A former parking has become a Green Oasis in front of Poznan, Poland’s city hall, but beyond providing seating and greenery the redesign adds another key element: effectively endless flexibility.

Custom-created benches and planters (filled with an array of taller trees and shorter flora) create a system of mobile street furniture that can be configured in an infinite variety of ways.

Normally, independent islands allow small groups to gather. As needed, though, the benches can be matched up for anything from public speeches to in-the-round performances — the modular geometry of the 14 benches and 20 planters allows them to befit together like pieces of a puzzle.

Developed by Atelier Starzak Strebicki, this modular courtyard serves as a gathering space, open-air amphitheater or auditorium — the street furniture elements can also be moved out of the way entirely if the entire square is needed.

The seats are also doubled-up, allowing people to sit on a higher or lower tier (or both simultaneously for crowded events). At the same time, the furnishings are sufficiently heavy that no one need worry about someone walking (or rolling) away with them at the end of the evening.

These fairly simple but robust steel-and-wood designs provide a nice industrial-style contrast with their historic surroundings, and suggest another way of thinking about public furniture, one which allows it to serve different functions on demand.

Unlike The Maze and other classic puzzle books, the Codex Silenda brooks no cheating, forcing readers to solve elaborate puzzles on each page before proceeding to the next.

Somewhere between a choose-your-own-adventure novel, a Chinese puzzle box and a blacksmith puzzle, this five-page volume features dizzyingly complex mechanical puzzles that can only be completed in sequence. In each pair of facing pages, a short story unfolds on one side while a related new puzzle is revealed on the other.

Designed by Brady Whitney, the wooden book is laser-cut and ornately detailed, full of hidden mechanisms worthy of Leonardo Da Vinci – indeed, the story itself is about an apprentice stumbling into the master’s workshop and becoming trapped inside the tome. The laser-burnt edges give the work a hand-crafted but careworn look, like something you might find in a mysterious antique shop, covered in dust.

From the makers: “Codex Silenda is a five page book that features five intricate puzzles. Each page features a unique puzzle that requires the user/reader to unlock the corresponding bolts in order to progress to the next page.” More about its maker: “Brady Whitney is the designer of the operation, the mastermind of the Codex. He originally came up with the idea for his senior thesis research project during his final semester at Iowa State University. Having grown up with a childhood filled with imagination, his passion for design has always been focused on the realm of toys and games, creating the products and ideas he always wished he had as a kid.”

Pick any spot in the world and this company can print out a custom mould for a concrete pour, which, when cured, will make a 16- or 32-piece puzzle out of your favorite place.

Using Open Street Map data, Logiplaces has already created a preliminary set of popular places voted up by fans for mass production, including downtown San Francisco and the Grand Canyon.

Liked a traditional puzzle, the sides of each piece can be matched up to create the whole, but unlike most puzzles, it is the vertical rather than the horizontal shapes that allow for matching. It becomes a matter of figure and ground, connecting building scales and typographies rather than colors and 2D patterns.

At this point, fully-custom selections are cost-prohibitive for consumers, but the goal of the company is to make these accessible to mass markets as well. “When we came up with the idea of LOGIPLACES, we believed it had the potential to go global with loads of different places to cover. However, right now, we would first like to see, what are your favourite places that we can start manufacturing, and of course, we’re interested in what our first consumers think.”

This year alone we have learned that a Frank Lloyd Wright house must be moved 1,000 miles to protect it from floodwater, a Le Corbusier chapel has been vandalized and a seminal structure by Micheal Graves may be razed. In a remarkable turnaround, the MoMA has also recently decided to save the entire facade of the American Folk Art Museum, but by dismantling and storing it indefinitely. There is nothing like the threat of utter annihilation to make one wonder: how do we choose what building we preserve, restore and ultimately save? Here are five hot-button buildings generating serious buzz, raising questions both within and beyond the architectural design community.

Frank Lloyd Wright House to be Moved & Reconstructed

First to Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work invariably makes headlines whenever it is at risk of destruction. Thanks to the intervention of the Crystal Bridges Museum (images by Tarantino Studio) in Arkansas, the Bachman Wilson House will be transported from its original location in New Jersey to a site on their campus.

Its owners, Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, put it on the market hoping for just such a buyer and after spending years restoring the home themselves. This remarkable move will save the structure itself by carefully deconstructing it, transporting its parts then rebuilding piece by piece in a new place.

However, the process  is inevitably partial  and one has to wonder: how will relocating it change the nature of a home designed around a specific site many states away? Is regional architecture truly as portable as this solution implies, and what does it lose forever when taken out of its context?

Le Corbusier Chapel Broken Into, Robbed & Vandalized

An unusual work by one of the world’s most famous architects, the Chapel of Ronchamp by Le Corbusier was reported vandalized earlier. Amid other damage and theft, the destruction of stained glass window drawn (and reportedly signed) by Corbu himself was deemed a “priceless” loss, the colored glazing irreparable.

The building is a destination for tens of thousands of annual tourists. Its sculptural form reflects the architect’s philosophy that while Modernism may be appropriate for most architecture, spiritual structures are an exception.

The shocking break-in leaves open questions: how does one replace an irreplaceable window – with a copy of the original, something commemorating its loss or a new work entirely? And how does one protect against future defacement, particularly in a structure so often open to the public?

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5 Preservation Puzzles Famous Architecture Facing Threats

Science meets luxury in this levitating coffee table composed of hovering blocks that seem to magically shift back into formation when applied pressure is removed.

Like an over-sized Rubik’s Cube, the basic design is composed of a three-by-three grid of smaller wooden cubes, inexplicably (at least at a glance) separated in space. Also like its little cousin, the object is … puzzling.

The solution to the puzzle hides partly in the voids – thin wires keep each cube from flying away from the others, while powerful magnets hold the constituent pieces apart.  Effectively, The Float Table, is a matrix of “magnetized” wooden cubes that levitate with respect to one another. The repelling cubes are held in equilibrium by a system of tensile steel cables.”

The co-founders of RocketPaperRobot, creators of The Float Table, have backgrounds in robotics, electrical engineering and artificial intelligence, on the one hand, and design, film and advertising on the other. The company itself “is an engineering boutique specializing in the innovation and fabrication of high-end kinetic furniture, lighting, and installations.”

Of their work, RPR writes: “It’s classical physics applied to modern design. Each handcrafted table is precisely tuned to seem rigid and stable, yet a touch reveals the secret to Float’s dynamic character.”

And about their firm: “We relish in defying expectations through artful execution with a staunch allegiance to utility,(apparent) simplicity and technical excellence. We also work with clients to customize aesthetic yet functional products that enhance the versatility of residential/commercial spaces and celebrate the expression of unabashed style.”