Here's what we looked at this week: A man was ordered by the city to build a visual screen to conceal his boat. He complied. This incredible mobile bridge, designed and built in Switzerland, diverts traffic overhead during road repairs. This TriqBriq production system turns otherwise unusable wood into Lego-like blocks for homebuilding. Barebones'...

Canfield Scientific, a manufacturer of imaging systems for science and healthcare applications, wanted to refresh their Vectra H1 handheld system. They contacted industrial design and engineering consultancy HSD, a/k/a/ HS Design. "HSD worked to not only aid in improving lighting and imaging quality, but also to incorporate Canfield Scientific's new...

Monocab is a new form of transportation that makes use of existing infrastructure. Conceived of by German design engineer Thorsten Försterling, the idea is that rural areas of Europe, which often lack public transportation options, could have their disused railway lines populated by these autonomous on-demand passenger pods."The MONOCAB is a gyroscopically...

Years ago on a trip to Death Valley, I slept in a tiny one-man tent. The host had provided a cot inside to elevate the sleeping bag. Although the space was coffin-like, sleeping on the cot was far more comfortable than on the cold ground. Jake Lah, a veteran South Korean tent designer credited with revolutionizing the industry, has taken this a step...

At Johns Hopkins University, a Mechanical Engineering class was given a difficult assignment: To silence an off-the-shelf leaf blower, without reducing its efficacy. Apparently the assignment was given with no expectation that it could actually be accomplished; as the school's Hub publication writes, "Shocking their sponsors, their advisers, and even...

This Wind bench, by Belgian designer Peter Donders, combines digital fabrication with hand craftsmanship.Made of birch plywood, the pieces were produced in slices on a CNC mill. "It is composed of 1265 sections over 85 layers which were combined into 220 numbered pieces before being assembled by hand," Donders writes. The bench measures 220 cm (7.2')...