Bastian Schaefer and a team of designers at Airbus have been imagining the high-concept future of the jet airlplane -- in a future with less fuel and more passengers.

With a team of engineers, Paul Moller works on the Skycar, a combination car and jet, as well as the M200, a saucer-shaped hovering car. He also develops next-generation engines to power these and other amazing vehicles.

Scott Summit uses his 20 years of experience as an industrial designer to make artificial limbs that help people take personal control of these intimate objects.

As a creative director at Ideo, Paul Bennett reminds us that design need not invoke grand gestures or sweeping statements to be successful, but instead can focus on the little things in life, the obvious, the overlooked.

Zach Kaplan is the CEO of Inventables, a company that collects and shows off new materials and new ideas (you can see their latest collection on Discovery Channel's new show, "Prototype This!").

Klaus Stadlmann was pursuing his PhD at Vienna's Technical University when a broken laser system gave him some unexpected free time to think. Instead of working on his thesis, he decided to build the world's smallest 3D printer.

Showing a series of inspiring, unusual and playful products, British branding and design guru Paul Bennett explains that design doesn't have to be about grand gestures, but can solve small, universal and overlooked problems.

If you build it, they will come... But what happens when robots, buildings and other marvels can build themselves? These talks explore this (increasingly real) reality.

Using a principle he calls “convex lens leadership,” R.A. Mashelkar’s vision has catapulted india’s talent for science and innovation onto the international stage.

Why are pencils shaped like hexagons, and how did they get their iconic yellow color? Pencil shop owner Caroline Weaver takes us inside the fascinating history of the pencil.

Designer Bastian Schaefer shows off a speculative design for the future of jet planes, with a skeleton inspired by strong, flexible, natural forms and by the needs of the world's, ahem, growing population. Imagine an airplane that's full of light and space -- and built up from generative parts in a 3D printer.

Prosthetics can't replicate the look and feel of lost limbs but they can carry a lot of personality. Designer Scott Summit shows 3D-printed, individually designed prosthetic legs that are unabashedly artificial and completely personal -- from macho to fabulous.

Bjarke Ingels believes that architecture is the art and science of making sure our cities and buildings fit with the way we want to live our lives.

Known as "Captain Organic," Ross Lovegrove embraces nature as the inspiration for his "fat-free" design. Each object he creates -- be it bottle, chair, staircase or car -- is reduced to its essential elements. His pieces offer minimal forms of maximum beauty.

Design legend Niels Diffrient talks about his life in industrial design (and the reason he became a designer instead of a jet pilot). He details his quest to completely rethink the office chair starting from one fundamental data set: the human body.

When architect Antón García-Abril moved to Boston, he quickly discovered that his budget wouldn't stretch to the sort of airy, modern home he had in his native Madrid. His solution: to ship a prefabricated house from Madrid to Boston. Using video documentation to illustrate his point, García-Abril explains how his home-in-a-box could represent t...

What could you do with the world's smallest 3D printer? Klaus Stadlmann demos his tiny, affordable printer that could someday make customized hearing aids -- or sculptures smaller than a human hair.

A self-proclaimed nature nerd, Janine Benyus' concept of biomimicry has galvanized scientists, architects, designers and engineers into exploring new ways in which nature's successes can inspire humanity.

Engineer RA Mashelkar shares three stories of ultra-low-cost design from India that use bottom-up rethinking, and some clever engineering, to bring expensive products (cars, prosthetics) into the realm of the possible for everyone.

Pick up a book, magazine or screen, and more than likely you'll come across some typography designed by Matthew Carter. In this charming talk, the man behind typefaces such as Verdana, Georgia and Bell Centennial (designed just for phone books -- remember them?), takes us on a spin through a career focused on the very last pixel of each letter o...

Humanity's future is the future of cities. Explore the crowded favelas, greened-up blocks and futuristic districts that could shape the future of cities -- and take a profane, hilarious side trip to the suburbs.

Ole Scheeren designs buildings that generate both functional and social spaces.

During the winter of 2018-2019, one million tons of salt were applied to icy roads in the state of Pennsylvania alone. The salt from industrial uses like this often ends up in freshwater rivers, making their water undrinkable and contributing to a growing global crisis. How can we better protect these precious natural resources? Physical organic...

3D printing has grown in sophistication since the late 1970s; TED Fellow Skylar Tibbits is shaping the next development, which he calls 4D printing, where the fourth dimension is time. This emerging technology will allow us to print objects that then reshape themselves or self-assemble over time. Think: a printed cube that folds before your eyes...

Reliable electricity remains a distant dream for too many people around the world and simply linking to the existing grid can be cost prohibitive. In this talk, Anil Raj proposes an alternative: micropower plants, small-scale renewable energy sources connected to a minigrid.

American designer Chris Bangle explains his philosophy that car design is an art form in its own right, with an entertaining -- and ultimately moving -- account of the BMW Group's Deep Blue project, intended to create the SUV of the future.

Designer Ross Lovegrove expounds his philosophy of "fat-free" design and offers insight into several of his extraordinary products, including the Ty Nant water bottle and the Go chair.

David Sedlak’s research focuses the long-term goal of developing cost-effective, safe and sustainable systems to manage water resources.

Economic growth has been slowing for the past 50 years, but relief might come from an unexpected place -- a new form of manufacturing that is neither what you thought it was nor where you thought it was. Industrial systems thinker Olivier Scalabre details how a fourth manufacturing revolution will produce a macroeconomic shift and boost employme...

Venice is sinking. To save it, Rachel Armstrong says we need to outgrow architecture made of inert materials and, well, make architecture that grows itself. She proposes a not-quite-alive material that does its own repairs and sequesters carbon, too.