Andrea Air is a new air purifier designed by Mathieu Lehanneur engineered to improve air quality by using the filtration of natural plants.

Volkswagen believes that injecting a healthy dose of fun into the often mundane tasks in our daily lives, such as choosing the stairs or remembering to recycle, is the best method for positive influencing our behaviors.

Swiss scientific illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Honegger travels to post and near-nuclear sites like Chernobyl, documenting the bizarre ‘morphologically disturbed’ insects that have survived the fallout.

Czech firm A1 Architects recently explored the small living paradigm at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague last month, creating a whimsical exhibition called “The Small House.”

Barcelona-based studio Bel & Bel has found an ingenious use for vintage Vespas – as upcycled office chairs.

Solar Roadways is a series of structurally-engineered solar panels that can be driven on, replacing all current asphalt roads, including driveways and parking lots. The panels would collect and store solar energy to be used for our homes and businesses.

I recently presented at the Future Trends conference in Miami. My presentation was called ‘Good Ideas in 2010′ and it is the first part of a project to deliver a book later this month with the same title.

Are small single serve versions of products wasteful?

A new laser etching technique might make the small labels on fruits and vegetables a thing of the past.

Casa Huerta (Orchard House) is a small scale greenhouse / vertical farming system proposed to better life in the poor areas of the world’s cities.

Paul Coudamy is a French architect whose work is a contemporary mash up of inventiveness supplied by today’s technologies and materials.

The Energy Belt designed by Massimo Iosa Ghini is a solar powered monorail proposed as a sustainable transportation solution, connecting the Italian city of Bologna with the city’s international airport.

Each year during Tokyo Design Week, DesignTide Tokyo features top design innovations from a variety of fields. With today marking the end of the five-day event, we’ve highlighted three projects below that we find particularly inspirational.

“Living Light” is a piece of public art that uses networked panels to reveal the real-time air quality of each neighborhood in Seoul, South Korea.

William Stranger’s “Second Life” uses reclaimed wood from a local LA bowling alley to create a number of different works including a coffee table, a bench and a diptych.