Spring has officially arrived in New York City and that means getting out of the apartment--at last!--and into the parks and playgrounds.

This foot-long block of blue foam reflects this happy change: it's a miniature, pop-out playground sent to us by the Rockwell Group,  designers of

A couple weeks ago, Studio 360 featured the good works of David Ellis Dickerson — former Hallmark greeting card employee gone solo.  He takes commissions at his blog, Greeting Card Emergency.  He has a real gift for making greeting cards for sticky situations. Little did we know we'd soon have one of our own.

William McDonough is a grand old man in the young field of green architecture. In the 1970s, he built the first "green roof" in America - a corporate headquarters with a meadow on top - and now works on green projects all over the world.

The New York subway system has one of the best environmental designs of recent years: Coney Island's Stillwell Avenue terminal, one block from the Atlantic Ocean, is topped by a state-of-the-art photovoltaic glass roof. Kurt checked it out with architect Greg Kiss.

Audio Slideshow: Stillwell Avenue ...

In Hesperia, California, architect Nader Khalili created a housing movement for the future. Khalili, who passed away in March 2008, prototyped his dome-shaped adobes on a commission from NASA for a lunar colony. Then he realized that his "superadobes" could take root on Earth. Studio 360's

Mouna Andraos is an artist and web designer who's been fascinated by street vendors since her childhood in Lebanon. She created a working portable generator that uses a crank and a solar cell to charge cell phones and laptops, and even run small appliances.

What's the secret to great hair? Architecture. Vidal Sassoon helped define the mod look during London's swinging sixties. The world-famous hairdresser says that more than anything else, the Bauhaus style inspired his geometric cuts. A documentary about his life called "Vidal Sassoon the Movie" premieres at ...

After 15 years and several false starts, the Large Hadron Collider research program has finally begun.  Early this morning, 3300 feet below the Swiss-French border near Geneva, it successfully smashed two protons at record-setting energies.

Rather abruptly, an icy, slushy, uncommonly frigid winter has melted into blue skies and mellow sunshine. In New York, we're taking advantage of the thaw to head to the High Line.

The High Line is the ...

Architecture critic Paul Goldberger's new book is called Why Architecture Matters. To talk about that idea, Kurt and Paul headed to the High Line, a formerly dilapidated train track thirty feet above the street that was recently transformed into an extraordinary public park.

Though President Obama has spoken of a new commitment to NASA, getting humans to Mars still looks a long way off. Undeterred, a group of scientists and engineers created the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah to simulate life on the red planet. We sent reporter

Last Sunday, I visited Volta NY to get my contemporary-art fix.  The room was tightly packed with nearly a hundred solo exhibits.  Visually exhausted after walking aimlessly for over an hour, I was struck by the simple (and eerie) beauty of one piece – a skull suspended in ...

We were thrilled to hear last week that graphic designer Milton Glaser has been awarded a National Medal of Arts. He's probably best known for his 'I heart NY' logo, along with countless designs of magazines, posters, interiors, hotels, shopping malls, and on and on. We celebrate his ...

Finally, a YouTube time-suck guaranteed to delight you with repeated viewings.  If, by the end, your jaw is not scraping the floor, you will be sporting an ear-to-ear smile of gee-whiz amazement.

The band OK Go made viral video history back in 2006 with their goofy treadmill ...

Move over American Idol. Presenting: Studio 360's American Icons.

Sure, Abraham Lincoln isn't most people's idea of a triple threat (though his voice was said to be a reedy tenor). But his memorial in Washington, DC, has staying power. History was made there, and continues to be made ...

In this week's show, Kurt says that we can find the Lincoln Memorial on the back of any old penny. Well, that old penny is getting a new backside. Last week, the United States Mint released a new one-cent coin, in honor of the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth. ...

Halfway into the first week of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, some athletes have already taken issue with the judging. But at these games, there is no discordant French judge at the center of the controversy. Instead, it’s the style police stirring things up.

Figure skater Johnny Weir has ...

Our Valentine Redesign Challenge elicited many great entries to our Flickr page.  And we received mailed-in submissions too.  They ranged from a set of miniature cards 'inspired by a muse and faces of love' to my favorite, a three-foot tall by two-foot wide poster from Victor Stabin.  He ...

We got nearly 200 great entries to our redesign Valentine challenge. And on last week's show, Elizabeth Gilbert picked the winning entry: a bouquet of rolled bacon strips that look like roses (only yummier!) by Sarah Tisdale. As Gilbert said so aptly, 'Nothing can compete ...