters, utility boxes, blank signs and other blank (and often ugly) urban surfaces. Some, like a giant mural taking up almost the entire side of a three-story building, are created with permission.

“Jewelry makes people look pretty, my public jewelry has the same goal, make public places look better. I would like people who discover, here and there, my small applications, to smile and just simply feel better,” says the artist.