Today's post is going to be a bit of a departure from our regularly scheduled programming. But it's so cool that I had to share it. It's a company called Vollebak, and they use science and technology to make highly technical clothing (or, as they call it, the future of clothing). It was founded by two brothers.

Every month they launch a new clothing concept. (Sign up here if you want to get on their list.) But each new piece they develop could take anywhere from one to five years to actually produce. Usually we're talking about new production methods and materials that have never before been used for clothing.

Examples include an indestructible puffer jacket designed to help us withstand up to -40 degrees; a solar charged jacket; a "black squid jacket" that reflects visible light to go from black to bionic; and a plant/algae t-shirt that is grown and can later be composted.

But the piece I'm really eyeing is this blue morpho ski/snowboard jacket. It uses two billion microscopic glass spheres to try and replicate the wings of a blue morpho butterfly. During the day the jacket is matt blue. But as soon as you shine light onto it, it looks like the above photo.

This would be useful if you were, say, caught in an avalanche and a helicopter searchlight was trying to find you. Hopefully that's a use case that none of us have to experience. But it could also be invaluable if you were out walking or cycling at night and you wanted to make sure that cars could see you.

(Please note how I somehow managed to make this post mildly relevant to cities.)

Image: Vollebak

Most of you have probably heard of the STEM subjects. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. These academic fields have been the focus of many federal governments around the world as they have been seen as the key to driving innovation.

But what you may not have heard of is something called STEAM. I hadn’t heard about it until this morning. STEAM is an initiative being led by the Rhode Island School of Design to integrate art and design into national agendas pertaining to STEM. STEM + Art = STEAM.

Here’s a snippet from RISD:

The goal is to foster the true innovation that comes with combining the mind of a scientist or technologist with that of an artist or designer. RISD offers endless examples of how art and design education teaches the flexible thinking, risk-taking and creative problem solving needed to solve today’s most complex and pressing challenges – from healthcare to urban revitalization to global warming.

I couldn’t agree more with this initiative. As somebody who thought a lot about how