Natoora, a sustainable supplier of fruits and veggies to some of London's most prestigious chefs, recently opened a brick-and-mortar shop that feels very similar to another retailer of posh, eco-friendly goods. The fresh produce store was designed in collaboration by architect Noé Golomb and cabinet maker FincH, whose work includes five fit-outs for Aesop stores. All of the food items are locally sourced and are kept in their natural state with no plastic packaging.

This past decade has seen some major political and culture shifts in attitude towards marijuana—with nine states approving its recreational use and another 21 states approving medicinal use, the U.S. is slowly coming around to this hotly contested plant's powers of persuasion. Another major shift in opinion happened last week, when the FDA approved the first cannabis-based drug for prescription across all 50 states. This drug specifically targets and reduces episodes of seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, a form of epilepsy, and Dravet syndrome, a brain dysfunction, by 25%. 

Moon Ribas is a dancer and choreographer with an unusual source of inspiration: earthquakes. Implants embedded in her feet are linked to online seismographs, which send vibrations through her body any time they detect seismic activity. Ribas then transforms those vibrations into dance moves. 

For now, space artist Ron Miller is bound by gravity and expense to remain on planet Earth, but that doesn't mean he can't bring the heavens a little closer to home. Using a photo of the moon rising over Death Valley as reference, Miller inserted the other eight planets into the picture and the results are jaw dropping. "We would all feel a lot more humble with Jupiter's presence constantly looking over us," Miller explained to the Daily Mail.

Over 4,000 Swedes are one step closer to becoming true cyborgs. How? Microchips, as small as a grain of rice, inserted just above the thumb via syringe. The chips can be used to store emergency contact information, access homes and other familiar places, and even act as a digital wallet for train and event tickets. 

Scientists at Northwestern University and San Diego State University may have unraveled the mysteries of the Black Widow's super-strong web. MRI and NMR imaging revealed the molecular structure of the glands that make the spider's silk, which could be extrapolated to synthetically reproduce this stronger-than-steel material at scale. Everything from bridges to bulletproof vests could one day be impervious thanks to one of the world's deadliest spiders.

Bjarke Ingels Group and Italian lighting brand Artemide have teamed up to produce a lamp that can provide indoor plants with the kind of light they need to survive. The Gople lamps use Artemide's patented RWB lighting system to diffuse red, blue, or white light to encourage the plants to photosynthesize or bloom. The lamps come in a white crystal, transparent silver, and transparent bronze finish.

The Water Abundance XPrize awarded two designers from California the $1.75 million prize purse for an invention that pulls drinkable water straight out of the air. Called WeDew, the winning project extracts moisture from its surroundings and transforms it into 2,000 liters of clean water per day, satisfying the daily needs of 100 people. It's composed of two devices, SkyWater and a biomass gasifier, and housed inside a shipping container. 

Researchers at Australia's Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology have developed a new renewable energy solution in the form of solar paint. The paint can produce electricity through solar energy or by absorbing moisture out of the air, making it ideal for humid and arid climates. The researchers estimate that when the paint becomes commercially available it will be relatively cheap to produce. 

To say that open offices may not have been the productivity godsend they were touted to be is a bit of an understatement. It seems everyone—from the common office worker to journalists to big-name designers—has conceded that these workplaces cater more to distraction than to productivity. Luckily, those challenges may soon be erased by Panasonic's WearSpace, a futuristic headgear that resembles horse blinders and promises a 60% reduction in the wearer's peripheral vision.

A team from Facebook's Artificial Intelligence Research lab recently revealed that in an experiment designed to replicate human negotiations between two chatbots, the machines actually developed their own non-human language. While many animal species do show evidence of complex forms of communication, language remained firmly in humanity's realm until this development. What the machines' new ability will engender remains to be seen, but it's nonetheless a humbling reminder that machine learning offers unprecedented scientific and philosophical investigative opportunities. 

Innovation is the name of the game at SANDOW, as evidenced by the brand’s latest collaboration with Grammy Award–winning musician and New York Times bestselling author Questlove (not to mention Interior Design's Innovation channel, too). The venture, called CREATIVE HOUSE, aims to unite a diverse mix of artists, designers, inventors, and innovators to inspire, connect, and ideate all kinds of new brands and products. Further details will be announced in January 2019, but Questlove provided a snapshot of the project at this year’s Adobe MAX Creativity Conference.

In John Carpenter's iconic film They Live, protagonist John Nada dons a pair of innocuous sunglasses and discovers a horrifying reality: the world has been taken over by aliens who keep their identities and intentions secret by subliminally controlling the human population through mass media. Now, that same idea has been taken to its opposite extreme by engineer Scott Blew and artist Ivan Cash in the form of IRL Glasses. These seemingly ordinary sunglasses use Steelcase's Casper screen-blocking film to completely black out all screens. If the glasses from They Live revealed a nightmare to the wearer, IRL Glasses may deliver a dream. 

Homes built to the Passive House standard have been gaining popularity in recent years, and with the UN's latest dire warning about climate change, that popularity may see a bona fide boom. For people looking to do their part for the planet, German company Lofts to Go offers a solution: the Coodo, a prefab structure that adheres to this rigorous environmental standard. The units can be used as both residential and commercial spaces, and developments are in place to take the Coodo completely off the grid. 

It’s full steam—er, electricity—ahead for autonomous vehicles. The hospitality industry expressed its excitement over this swiftly emerging tech at the 12th annual Radical Innovation Awards, selecting Steve Lee’s Autonomous Travel Suite as the grand prize winner. The Aprilli Design Studios's project won the jury and audience over with its sleek design, game-changing door-to-door service, and easy integration with future tech.

In 2017, HIV/AIDS claimed nearly one million lives, with an additional 36.9 million people living with the disease. HIV is a treatable illness if caught early, but once it becomes AIDS it is fatal. A new device developed by product designer Hans Ramzan gives people in the developing world, where the majority of new HIV/AIDs cases emerge, the power to test themselves at home for the virus, removing dependence on foreign aid.

Electric, not gas. James Bond's preferred automotive brand moves into the future with the release of the Rapide E all-electric luxury sports car in 2019. The car will be powered by 5,600 lithium-ion 18650 format cylindrical cells and can go from 0-60 mph in under four seconds. 

The quest to find evidence of extraterrestrial life has largely focused on the hunt for exo-planets and watery moons, but in the 20th century it was all about finding technosignatures. Largely comprised of radio signals and/or microwaves, technosignatures present not only an opportunity to find alien life, but intelligent alien life. Representatives from NASA, SETI, the Planetary Science Institute, and large research universities held a three-day conference in Houston to re-examine this avenue, astoundingly due to pressure from Congress in support of these efforts. Maybe it has something to do with Space Force.

Countless birds have succumbed to ill-fated collisions with airplanes, but a recent study from Purdue University provides a possible solution to this tragic reality: LEDs. In their experiment, the team demonstrated that birds, specifically the brown-headed cowbird, consistently avoided flying through a hole in a board that was surrounded by red or blue-emitting LEDs. This provided some hope that in the future airplanes could be outfitted with LEDs to help birds steer clear while in the air.

People generally don't like how technology can track their location at all times—the profusion of articles about how to hide from Google and Facebook's panopticon-like power make that perfectly clear. Silicon Valley–based startup Lime, which deploys and operates dockless bicycles in over 88 American cities, may slightly improve that opinion. A few city planning departments have turned to Lime's data about user locations to understand how people are biking in their cities and how to accommodate those riders with new and improved bicycle infrastructure.

A new incarnation of Pelléas et Mélisande, the only opera ever completed by Claude Debussy, in 1902, is a feast for the eyes—literally. Current-day directors and choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet envisioned the Opera Vlaanderen and Royal Ballet Flanders production as a window into the human soul. “The libretto is so much about vision that we thought to make the story unfold inside an eyeball,” Jalet explains.

Rothy's, a footwear brand that makes shoes exclusively out of recycled plastic water bottles, has at last rolled a sneaker style. The shoes resemble classic Vans, but come with an added benefit of being sustainably sourced and completely recyclable. The asking price is $125, which runs a little less than Adidas's Parley shoes ($140). 

Since antiquity, architecture has remained in the realm of "men's professions." A handful of female architects made dents, but their accomplishments went virtually unrecognized by professional institutions and the public at large. But women architects are finally getting their due credit and professional barriers are incrementally lifting, enabling several women to make lasting contributions to some of the world's most design-forward cityscapes. 

For California's high-speed rail line, eleven years late is better than never. The highly contested $100-billion project is finally underway, with 20 sites along the train's planned proof-of-concept route between Bakersfield and Madera having broken ground. The 119-mile stretch is slated to be complete by 2022. The final length of the high-speed rail will be 300 miles. 

First trains, then cars, and now yachts are getting the eco-friendly electric treatment. The Hinckley Company's Dasher is the world’s first fully-electric luxury yacht, earning the nickname "Tesla of the sea.” The stylish boat produces zero emissions, runs with whisper-quiet propulsion, and can be fully charged at the dock in half the time of its land-locked counterparts.

Carbon capture may be in its infancy, but it'll need to grow quickly if we're to rely on it to mitigate global climate change. The Carbon XPrize currently has ten teams competing for the $20 million purse prize. The goal is to transform captured carbon into products that can be used in the built environment, or as alternative fuels, or commercially available items. 

If it seems WeWork couldn't possibly do more with the modern office, think again. The $20 billion company realizes that for some of its tenants who represent established companies, such as Microsoft or Facebook, the built-in culture that WeWork offers isn't what's needed. For that reason they created HQ by WeWork, a pared-down arrangement with less staff and minimal WeWork branding. 

As 3-D printing becomes more available, the potential to create unprecedented architectural feats has exploded. The latest iteration of this growing trend involves a research team at ETH Zurich and the super-slim concrete ceiling they made with a 3-D printed sand mold. The team made a total of 11 1,000-square-foot slabs, which will be installed in their ongoing DFAB House project.