A kilometre-long public park that winds its way through an area to the north of Copenhagen’s city centre, Superkilen is dotted with surreal follies – from a giant Japanese octopus slide to a star-shaped Moroccan fountain – inspired by the many different nationalities that live in this diverse district Photograph: Iwan Baan
A surreal sight perched on the roof of the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Room for London is a holiday home with a difference. The smallest of Alain de Botton’s Living Architecture holiday rentals, it takes the form of a boat inspired by the Roi des Belges in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness Photograph: Charles Hosea
The glistening star of the Olympic opening ceremony, Thomas Heatherwick’s cauldron was the first ever kinetic cauldron of its kind, formed from 204 handmade polished petals that came together in a brilliant burning dandelion. At just 8.5m high and weighing 16 tonnes, it was the smallest and lightest Olympic cauldron ever designed, in tune with London’s lean, flatpack Games Photograph: Edmund Sumner
The runaway success of the Barbican’s exhibition programme, sustaining three-hour long queues for its whole run, the Rain Room caught the public’s imagination by recreating an indoor torrential downpour – in which you didn’t get wet Photograph: PR
Bringing a sense of personality to the increasingly anonymous world of gadgets, the Little Printer lives in your home, bringing you news, puzzles and gossip from your friends. Connected to your smart phone, the printer compiles summaries from your apps and social media streams, spooling out a compilation of updates on demand in the form of a miniature newspaper Photograph: PR
Furniture made from wood generates between 50–80% waste in the form of sawdust, chippings and shavings. Seeing this as an opportunity, the designers combined this waste with bio-resin, forming a porridge-like mixture that expanded into a mould to form this organic-looking chair seat Photograph: PR
Jolan van der Wiel designed a medieval-looking ‘magnet machine’ to create this stool in an inverse process of casting. Combining iron filings with resin, the machine pulls this gloopy mixture apart, letting gravity determine the final form of each stool Photograph: PR
Continuing the trend for ‘hacking’ mainstream products, the Free Universal Construction kit is an online set of 80 bricks and components that can be 3D-printed and fixed to existing construction toys – from Lego to K’Nex – to form previously impossible hybrid designs Photograph: PR
Two million dollars’ worth of Chanel diamonds and vintage Balenciaga-inspired dresses are just a few of the finishing touches costume designer Jacqueline Durran dreamed up for Keira Knightley’s fur-clad character in Joe Wright’s 2012 film of the 1877 Tolstoy novel Photograph: PR
Playing with ideas of utility and function, the large wooden structures in this collection have connotations of religious pilgrimage. Inspired by luggage carriers, the huge structures dwarf the models and create menacing, abstract silhouettes Photograph: PR
The timeless design of biannual magazine The Gentlewoman – the ‘fabulous publication for modern women of style and purpose’ – is the work of Veronica Ditting and Jop van Bennekom, who have developed a hugely influential aesthetic of stripped minimalist layouts and clean, crisp typography Photograph: PR
Now legally required packaging for all cigarettes in Australia, this hard-hitting anti-design, featuring graphic images of the effects of smoking, was the result of market research showing that olive green was the least attractive colour to shoppers Photograph: PR
The Centre for Vision in the Developing World presents an equally revolutionary design for a pair of children’s glasses that can be manually adjusted, providing corrective eyewear for those without access to opticians. Incorporating clear silicon-filled lenses, which can be calibrated by two removable adjusters, the glasses could help millions of children worldwide Photograph: PR
Donky bike designer Ben Wilson aimed to combine the load-carrying ability of traditional Dutch bikes with the strength and simplicity of a BMX. A steel beam running through the middle of the frame means it can carry heavy loads on both its front and rear platforms Photograph: John Selby
Morph folding wheel, developed by young design agency Vitamins, for a new generation of folding wheelchairs. Taking up almost half the volume of a fixed wheel when folded, the Morph is designed to be easy to pack away into the storage compartments of aeroplanes and small cars – as important a breakthrough as the Brompton bike for wheelchair users Photograph: PR
