Michael Singer says "What If" a lot, in his presentation, and probably in his work too. An environmental and architectural artist, he is doing some amazingly cool stuff in designing sustainable infrastructure that is purposeful and beautiful.

What if you had a power generation facility as a community and environmental resource? was a question he asked for New York. The result was the reframing of an ugly urban power plant as a scaffolding for community neighborhood gardens, using the heat from the plant as a growth supercharger for the plants.

What if a Whole Foods could redefine the role of a shopping center in connecting to the community? Integrate green space and community gardens, use the flat plot for water collection, slant the plot catty-corner to the road so it isn't a rectangle next to a straight line. Singer's insights became the guidelines for site planning for Whole Foods, and the first stores are being built in Orlando.

 Singer says he's going beyond sustainability to regenerative design, where the building and infrastructure give back resources to their environment, not just consume less.